, to whom one day in 1655 had come his friend John
Milton, bringing a manuscript for him to read. "He asked me how I liked
it, and what I thought of it, which I modestly but freely told him; and
after some further discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, Thou
hast said much here of _Paradise Lost_, but what hast thou to say about
Paradise found?" Whereupon the poet wrote his second epic.

Ellwood has left a happy description of Guli Springett. "She was in all
respects," he says, "a very desirable woman,--whether regard was had to
her outward person, which wanted nothing to render her completely
comely; or as to the endowments of her mind, which were every way
extraordinary." And he speaks of her "innocent, open, free
conversation," and of the "abundant affability, courtesy, and sweetness
of her natural temper." Her portrait fits with this description, showing
a bright face in a small, dark hood, with a white kerchief over her
shoulders. Both her ancestry and her breeding would dispose her to
appreciate heroism, especially such as was shown in the cause of
religion. She found the hero of her dreams in William Penn. Thus at
Amersham, in the spring of 1672, the two stood up in some quiet company
of Friends, and with prayer and joining of hands were united in
marriage.

"My dear wife," he wrote to her ten years later, as he set out for
America, "remember thou hast the love of my youth, and much the joy of
my life; the most beloved, as well as the most worthy of all earthly
comforts. God knows, and thou knowest it. I can say it was a match of
Providence's making."

The Declaration of Indulgence, the king's suspension of the penalties
legally incurred by dissent, came conveniently at this time to give them
a honeymoon of peace and tranquillity. They took up their residence at
Rickmansworth, in Hertfordshire. In the autumn, William set out again
upon his missionary journeys, preaching in twenty-one towns in
twenty-one days. "The Lord sealed up our labors and travels," he wrote
in his journal, "according to the desire of my soul and spirit, with his
heavenly refreshments and sweet living power and word of life, unto the
reaching of all, and consolating our own hearts abundantly."

So he returned with the blessings of peace, "which," as he said, "is a
reward beyond all earthly treasure."

V

THE BEGINNING OF PENN'S POLITICAL LIFE: THE HOLY EXPERIMENT

In 1673, George Fox came back from his travels in America