4 AUGUST 1917, Page 12

WILLIAM PENN.

(To TEE EEOTOs or elm " SPECTATOR.") your review of Mr. Graham's Life of Penn 1Spectator, July 28th) you say of Penn "To Friends he will always be their great protagonist and apologist." I am not myself a "Friend," hut I happen to be directly descended from Robert Barclay, the author of An Apology for the True Christian Divinity as the some is Held Forth and Preached by the People called in Scorn Quakers, and I have always supposed my ancestor was the Quaker Apologist. Of course I knew that Penn had written books of

controversy in defence of Quakerism, and may be styled • " Friends' protagonist," but I submit that the title "Apologist " belongs to Barclay of Ury and to no other.—I am, Sin, deo EDWARD STARLET EOREBISON.