Family History: Introduction and Chapters I-IV, Jenkins', The Family of William Penn, 1899: PA File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Linda Kyle. jkyle@trib.co USGENWEB NOTICE: Printing this file by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. ____________________________________________________________ Page i THE FAMILY OF WILLIAM PENN FOUNDER OF PENNSYLVANIA ANCESTRY AND DESCENDANTS BY HOWARD M. JENKINS AUTHOR OF VOLUME ONE, MEMORIAL HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA, ETC., ETC. 1899 PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, U. S. A. THE AUTHOR LONDON, ENGLAND HEADLEY BROTHERS, 14, BISHOPSGATE WITHOUT Page iii PREFACE. THE occasion of this volume is substantially, perhaps sufficiently, stated in the opening of the first chapter. To the explanation there given a few particulars may be added. There has always been, the author believes, a strong and very reasonable interest in the personality of William Penn, as the Founder of Pennsylvania, and as a worthy figure in the world's history, and some of this interest attaches to the line of those who have descended from him. The volume here prepared assumes simply to deal with this Family subject. It is not a history nor a biography. In one or two places, perhaps, the record has been permitted an extension which could not be entirely justified by the plan of the work, but excusing this by the special interest of the subject at those points, the author thinks the book has been fairly confined to its original and legitimate plan. Some of the family letters, very possibly, may be regarded as containing details too trivial for printing. The view adopted as to such matters has been that the account is thus made more precise and distinct, and is invested with human interest. Indeed, a book of this character must in part find its justification as being a study, a picture, of social conditions in the period to which it belongs, and such a study or picture is obviously of little value unless it is presented with lines sufficiently distinct, and details sufficiently definite, to make a positive impression on the mind. While it has not Page iv been desired to dwell upon features that are unpleasing, and not to reward a reader--if any such there be--who comes in search of scandal, yet it has not been thought proper to omit a candid, if brief, mention of whatever is essential to the completeness of the record. One criticism to be reasonably made is that which must apply to nearly all such works,--that the treatment of individuals is unequal, that in cases where the claims are alike more is said of one and less of another. This is explained by the variation of materials,--in one case they are abundant, in others scanty. Concerning some persons there survive letters and documents so numerous and so full that there is no difficulty in making a satisfactory account of them, while as to others only a few particulars remain, or are accessible. Page v PAGE I THE ORIGIN OF THE PENN FAMILY 1 II ADMIRAL PENN'S PROGENITORS 5 III ADMIRAL SIR WILLIAM PENN 14 IV WILLIAM PENN: CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 30 V WILLIAM PENN'S FIRST MARRIAGE 47 VI WILLIAM PENN'S SECOND MARRIAGE 67 VII FAMILY LIFE AT RUSCOMBE 88 VIII WILLIAM PENN, JUNIOR 106 IX THOMAS PENN 129 Page vi X THE DESCENDANTS OF THOMAS PENN 153 XI RICHARD PENN AND HIS DESCENDANTS 177 XII WILLIAM PENN, THIRD, AND HIS DESCENDANTS 204 XIII SUPPLEMENTARY AND CONCLUDING CHAPTER 229 Page vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE WILLIAM PENN Frontispiece. "The Portrait in Armour." Engraved on steel, 1877, by S. C. Armstrong, from the painting in the gallery of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. ADMIRAL PENN 15 From an engraving of the portrait by Sir Peter Lely, at Greenwich Hospital, England. LETTER FROM THE DUKE OF ORMONDE TO ADMIRAL PENN 39 From the original in the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. WILLIAM PENN 47 After engraving by John Hall, London, 1773, of the drawing (1770) by Du Simitiere, of ivory bust in alto relievo (from memory), by Sylvester Bevan. JORDANS, ENGLAND 59 Burial-place of William Penn and his family. From a recent photograph. PLAN OF GROUNDS AT JORDANS 67 From a drawing about 1853, folded frontispiece to "A Visit to the Grave of William Penn" (London, Wm. and Frederick G. Cash). JOHN PENN 73 "The American." From the original painting, ascribed to Sir Godfrey Kneller, in the possession of Mrs. Admiral Lardner, Philadelphia. THOMAS PENN 89 From the picture in the gallery of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Copy of the original, by Peter Van Dyck, 1750, in the possession of the Earl of Ranfurly, at Dungannon Park, Ireland. LADY JULIANA PENN 129 From the mezzotint by Charles Turner, in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, of portrait in crayon, in the possession of the Earl of Ranfurly. CHILDREN OF THOMAS PENN 139 From a mezzotint by Charles Turner of the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1761. The four children are Juliana (Mrs. Baker), Louisa Hannah, John, and Granville. (The original was at Tempsford Hall, Beds., in the possession of Major William Dugald Stuart). Page viii OLD MANOR-HOUSE, STOKE POGES 145 Built 1555, by Henry, Earl of Huntingdon. Occupied by Lord Keeper Hatton and Sir Edward Coke. Country residence of Thomas Penn, and John Penn, 1760-90. Partly taken down by John Penn. From a recent photograph. DOORWAY, OLD MANOR-HOUSE, STOKE POGES 147 Showing the date, 1555. From a recent photograph. JOHN PENN 153 Of Stoke, son of Thomas. Photogravure of portrait by James R. Lambdin, in the gallery of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Original by Pine, presented by John Penn to Edmund Physick. STOKE PARK 159 Residence of John Penn, and of members of his branch of Penn Family, 1790-1848. View from the rear. From a recent photograph. JOHN PENN 162 Of Stoke, son of Thomas. In uniform as lieutenant-colonel of Royal Bucks Yeomanry. From the mezzotint of the portrait by Sir W. Beechey, P.R.A., at Pennsylvania Castle, in possession of J. Merrick Head, Esq. RICHARD PENN, PROPRIETARY 177 From the original painting, by Richard Wilson, R.A., in the possession of Mrs. Admiral Lardner, Philadelphia. HANNAH LARDNER PENN 182 From the original painting, by Richard Wilson, R.A., in the possession of Mrs. Admiral Lardner, Philadelphia. GOVERNOR JOHN PENN 187 Son of Richard, Proprietary. Etching by Albert Rosenthal, Philadelphia. CHRISTIANA GULIELMA (PENN) GASKELL 208 From the portrait in the possession of Colonel Peter Penn-Gaskell Hall, Philadelphia. NOTE.--The reproduction alluded to on page 229, of the photograph of Admiral Penn's tablet in St. Mary Redcliffe, was in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, but has been lost; in order not to delay the issue of the book it is omitted. Page ix ADDITIONS, CORRECTIONS. ON page 5 the spelling Stoke Pogis should follow that used generally elsewhere in the book, Stoke Poges. Page 21. My friend Isaac Sharp, custodian of the Friends' records at Devonshire House, London (whose kind aid in the preparation of this work I take this opportunity to acknowledge), writes me: "I have in my possession the original letter from William Poole to Admiral Penn, dated Livorno, Italy, June 2, 1670. Page 30. In the eleventh line from the bottom, for "fourteen" read eleven. Page 34. Foot-note, the Fairlop oak is said to have blown down in 1820, not 1870. Page 39. Second line from bottom, for "Stewart" read Stuart. Page 39, and elsewhere. Tempsford Hall, Bedfordshire, the residence of Major Stuart, was totally destroyed by fire, November 11, 1898. The "Portrait in armour" of William Penn, the Founder, was one of the few things saved. The family portraits, and the fine library collected by Major Stuart's grandfather, William Stuart, shared the destruction of the hall. Page 39, and elsewhere. "Pennsylvania Castle" remains in the possession of J. Merrick Head, Esq., of Ardverness, Reigate, Surrey. The author of this volume has been favored by him with fine photographic views of the Castle, and of the adjoining ruins of the old Rufus Castle, said to have been erected by William Rufus. Besides other family portraits, there are four of John Penn (son of Thomas) in Pennsylvania Castle, one of these being the military portrait, by Sir W. Beechey, P.R.A., the mezzotint engraving of which is reproduced in this volume. Page 40. Foot-note, for "Thomas" Sartain read John. Page 55. Eighth line from top, for "his mother" read his wife. (The inheritance of Worminghurst is correctly stated on next page.) Page 56. Fifth line from top, attention has been called to the date of the birth of the first child of William Penn. It is given as the records give it (cited by Coleman), but would be better if double-dated, "11 Mo. 23, 1672-73,"--i. e., January 23. This child died First Month (March), 1673, and the date 1672, in the fourteenth line, should be corrected to read 1673. (See also page 66, fourth line from bottom.) Page 60. First line, for "three years" read two years. (The same subject is correctly referred to on next page, fourth line from top.) Page 75. The portrait of John Penn, at the Philadelphia Library, is not by Sir Godfrey Kneller (though so stated in a number of works of authority), but is a copy, 1859, by James R. Lambdin. (The canvas, on the back, is lettered "Thomas Penn," but this appears to be, upon the best obtainable evidence, an error.) Page x Page 79. Line 18, Thomas Freame had probably not "been at Ruscombe," as the Penn residence there had no doubt been given up about 1719, but apparently he had been at John Penn's country place, wherever that then was. Page 79. Last line, for 1746 read 1740. Same correction on page 87, eighth line from bottom. (See foot-note, page 142.) Page 85. Lines 17 and 18, Simon Clement was the uncle of Hannah Penn, not her brother-in-law; he was husband to her aunt Mary. (The relationship is correctly mentioned near bottom of page 89, and is exactly stated page 68, line 6.) Page 90. Foot-note, "Lace" Raylton should be Tace. The passage in Beck and Ball's work speaks of Isaac Sowle, and I have followed it, but it was Andrew Sowle (who d. 1695), who was the Friends' printer. Page 146. The poem by Thomas Gray, "A Long Story," gives in two of its stanzas some description of the old manor-house at Stoke: "In Britain's isle, no matter where, An ancient pile of building stands: The Huntingdons and Hattons there Employed the pow'r of fairy hands "To raise the ceiling's fretted height, Each panel in achievements clothing, Rich windows that exclude the light, And passages that lead to nothing." Page 174. Second line from top, Mr. Henry Stuart was M.P. for Bedfordshire. Page 175. "Belrath" should be Balrath, and "Kempstone" should be Kempston. Page 177, Line 11, for "Hannah" read Rebecca. Page 179. Foot-note, line 1, for "Hannah" read Margaret. Same correction, page 180, line one. Page 190. James Greenleaf, whose wife was the niece of Ann (Allen) Penn, was not married to her at the time of the conveyance of "Lansdowne," in 1795; the marriage took place (as I am informed by Mr. Chas. Henry Hart) April 26, 1800. Page 207. Foot-note, the reference should be to Beck and Ball's "London Friends' Meetings." (The work is correctly cited in foot-note, page 90.) Page 239. Line 17, the statement that Thomas Freame probably did not return to England between 1732 and 1734 is an error. The fact is correctly stated on pages 74 and 133 (including foot-note), that he arrived in September, 1734, at Philadelphia, in company with John Penn, and his (T. F.'s) family, and as he had previously been here, in 1732, it is evident he must meantime have returned to England. The Pennsylvania Gazette for September 26, 1734, says,-- "An Express from New Castle having late last Thursday night brought the agreeable News that the Honourable John Penn, Esq., the eldest of our Proprietors, with his Brother-in-law, Mr. Freame, his Lady and Family, were on board a ship from London standing up this River [Thomas Penn and others hastened early next morning to Chester and] Mr. Penn, Mr. Freame and his Lady came on shore about 4 in the afternoon." Page 252. Line 2, for "Masters" read Allen. THE FAMILY OF WILLIAM PENN. Page 2 The facts concerning the family of William Penn are not, to my knowledge, collected in any one work. Some of them are not to be found in a satisfactory form at all; most of them must be laboriously sought in scattered and not easily consulted volumes. It has appeared to me that the whole subject deserved a fresh, orderly, and comprehensive restatement. I have availed myself for this essay of all the authoritative printed matter concerning the Founder and his family with which I am acquainted, accessible in Philadelphia, and have consulted some unprinted manuscripts, and I think the result will be regarded as reasonably satisfactory in point of accuracy. If errors appear, it may be hoped that those better informed will supply the needed corrections, so that we may thus have a record both complete and correct. Perhaps I should add that in order to give unity to the narrative, and to make it clear to the reader, I have included in it many well-known facts concerning the Founder and his father, the Admiral, as well as those gleaned from obscure sources, and therefore not generally familiar. I. THE ORIGIN OF THE PENN FAMILY. The ancestry of William Penn, the Founder of Pennsylvania, has not been positively ascertained farther back than his great-great-grandfather, who bore the same name, and of whom I shall presently speak. But the evidence seems to me sufficient that his family was originally Welsh. The name itself is distinctly Welsh,--a word of common use in that language: pen, a head or highland. When a name was to be assigned to his newly granted province, in 1681, he himself chose, he says, "New Wales," but the King gave it the name of PENN-SYLVANIA, and the Secretary, Sir Leolin Jenkins,1 a Welshman, could not be prevailed on to change it. Mentioning this, Penn (in his well-known letter to Robert Turner, March 5, 1680-81) explains the meaning of his own name, it being, he says, "Welsh for a head, as Penmanmoire in Wales, Penrith in Cumberland, and Penn in Buckinghamshire," etc. The story in Watson is also well known, that the Reverend Hugh David came over with William Penn "about 1700" (on the "Canterbury," of course, in 1699, if the story is true), and that in conversation on the ship, Penn said, "Hugh, I am a Welshman myself," adding the explanation that one of his ancestors had come from Wales into England.2 1 Hepworth Dixon, in his "Life of Penn," refers to the Secretary with whom Penn discussed this subject, as Blathwayte, but it is obvious it was Jenkins. Cf. the record in the "Breviate of the Boundary Case," "Pennsylvania Archives," Second Series, Vol. XVI. p. 355. There is a good sketch of Sir Leolin (or Llewelyn) Jenkins in the "Dictionary of National Biography." 2 "Annals," Vol. I. p. 219. While the account ascribed to Hugh David is obviously incorrect as to the point of William Penn's grandfather being "named John Tudor," other details in it are not incredible, and some of them are supported by independent testimony. The Founder is reported as saying that his ancestor, John Tudor, "lived upon the top of a hill or mountain in Wales," and was generally called John Penmunrith, or John on the top of the hill; hence, ultimately, John Penn. This might have been. It is worth note that the Welsh Tudors, ancestors of Henry VII., are said to have come from Penrunydd, in Anglesea. And it is of record that Edward VI., grandson of Henry VII., in 1553 made a grant of land to David Penn, in consideration of the services of his wife, Sybil Penn, who was the nurse of Henry VIII.'s children, a near association of the Penns with the royal Tudors being thus suggested. Page 3 The arms borne by William Penn, the Founder, Argent, on a fesse Sable three plates, are the same as those of the Penns of Penn, in Buckinghamshire, according to the Heralds' Visitation of that county, 1575-1634. They are the same, also, as those of the Penne family of Shropshire, on the border of Wales, according to the Heralds' Visitation of that county, 1564-1620. This latter family, in a pedigree given in the Heralds' manuscript,1 extending over fifteen generations, begins with Sir William Penne, Knight, Lord of the Bryn (hill), who married Joan, daughter of Ririd Voel of Lodfoll, and follows with his son, Sir Hugh Penne, Knight, who married Jane, daughter to Jer. Goch ap Bleddin ap Kinvan. The pedigree thus "bristles with Welsh names," and in the eighth generation from Sir Hugh, Richard Penne married Lowry, daughter of David Lloyd ap Sir Griffith Vaughan, and Sionett Penne married Ievan ap Llewelyn ap Griffith,--all of which record, it need hardly be said, is thoroughly Welsh. Not only did the Penns of Penn, in Bucks, bear the same arms, Argent, on a fesse Sable three plates, as the Shropshire family and Penn the Founder, but they had among their family the names David and Griffith, distinctly Welsh. "How are we to account for the occurrence of these Welsh names in a family inhabiting a remote village in the heart of England, except by supposing it was of Welsh descent, and kept green the memory of its extraction?"2 An old manuscript, prepared in the middle of the seventeenth century by a member of the Penn family of Worcestershire, and preserved by Mr. Grazebook, a well-known English authority on heraldry, describes the arms, Argent, on a fesse Sable three plates, as belonging to the "main stem of the Penn family," and says,-- "As for our beginning I own it to proceed from the Britons, our estates lying amongst them, and in the Marches of the same, which 1 Harleian MSS., British Museum, No. 1241, cited in Quakeriana, London, October, 1894. The Bucks Visitation is Harleian MSS. No. 1533. 2 Article in Quakeriana, already cited, October, 1894. anciently belonged to Penn-house, before that it was divided and scattered by many branches into several counties."1 page 4 on the tomb of Sir William Penn, father of the Founder, it is stated that he was son of Giles Penn, "of the Penns of Penns-Lodge in the county of Wilts, and those Penns of Penn, in the County of Bucks," and this inscription, it is fair to presume, was made with adequate knowledge. The author of it was doubtless William Penn, the Founder.2 His intelligent acquaintance with his father's career, and devotion to his memory (shown afterwards in his "Vindication"), his ability in composition, and his right as eldest son, heir, and executor, make it unlikely that the work would be intrusted to any other hands.3 In the transcription of the monumental inscription to Admiral Penn, Mr. J. Henry Lea (Penna. Mag., Vol. XIV. p. 172) differs from all other authorities as to the language used in it, by omitting the words "and those Penns of Penn in the County of Bucks." These appear in the full inscription given in Granville Penn's "Memorials" of the Admiral, in Burke's "Commoners of England," and in Maria Webb's "Penns and Peningtons;" and Mr. W. H. Summers, author of the interesting and valuable "Memories of Jordans and the Chalfonts" (London, 1895), says, in a letter from Beaconsfield, October 3, 1895, to Quakeriana, London,-- "When in Bristol a few weeks ago, I entered St. Mary Redcliffe Church and examined Admiral Penn's monument. It certainly is very difficult to decipher the inscription, but I was able, even without a glass, to read the disputed words 'and those Penns of Penn in the County of Bucks.' " 1 Ibid. The "Marches" were the partly Welsh counties bordering on England, geographically and politically counted as part of England. 2 The expression on the tablet, that the Admiral, "With a gentle and Even Gale, in much peace, arrived and anchored in his Last and Best Port," strongly suggests the style of William Penn, the Founder. 3 The Admiral's widow writes to her son (W. P., the Founder), October 9, 1670, "The man is returned from Bristol, and set up his monument very well," etc. (Foot-note to G. Penn's "Memorials," Vol. II. p. 568.) Page 5 "Relation of kindred," says Granville Penn, in his "Memorials" of the Admiral (Vol. II. p. 575), "was always mutually claimed and acknowledged between the family of Sir William Penn and the Penns of Penn in Bucks, now represented by Earl Howe; but the genealogical connection does not appear on record." It is also true--though the fact may be of no great significance--that at Penn, in Bucks, in the parish church, where the Penn family of that place are buried, Thomas Penn, of Stoke Pogis (son of the Founder), constructed a large family vault, in which the remains of six of his children, who died in infancy, 1753-60, were deposited and now remain.1 From these several pieces of evidence it seems to me reasonable: (1) that the ancestry of William Penn was originally Welsh; (2) that families of the name in several southern and southwestern counties of England, bearing the same arms, were of a common stock, derived from Wales; (3) that the Penns of Wiltshire and Bucks were nearly related, and when the lines shall be traced will prove to be common ancestors of the Founder. II. ADMIRAL PENN'S PROGENITORS. Coming now from the probable to the certain, we begin the line of William Penn, the Founder, with his great-great-grandfather, who died 1591. Records from that date make it plain. This ancestor was "William Penn, of Myntie, in the County of Gloucester, Yeoman," whose will is recorded in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and has been printed in full in the Penna. Magazine, by J. H. Lea (Vol. XIV. p. 58).2 "Minte, Minety, or Minty," says Britton's description of Wiltshire (London, 1814), "is a large parish, principally situated in a detached portion of the hundred of Crowthorne and Minety, which belongs politically to the County of 1 Letter of Rev. J. Grainger, M.A., vicar of Penn, to W. H. Summers, cited in Quakeriana, London, November, 1894. 2 Also by Coleman (London, 1871) in his "Pedigree of Penn."1 page 6 Gloucester, though completely environed by Wiltshire.' An earlier description (Atkyns's "Gloucestershire," pp. 346, 358) says, "Minchy, now Minety, was always accounted a member of the manor of Cirencester, and gave the name to the hundred of Minety, now united to the hundred of Crowthorn; it anciently was written the hundred of Cirencester. The parish church, the parsonage, the vicarage house and a small hamlet called Wiltshire-row, lie in the hundred of Malmsbury, in Wiltshire; the rest, and far the greater part of the parish, lies in the hundred of Crowthorn and Minety," in Gloucester. Penn's Lodge, Clarkson says ("Life of Penn," p. 1), was near Minety, "on the edge of Bradon Forest, in the northwest part of the county of Wilts, or rather in Gloucestershire, a small part of the latter being enclosed in the former county."1 In Granville Penn's "Memorials" (Vol. II. p. 375) there is a letter from John Georges, a barrister-at-law, M.P. for Cirencester (then a man of seventy-three), dated at "Bawnton, near Cicester," January 27, 1665-66, to Sir William Penn, in which he urges him to repurchase the ancestral place at Minety. In this letter Mr. Georges says,-- "And now give me leave . . . to revive a former notion to you: that . . . you would redeem unto your name and family the lands in Myntie, which were your ancestors', the Penns, for many generations, worth about 100l per ann., with a genteel ancient house upon it. I have heretofore made an overture of this my desire to Mr. Nicholas Pleydell, the present owner of it, and never found him averse to part with it," etc. We fix, therefore, William Penn, of Minety, as a yeoman, living at Penn's Lodge, a "genteel, ancient house," in Gloucestershire, adjoining Wiltshire. His will, dated May 1, 1590, shows that he had had one son, William, whose 1 "A large tract of country lying to the south and southeast of Minty is still distinguished by the name of Bradon Forest, though it is now almost entirely denuded of trees, and a great part of it is enclosed for cultivation." (Britton's "Wiltshire," p. 633, London, 1814.) Page 7 wife's name was Margaret; that William was dead at the time of making this will, but Margaret surviving, with six children, George (explicitly named as the eldest son), Giles, William, Marie, Sara, and Susanna.1 He directs that his "body be buried in the parish church, chancel, or churchyard of Minetie." It appears that it was so buried, and that a monumental stone in the chancel near the south door of the church bore the inscription, "William Penn dyed the 12 of March in the year of our Lord 1591." The rector of Minety, Rev. Mr. Edwards, in 1890, reported that the stone had then--at the distance of three centuries--"quite disappeared."2 The yeoman of Minety, though a man of moderate estate, appears thus to have been a person of social distinction in his neighborhood, entitled to sepulture and a memorial tablet within the parish church. We pass now to his son William, who, as the will shows, had predeceased him. The will gives the name of the son's wife (Margaret) and the names of their six children (stated above), but discloses little more concerning him. But the letter, already partly cited, of the barrister Georges to Admiral Penn presents something further. He addresses the Admiral as "loving cousin," and claims a "share and interest" in him as one of his "kinsfolk and near allies," and in explanation says,-- "And to the end that you and yours may be truly informed . . . how I make my title to it, you may please to know that your grandfather, 1 The record of Marriage Bonds in the Diocesan Registry Office at Salisbury shows the bond of Richard Cusse, of Wooton Bassett, in Wilts, August 2, 1633, to marry Susan Penn, of the parish of Brinkworth, spinster. Mr. Lea says she "is unquestionably the daughter of William and Margaret (Rastall) Penn, and the aunt of Admiral Penn;" if so, she was at least forty-three years old, as she is named in her grandfather's will, 1590. 2 Cf. J. Henry Lea, Penna. Mag., Vol. XIV. p. 57, foot-note. Clarkson, in his "Life of Penn," says, "A flat grave-stone, which perpetuates this event, is still remaining [he wrote about 1812]. It stands in the passage between two pews in the chancel. It states, however, only that he died on the 12th of March, 1591." Page 8 William Penn (whose name you bear) was by your great-grandfather (of the same name also) placed with my great uncle, Christopher Georges, then a counsellor-at-law, to be bred up by him, and with whom he lived many years as his chief clerk, till he married him to one of his sister Ann Georges' daughters by Mr. John Rastall, then one of the aldermen of Gloucester, . . . By which pedigree it may appear to you that your father and myself were cousin-germans but once removed."1 We pass now to the third generation. Of the six children of William, the law-clerk, we have little knowledge,2 except as to Giles, the second son. He was "a captain in the navy, and for many years a consul for the English trade in the Mediterranean," Granville Penn says, and the Admiral's mural tablet uses nearly the same words. The "Calendar of English State Papers," in 1635-39, shows a long correspondence between Giles Penn and the government, in which he desires a commission to lead an expedition against the Sallee corsairs of Morocco, a commission which might or might not have been finally given him, except for the pressure of the then impending civil war. The Admiral's tablet says his mother, the wife of Giles, was of "the Gilberts in the County of Somerset, originally from Yorkshire," and the records of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, show the marriage of "Giles Penne and Joan Gilbeart," on the 5th of November, 1600. That this was our Captain Giles is fairly certain, and makes an alteration in the customary Penn pedigrees, which give the name of Giles's wife as Margaret.3 Granville Penn says, "Giles had two sons, between whose ages was a difference of 20 years." These two were George and William, the Admiral, and as the latter was born in 1621, it fixes George's birth as 1601, and corresponds appropriately with the date 1600 as that of the parents' marriage. 1 The list of lay subsidies for Wiltshire, 1587, has a reference to William Penn, of Malmesbury Borough, who Mr. Lea thinks was the lawclerk, the son of the yeoman. 2 Susan's marriage is probably noted (see foot-note preceding), and George, by an allusion in Admiral Penn's will, lived at Bradon Forest, Wilts (in succession to his grandfather), and had a son William. 3 This error occurs in the Penn Pedigree, by Coleman (London, 1871). Coleman also has other errors: he confuses George Penn, uncle of the Admiral, with George, the Admiral's elder brother, and gives the year of William Penn of Minety's death as 1592 and his will 1591,--both dates a year too late. Page 9 As to Giles Penn's children other than George and William, the records of St. Mary Redcliffe show the baptism of "Rachell daughter to Gyles Penne," February 24, 1607, and the death of "Eleanor the daughter of Mr. Giles Penne," November 24, 1612. Two daughters of Giles Penn must have grown up and married and had issue, or one have married twice, for Admiral Penn, in his will, names his "nephews, James and John Bradshaw, and William and George Markham." He also names his "Cousin William Penn, son of George Penn late of the Forest of Braydon, Co. Wilts, Gentleman, deceased," which indicates that his uncle George, named executor in the will of the yeoman of Minety, dwelt in Wiltshire and closed his life there. The nephew William Markham is of course well known to us, the first cousin of the Founder, and many years Lieutenant-Governor of Pennsylvania. George Penn, the elder son of Captain Giles and brother of the Admiral, was "brought up to commerce," Granville Penn says, "became an opulent merchant in Spain, and resided many years at Seville." But this is a scanty and somewhat vague outline of the experiences of George, which appear to have been romantic and unfortunate to a degree not here suggested. Mr. Conner, in his "Sir William Penn, Knight," says that "the elder [son] having grown rich as a merchant in Spain, was pounced upon by the Inquisition as heretic and sinner. Torn from wife and fortune, tortured and expelled, he regained his native land but to die." This affords us a fuller idea of the case, and the whole story is given in documents and comments which Granville Penn prints in the "Memorials." There are, first, the minutes of the Committee of the Admiralty, at London, 1681 and 1682," he being in England the whole of 1681. He spells William Aubrey's name Aubury, and Gulielma he uniformly prints Gulima. Page 10 in the time of the Commonwealth, when Captain (afterwards Sir) William Penn was cruising on the coast of Ireland in the 30-gun frigate "Assurance." Thus, the minutes: "Jan. 12, 1646-7.--A Spanish gentleman, named Don Juan de Urbina, being taken by Captain Penn, on the coast of Munster, in a prize that came out of Waterford, did this day attend the Committee, (together with Sr. Bernardo, agent for the ambassador of his majesty of Spain . . .), and desire that he might be set at liberty, being a person of quality . . . he alleged that he came from Bilboa, was bound to Flanders, to be secretary to the governor thereof; that the ship wherein he was embarked was cast away about Waterford in Ireland, at the end of June last. That he had been at Kilkenny, Ross, and other parts of Ireland. . . . That . . . he had embarked himself for Bilboa in the St. Patrick of Waterford, which was after taken by Captain Penn, who did offer affronts to his person, stripping him naked, and putting him among the common mariners; for which he therefore desired satisfaction and reparation in his honor," etc. The committee, after an examination into the case, decided that there was no reason for the Don's detention, and directed "that he be delivered to Mr. Bernardo," the agent for the Spanish ambassador. In Captain Penn's journal he had made this entry of the Don's capture: "13th December, 1646, Sunday.--About eight of the clock in the morning we spied a sail, to whom we gave chase; and about eleven we came up with her, and took her; she belonging to Waterford, and was called the Patrick thereof, of burthen about 60 tons, laden with hides, salmon, and several other commodities, bound for Bilboa; and had in her about 8 Spaniards, passengers." No particular mention, however, is here made of the Don. Explanation of the case is plainly needed, and this Granville Penn, after these quotations, proceeds to supply. At the time, he says, that Captain Penn took the "St. Patrick," his brother George was a prisoner in the hands of the Spanish Inquisition, and had suffered the most cruel treatment; the captain therefore regarded Don Juan "as a representative of the Spanish nation," and proposed "to Page 11 repay to him a mollified portion of the severities and indignities which his brother was suffering at Seville. But his object was not merely to make a Spaniard suffer for his brother; it was to do an act that should speak home to the Spanish government, and provoke a public notoriety of the outrage for which he could obtain no other redress; and for that purpose he selected from amongst the captured Spaniards him who was of the highest quality to endure a vicarious chastisement for his nation. He did not apprehend severity of censure from his employers, when the motive of his conduct should be fully exposed; nor does any record of censure appear in the minutes of the Council. . . . Shortly after this event, George Penn was dismissed from the Inquisition; and it is not unreasonable to assume, that Urbina's report, on his return to Bilboa, of the fraternal retaliation exercised upon his person by Penn determined the liberation of the brother."1 As to this last statement we must express some doubt. It seems unlikely that the Don was in such temper upon his return to Spain as to expedite the enlargement of the English heretic; he would have been more likely to urge the inquisitors to give another turn to their screw. It appears, too, by the further documents which Granville Penn gives, that George Penn was finally discharged and sent out of Spain, and that this must have taken place--without apparent interference from outside influences--fully as soon as the time of the Don's liberation at London. In an appendix (C) to his first volume, Granville Penn prints George Penn's own account of himself and his troubles, drawn up for presentation to Cromwell. This describes the time of his arrest as in 1643, and the whole period of his detention as being three years, two months, and six days. It is obvious from this that his enlargement could have been little if any later than the date of Don Juan's appearance before the Admiralty Committee, January 12, 1646-47. In his petition and statement to 1 "Memorials," Vol. I. pp. 230-233. ) Page 12 the Protector, George Penn says that "after living many years in Spain, that is to say, chiefly in Seville, Malaga, Cales, and Sanlucar, in credit and estate," he was apprehended by officers of the Inquisition, at his house in Sanlucar, in the year 1643. They first executed the ceremony of excommunication, "body and soul," then broke open all his rooms and warehouses, and seized his property, "to a nail in the wall," and confiscated all debts due him, found by his "books, writings and accounts." Then they took him to Seville, where he was placed in a "dungeon some eight feet in diameter, as dark as a grave," and left alone. An allowance of bread and water was given him every Monday, to last a week. Once a month he was tied to the dungeon-door and received fifty lashes with knotted whip-cords, fresh stripes usually arriving before the previous month's wounds had healed. All this lasted, he says, three years without any formal charge being made, "they intending by it to make me be my own accuser;" finally he was accused before seven inquisitors and put upon the rack for four hours, when, the torture being beyond endurance, he confessed "all their false accusations" en bloc. The accusations, he explains, were that he was "a most damnable heretic, by birth, breeding and perseverance," that he had married a woman of the Catholic faith, a Spanish subject, born in Antwerp, had endeavored to pervert her and her sisters, and had intended to take them to England, "a land which of all others in the world overfloweth with all sorts of most damnable heresies and disobedience to the see of Rome," etc. Finally, upon his abjuring the Protestant faith, a public procession was formed in Seville, he was taken to the church, and his offences, confession, and sentence proclaimed "in the sight of thousands." His property was confiscated,--about ten thousand pounds' value, he declares,--he was ordered to leave Spain within three months, on pain of death; he was sentenced to be burned if he should be again under arrest and found to have renounced the Roman faith; lastly, his wife was divorced from him, and she was ordered to be married to a Spaniard "for her better safeguard from me and securing of her soul from my heretical suggestions." Page 13 The dates of this transaction, including the condemnation in the church of Seville, are wanting, and we can only infer them, but it seems to me most probable that the whole of the business was known to the young sea-captain, the brother of George Penn, when he caught the little ship with its "8 Spaniards" coming out of Waterford, in the winter of 1646, and that as he stripped and exposed the unhappy secretary of the governor of Flanders he was inflicting a retaliatory blow, and not expecting to propitiate the Inquisition at Seville, or hoping to secure the good offices of the humiliated Don Juan. George Penn, at any rate, came back from Spain to England without his property, and presumably without his Flemish wife. He fortified his case with the deposition of twelve English traders who had known him in Spain, and who estimated his own loss at six thousand pounds, and the property seized in his hands belonging to others at "near as much more." He applied, or prepared to do so, to the Protector (probably Richard Cromwell, not Oliver), and subsequently renewed his effort with Charles II. The latter, it appears, considered his case favorably, for a presentation of a claim for damages was made by his nephew, William Penn the Founder, to Queen Anne, during the negotiations for the Peace of Utrecht in 1712-13, and in it the statement is made that the king (evidently in 1663 or 1664), "out of compassion and justice to Mr. George Penn, appointed him envoy to reside at the King of Spain's court in order to and with commands that he should, insist upon satisfaction from that king for his sufferings, loss, and damage. But Mr. George Penn," the petition adds, "being then about sixty-three years of age, was prevented of going thither by his sudden death."1 1 Appendix C, No. 2, "Memorials" of Admiral Penn, I. 555. As to this petition, it is evident that it must have been prepared (if drawn by William Penn himself) very early in the negotiations for the Peace of Utrecht, for he had his apoplectic seizure July 24, 1712. Page 14 The veracious Samuel Pepys, in his Diary, says, August 1, 1664: "Last night I was waked with knocking at Sir W. Pen's door; and what was it but people's running up and down to bring him word that his brother, who hath been a good while, it seems, sick, is dead." This was obviously George Penn. TABLE OF ADMIRAL PENN'S DESCENT. 1.--William Penn, of Minety, yeoman, d. 1591, = 2.--William Penn, law-clerk, = Margaret Rastall. 3.--(Six children, including) Giles Penn = Joan Gilbert. 4.--George, b. 1601, WILLIAM Four (?) daughters. d. 1664. (Admiral). III. ADMIRAL SIR WILLIAM PENN. Coming now to the Admiral, the great-grandson of the Yeoman, and father of the Founder, we may make selection among many personal details. Granville Penn, great-grandson of the Admiral, has gathered into his two volumes (London, 1833) the materials of a Memorial of his ancestor at once dignified and honorable. Contending with all the gibes and slurs of Mr. Samuel Pepys's Diary, and compelled to extract from that rich storehouse of history and spite the allusions to Sir William, he accomplishes the task with credit. We shall, in a moment, cite some of Pepys's paragraphs bearing upon the Admiral's family life and personal qualities. Many of them lie enfolded each in its own layer of backbiting, but this the reader can perhaps allow for. We present now the monumental inscription to the Admiral, placed in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, at Bristol, where his mother, Joan Gilbert, had been buried earlier, and where, in pursuance of his will, he was himself buried, with full ceremony, September 30, 1670.1 1 Cf. letter from R. Ellsworth, Bristol, to Captain Challoner, Lancaster Herald, "Memorials," Vol. II. p. 567, describing the ceremony. Page 15 We take the inscription as it is given by Granville Penn (Vol. II. p. 580), as follows: To the just Memory of Sr WILLM PENN, Kt., and sometimes Generall: Borne at Bristoll An. 1621: Son of Captain Giles Penn, severall yeares Consul for ye English in ye Mediterranean; of the Penns of Penns Lodge in ye County of Wilts, and those Penns of Penn in ye C. of Bucks; and by his Mother from the Gilberts in ye County of Somerset, Originally from Yorkshire: Addicted from his Youth to Maritime Affaires; he was made Captain at the yeares of 21; Rear-Admiral of Ireland at 23; Vice-Admiral of Ireland at 25; Admiral to the Streights at 29; Vice-Admiral of England at 31, and General in the first Dutch Warres, at 32. Whence retiring, in Ao 1655 he was chosen a Parliament man for the Town of Weymouth, 1660; made Commissioner of the Admiralty and Navy; Governor of the Town and Fort of King-sail; Vice-Admiral of Munster, and a Member of that Provincial Counseill; and in Anno 1664, was chosen Great Captain Commander under his Royall Highnesse in yt Signall and most evidently successful fight against the Dutch fleet. Thus, He took leave of the Sea, his old Element; But continued still his other employs till 1669; at what time, through Bodely Infirmities (contracted by ye Care and fatigue of Publique Affairs), He withdrew, Prepared and made for his End; and with a gentle and Even Gale, in much peace, arrived and anchored in his Last and Best Port, at Wanstead in ye County of Essex, ye 16 Sept. 1670, Being then but 49 and 4 months old. To whose Name and merit his surviving Lady hath erected this remembrance.1 The Admiral, it has already been said, was born at Bristol in 1621, twenty years later than his brother George. He 1 This inscription, as stated in the main text, is here taken from Granville Penn's "Memorials" of the Admiral. It is quite different (mainly by containing additional matter) from that given by J. Henry Lea in Penna. Mag. (Vol. XIV. p. 172), as to which Mr. Lea says he "believes that the transcript [which he gives] is correct." It varies at was "baptised in the church of St. Thomas the Apostle, in that city, on the 23d day of April," in that year. His father educated him "with great care, under his own eye, for the sea-service; causing him to be well grounded in all its branches, practical and scientific, as is shown by sundry elementary and tabular documents, nautical journals, draughts of lands, observations and calculations, which still survive."1 He served with his father, as a boy, "in various mercantile voyages to the northern seas, and to the Mediterranean, became a lieutenant in the royal navy," and "thenceforth passed the whole of his active life" in that service, under the Parliament, the Protector, and the Restoration. He married "very early in life," says Granville Penn, and the biography of him by Professor J. K. Laughton, in the "National Dictionary of Biography," says "about 1639." If in that year, he was only eighteen years old. But Hepworth Dixon has called attention2 to an entry in Pepys's Diary which seems to fix the date in 1643-44. It says,-- "Jan 6, 1661-2.--To dinner at Sir W. Pen's, it being a solemn feast day with him,--his wedding day, and we had, besides a good chine of beef and other good cheer, eighteen mince pies in a dish, the number of years that he hath been married." Page 16 Subtracting the eighteen pies from the date of this feast would fix the marriage January 6, 1643-44; and as William Penn the Founder, who has always been described as the several points, but not any essential one, from that given in Maria Webb's "Penns and Peningtons." In the latter the spelling is uniformly modernized: "King-sail," above, is contracted to "Kinsale;" the first Dutch "warres" is made "war;" "whence retiring" is made "returning;" it makes him chosen "Great Captain Commander" in 1665, not 1664, as above; the word "evidently," before "successful," is omitted; "thus he took leave" becomes "then he took leave;" at "what time" is made "at which time;" the word "years" is inserted after "49" (as the sense demands); "to whose name" is made "to his name;" and "merit" is made "memory." 1 Granville Penn, "Memorials," Vol. I. p. 2. 2 "Life of Penn," p. 16. Page 17 first child, was born October 14, 1644, this date thus receives a reasonable confirmation. Captain Penn's wife was Margaret Jasper, of Rotterdam, daughter of John Jasper. And this is all that seems to be known of her family, though why our information is so meagre is not easily explained. John Jasper is generally described as a merchant, sometimes as an "opulent" one; by one authority he is named a burgomaster, and the editor of Lord Braybrooke's edition of Pepys calls him Sir John. As to his daughter, we have little knowledge, except the pictures coarsely drawn by Pepys. This one is well known: "Aug. 19, 1664.--To Sir W. Pen's, to see his lady the first time, who is a well-looked, fat, short old Dutchwoman, but one that has been heretofore pretty handsome, and is now very discreet, and I believe hath more wit than her husband. Here we stayed talking a good while, and very well pleased I was with the old woman."1 The further allusions to Lady Penn by Pepys are not all in the same vein as this, though there are one or two that are not appropriate for reproduction. If we were forced to judge of her discretion, or even her wit, by his stories, we should hardly place them high, at least not from our standpoint of manners. The rompings and roisterings, the blacking of faces and tumbling upon beds, which he describes,--how truly is a question,--do not sound nice, and it seems very evident that, after allowing for Pepys's own coarseness and habitual readiness to backbite, we must make a further large allowance for the times of the Restoration, within the influence of Charles II.'s court. A few passages from Pepys, alluding to Lady Penn, may be given; she is mentioned also in others, to be cited in a moment, relating more particularly to her husband and daughter: 1 It appears rather odd that, as Pepys now records, this was his first sight of Lady Penn, for he had been closely associated with her husband for four years, and he records, earlier than this, numerous occasions when he and his wife were in company with Margaret, the daughter. What is still more odd is that he evidently did not see Lady Penn at her own house, at the time of the wedding-feast dinner, in 1661-62. Page 18 "June 8, 1665.-- . . . then to my Lady Pen's, where they are all joyed, and not a little puffed up at the good success of their father [in the naval battle with the Dutch, June 3]; and good service indeed is said to have been done by him. Had a great bonfire at the gate. . . ." "June 6, 1666.-- . . . And so home to our church, it being the common Fast-day, and it was just before sermon; but . . . how all the people in the church stared upon me to see me whisper to Sir John Minnes and my Lady Pen." "June 11, 1666.--I with my Lady Pen and her daughter to see Harmon [Captain, afterwards Rear-Admiral, wounded in the naval battle] whom we found lame in bed." It would be pleasant to wash the ill taste of Pepys out of one's mouth with something better; but, as has been said, there is little information available concerning Lady Penn from other sources. The high regard of William Penn the Founder for his mother is generally asserted. Clarkson says1 he had for her "the deepest filial affection. She had often interposed in his behalf when his father was angry with him for the dereliction of Church principles, and of the honors and fashions of the world, and she took him under her wing and supported him when he was turned out of doors for the same reason." In a letter written to a friend he speaks of "my sickness upon my mother's death." The biographical sketch prefixed to the collection of his "Select Works" says that at the time of his father's displeasure at his adoption of Quaker views he was "thus exposed to the charity of his friends, having no other subsistence, except what his mother privately sent him." Lady Penn died at the end of February or beginning of March, 1681-82, and was buried on the 4th of March, at Walthamstow, in Essex. The will of Admiral Penn is printed nearly in full in Granville Penn's "Memorials," and an abstract of it is given in the Pennsylvania Magazine, Vol. XVI. It is dated January 20, 1669, and was proved October 6, 1670. He mentions in it his wife, Dame Margaret Penn; son William Penn; younger son Richard Penn; daughter Margaret, wife of Anthony Lowther; and the nephews Bradshaw and Markham, 1 "Life of Penn," p. 109. Page 19 and cousin William Penn, previously referred to in these notes. He directs that the monument in the church at Bristol shall be for himself and his mother, but Mr. J. H. Lea says (1890) that, upon a visit there, he "found no trace" of any such memorial to the mother; probably none was erected. The Admiral's public career cannot here be described. The abstract on the church tablet will sufficiently serve. His marriage has been mentioned. Some notices of him by Pepys may be here introduced; he is alluded to in the Diary many scores of times between 1660 and 1669: "Sept. 8, 1660.--Drinking a glass of wine late, and discoursing with Sir W. Pen. I find him to be a very sociable man, and an able man, and very cunning." "Nov. 1, 1660.--This morning Sir W. Pen and I were mounted early, [to ride to Sir William Batten's] and had very merry discourse all the way, he being very good company." "April 18, 1661.-- . . . Then, it raining hard, homewards again, [from visiting Lady Sandwich, at Walthamstow] and in our way met with two country fellows upon one horse, which I did, without much ado, give the way to, but Sir W. Pen would not, but struck them, and they him, and so passed away, but they, giving him some high words, he went back again, and struck them off their horse, in a simple fury, and without much honor, in my mind, and so come away." These allusions have the air of truth. But the key-note of Pepys's dislike for Sir William appears in an entry in the summer of 1662. It seems that Pepys was interfered with in his enjoyment of some of the "pickings" of the office. His greediness could ill brook that: "June 3, 1662.-- . . . At the office, and Mr. Coventry brought his patent and took his place with us this morning. Upon our making a contract, I went, as I use to do, to draw the heads thereof, but Sir W. Pen most basely told me that the Comptroller is to do it, and so begun to employ Mr. Turner about it, at which I was much vexed, and begun to dispute; and what with the letter of the Duke's orders, and Mr. Barlow's letter, and the practice of our predecessors, which Sir G. Carteret knew best when he was Comptroller, it was ruled for me. What Sir J. Minnes will do, when he comes, I knowe not, but Sir W. Pen did it like a base raskall, and so I shall remember him while I live." Page 20 Probably this threat, entered in heat in Pepys's secret cipher, was actually kept. His malice is shown many times. Thus: "July 5, 1662.--At noon had Sir W. Pen, who I hate with all my heart for his base treacherous tricks, but yet I think it not policy to declare it yet, and his son William, to my house to dinner . . ." "July 9, 1662.--Sir W. Pen came to my office to take his leave of me, and, desiring a turn in the garden, did commit the care of his building to me, and offered all his services to me in all matters of mine. I did, God forgive me! promise him all my services and love, though the rogue knows he deserves none from me, nor do I intend to show him any; but as he dissembles with me so must I with him." "July 1, 1666.--(Lord's day.) Comes Sir W. Pen to town, which I little expected, having invited my Lady and her daughter Pegg to dine with me to-day; which at noon they did, and Sir W. Pen with them; and pretty merry we were. And though I do not love him, yet I find it neccessary to keep in with him; his good service at Shearnesse, in getting out the fleete, being much taken notice of, and reported to the King and Duke; . . . therefore, I think it is discretion, great and necessary discretion, to keep in with him." "Feb. 21, 1666-7.--To the office, where sat all the morning, and there a most furious conflict between Sir W. Pen and I, in few words, and on a sudden occasion, of no great moment, but very bitter and smart on one another, and so broke off, and to our business, my heart as full of spite as it could hold, for which God forgive me and him." "April 20, 1668.--Meeting with Sir William Hooker, the Alderman, he did cry out mighty high against Sir W. Pen for his getting such an estate, and giving ú15,000 with his daughter, which is more, by half, than ever he did give; but this the world believes, and so let them." A few other allusions, rather less unpleasing than these, may be added. The last, in June, 1668, approaches the end of the Admiral's active career. "April 18, 1666.--To Mr. Lilly's, the painter's [Lely, afterwards Sir Peter]; and there saw the heads, some finished, and all begun, of the Flaggmen in the late great fight with the Duke of York against the Dutch. The Duke of York hath them done to hang in his chamber, and very finely they are done indeed. Here are the Prince's [etc.] and will be my Lord Sandwich's, Sir W. Pen's" [etc.]. "July 4, 1666.-- . . . In the evening Sir W. Pen came to me, and we walked together, and talked of the late fight. I find him very plain that the whole conduct of the late fight was ill" [etc., explaining at length its character, and his view of a proper system of naval attack]. Page 21 "May 27, 1668.--To see Sir W. Pen, whom I find still very ill of the gout, sitting in his great chair, made on purpose for persons sick of that disease, for their ease; and this very chair, he tells me was made for my Lady Lambert" [wife of General Lambert, the Parliamentary commander]. "June 4.-- . . . and besides my Lord Brouncker is at this time ill, and Sir W. Pen." "June 17.--Saw Sir W. Pen, who is well again." Admiral Penn had three children: William the Founder, Richard, and Margaret. By the will of the Admiral, Richard was to have had one hundred and twenty pounds a year until he was twenty-one, and then four thousand pounds, but he survived his father only three years. He died in April, 1673, and was buried at Walthamstow. There is a letter in Granville Penn's "Memorials" (pp. 559-60), addressed to "the Hon. Sir W. Penn, Knt., etc., at his house at Wanstead, near London," dated at Livorno (Italy), June 2, 1670, from William Poole, commanding the ship "Jersey," to which letter there is this postscript: "My cousin, Richard Penn, is very well, and goes to Florence with Sir Thomas Clutterbuck, to wait on the ambassador."1 This Richard Penn, Granville Penn says ("Memorials," foot-note, p. 560), was the younger son of whom we are speaking. It would seem that he had been on the "Jersey" with Captain Poole, and it is probable that he was designed by his father to be a seaman. Pepys makes one allusion to Richard, and not unkindly: "Feb. 14, 1664-5.--This morning betimes comes Dicke Pen to be my wife's Valentine, and came to our bedside. By the same token, I had him brought to my side, thinking to make him kiss me, but he perceived me, and would not; so went to his Valentine: a notable stout, witty boy." Margaret Penn, the daughter, married Anthony Lowther, of Mask (or Marske) in Yorkshire. She is mentioned many 1 Sir William Poole and Sir Richard Rooth, commanders in the English navy, were both, as it seems from allusions in Granville Penn's "Memorials," kinsmen, perhaps cousins in some degree, of Admiral Penn. Page 22 times by Pepys, and often offensively. His dislike for her father he apparently conferred also upon her. Her husband is referred to more favorably. It would appear that he was a man of good character as well as good estate. In William Penn's "No Cross, no Crown," he quotes the dying expressions of "Anthony Lowther, of Mask, a person of good sense, of a sweet temper, a just mind, and of a sober education," whom I presume to have been the father of Margaret's husband. I cite here some of the earlier allusions of Pepys to Margaret Penn: "July 28, 1661.--To church, and then came home with us Sir W. Pen, and drank with us, and then went away, and my wife after him, to see his daughter that is lately come out of Ireland; and whereas I expected she should have been a great beauty, she is a very plain girl." "Oct. 6, 1661.--To church . . . There was also . . . Mrs. Margaret Pen, this day come to church, in a new flowered satin suit, that my wife helped her to buy the other day." "Dec. 11, 1661.--My wife by coach to Clerkenwell, to see Mrs. Margaret Pen, who is at school there." Margaret's school days appear to have been over by 1664, for then she seems to have devoted herself to fashionable occupations, and to have taken lessons in painting at her home. Pepys has these entries,--the last one characteristically spiteful: "Nov. 20, 1664.--Up and with my wife to church, where Pegg Pen very fine in her new colored silk suit, laced with silver lace." "Jan. 13, 1664-5.--To my Lady Batten's, where I find Pegg Pen, the first time that ever I saw her to wear spots." "Aug. 7, 1665.--Talking with Mrs. Pegg Pen, and looking over her pictures, and commended them; but . . . so far short of my wife's as no comparison!" "Sept. 3, 1665.--I took my Lady Pen home, and her daughter Pegg; and after dinner I made my wife show them her pictures, which did mad Pegg Pen, who learns of the same man." The appearance of Mr. Lowther on the scene is recorded by Pepys: "Jan. 11, 1665-6.--At noon to dinner all of us by invitation to Sir W. Pen's, and much company. Among others . . . his . . . [prospective] son-in-law Lowther, servant to Mrs. Margaret Pen." Page 23 "April 12, 1666.--My Lady Pen comes to me, and takes me into her house, where I find her daughter and a pretty lady of her acquaintance, one Mrs. Lowther, sister, I suppose, of her servant Lowther's. . . . Mrs. Margaret Pen grows mighty homely, and looks old." "Jan. 4, 1666-7.--Comes our company to dinner; my Lord Brouncker, Sir W. Pen, his lady, and Pegg, and her servant Mr. Lowther. . . . Mr. Lowther a pretty gentleman, too good for Pegg." The marriage seems to have been very quiet and decorous, and thus, sad to say, gave great offence to the virtuous Pepys: "Feb. 14, 1666-7.--Pegg Pen is married this day privately; no friends, but two or three relations of his and hers. Borrowed many things of my kitchen for dressing their dinner. This wedding private is imputed to its being just before Lent, and so in vain to make new clothes till Easter, that they might see the fashions as they are like to be this summer; which is reason good enough. Mrs. Turner tells me she hears Sir W. Pen gives £4500 or £4000 with her."1 "Feb. 20, 1666-7.--To White Hall, by the way observing Sir W. Pen's carrying a favor to Sir W. Coventry, for his daughter's wedding, and saying there was others for us, when we will fetch them, which vexed me, and I am resolved not to wear it when he orders me one. His wedding hath been so poorly kept that I am ashamed of it; for a fellow that makes such a flutter as he does." "Feb. 22, 1666-7.--All of us, that is to say my Lord Brouncker, J. Minnes, W. Batten, T. Harvy, and myself, to Sir Pen's house, where some other company. It is instead of a wedding dinner for his daughter, whom I saw in palterly clothes, nothing new but a bracelet that her servant [now her husband] had given her, and ugly she is as heart can wish. A sorry dinner, not anything handsome or clean, but some silver plates they had borrowed of me. My wife was here too. We had favors given us all, and we put them in our hats, I against my will, but that my Lord and the rest did." "Feb. 27, 1666-7.--To Sir W. Pen's, and sat with my Lady, and the young couple (Sir William out of town) talking merrily; but they make a very sorry couple, methinks, though rich." And not only did the marriage, the later dinner, and eke the wedding favors dissatisfy the diarist, but he was further offended by the fineness of her coach, and what he regarded ( 1 See the reference by Pepys, April 20, 1668, to the report which greatly exaggerated this sum. ) Page 24 as the inadequacy of her wardrobe; while later he was disgusted at seeing her train borne by a page: "May 1, 1667.--Thence [the King's playhouse] Sir W. Pen and I in his coach, Tiburne way, into the Park, where a horrid dust and a number of coaches. . . . But that which I did see and wonder at with reason was to find Pegg Pen in a new coach, with only her husband's pretty sister [Margaret Lowther, afterwards the wife of Sir John Holmes] with her, both patched and very fine, and in much the finest coach in the park, and I think that ever I did see one or other, for neatness and richness in gold and everything that is noble . . . but to live in the condition they do at home and be abroad in this coach astonishes me . . . then home; where we find the two young ladies come home and their patches off; I suppose Sir W. Pen do not allow of them in his sight. Sir W. Pen did give me an account of his design of buying Sir R. Brooke's fine house at Wansted" [etc. The purchase was not made]. "June 28, 1667.--To Sir W. Batten's, to see how he did. . . . He told me how Mrs. Lowther had her train held up by a page, at his house in the country; which is ridiculous." "July 14, (Lord's day.)-- . . . and so towards Epsom [in a coach and four, Pepys, his wife, and Mrs. Turner] talking all the way presently and particularly of the pride and ignorance of Mrs. Lowther, in having of her train carried up." "Sept. 11, 1667.--Come to dine with me Sir W. Batten and his lady, . . . and Sir W. Pen and his lady, and Mrs. Lowther, who is grown, either through pride or want of manners, a fool, having not a word to say; and, as a further mark of a beggarly, proud fool, hath a bracelet of diamonds and rubies about her wrist, and a sixpenny necklace about her neck, and not one good rag of clothes upon her back." Anthony and Margaret Lowther had issue. The birth of their first child, a girl, is noted by Pepys as occurring February 8, 1667-68, and he reviles "Pegg," as usual; this time for the smallness of the company at the christening. Coleman's "Pedigree" names two children, Sir William Lowther, who married Catherine Preston, and Margaret Lowther, who married Benjamin Poole. Anthony Lowther was M.P. for Appleby in 1678 and 1679. He died in 1692, and was buried at Walthamstow. Margaret survived him many years. She is named in the will of her brother, William Penn the Founder, made in 1712, as one of the trustees to dispose of his proprietary rights in Pennsylvania. She died in 1718, Page 25 and was buried, Granville Penn notes, at Walthamstow.1 Anthony and Margaret's son William was created a baronet in 1697. In the next generation Sir Thomas Lowther, Bart., of Holker, in Lancashire, married Lady Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, and their son William dying unmarried in 1756, the baronetcy became extinct, and the Lowther property passed to the Cavendish family,--"the noble house of Cavendish," as Granville Penn, considerate always of aristocratic proprieties, is careful to say. What property, if any, Admiral Penn received from his father, Captain Giles, is unknown. But in 1654, as he was preparing for the famous West India expedition with Venables, he prevailed upon Cromwell to make him a grant of forfeited lands in Ireland. An order of the Protector, dated December 4, 1654, is given in full in Granville Penn's "Memorials," Vol. I. p. 19. It is addressed to the Lord Deputy and Council in Ireland, and directs "that lands of the value of ú300 a year, in Ireland, as they were let in the year 1640, be settled on General Penn and his heirs," to be located in some place "where there is a castle or convenient house for habitation upon them, and near to some town or garrison." The grant was partly made "in consideration of the great losses sustained by General Pen and his wife by the rebellion in Ireland," and in the minute of Council upon which the Protector's order was based it is recited that the favor is extended "in consideration of his sufferings in an estate of his wife's in Ireland." What estate she had, if any, or where it was situated, or how acquired, must remain, I presume, uncertain. But the grant made by Oliver to his sea-commander is readily identified. It lay in County 1 A letter from Hannah Penn, 9th of Third month (May), 1720, "to Rebecca Blackfan, at Pennsbury, or elsewhere in Pennsylvania," says, "I find several of my Letters to thee and others have miscarried, and therefore know not whether thou had acc't of ye Death of my dear Sister Lowther, who Died of a Lingering Fever & gradual decay about 5 months after her dear Brother,"--i.e., in 1718, five months later than the Founder.--MSS. in Collection Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Page 26 Cork, "the castle and estate of Macromp," and "had been the ancient possession of Macarthy, Lord Muskerry," against whom Penn had been fighting a few years earlier (1646), Muskerry being then the commander of the royal (and Roman Catholic) forces in Ireland. Some other property in County Cork the Admiral seems to have bought, in 1657, of Lord Broghill, and in a letter to Henry Cromwell, Lord Deputy for Ireland, dated at Macromp, 9th November, 1657, Penn speaks of his property "in Macromp and Killcrea." In Ireland, at Macromp, it would appear he spent much, if not most, of his time between 1655, when he was released from his confinement in the Tower, after the return from Jamaica, and 1660, when he was among the company that repaired to Holland to bring the king back to England. Meantime Lord Muskerry had become, in 1658, by the king's favor, Earl of Clancarty, and at the Restoration he naturally lost no time in claiming of his royal master the restitution of the lands taken from him by the Protector. A document printed by Granville Penn, in his "Memorials,"1 states that "Sir William Penn, upon the king's ordering the Earl of Clancarty to be immediately possessed of his ancient estate, did surrender the castle, town, and manor of Macromp, being a garrison wherein was constantly and conveniently quartered a foot company and a troop of horse; with many thousand acres of land contiguous; and the castle, town, and manor of Killcreagh, with several lands thereunto belonging, the whole amounting to ú848 per annum, [etc.] unto the said Earl of Clancarty." In lieu of this surrendered property the king gave the Admiral some other "forfeited lands . . . in Imokilly;2 namely Rostillon, Shangarry, and Inchy, with the lands joining thereunto." This gift the Admiral was able to hold, though he had to contend for it, in the courts and elsewhere, for several years,--at least as late as 1666,--the favor of the king being of importance to him at more than one juncture. The property was in County Cork, and yielded then, it appears, 1 Appendix N, Vol. II. p. 617. 2 This is elsewhere referred to, in a letter of the Admiral, as Eniskelly. Page 27 about one thousand pounds a year. Shangarry, in course of time, became familiar as one of the places with which the Penn name is most intimately associated. In London the Admiral had his home, during most of the last ten years of his life (1660-70), the period of his service as Commissioner, etc., of the navy, in one of the houses attached to the Navy Office, provided as an official residence. It was here that he was the near neighbor of Pepys, who also had an official house. Gibson, an old seaman who had served under the Admiral, and who wrote to William Penn the Founder in March, 1711-12, giving him reminiscences of his father, says,1 "I remember your honour very well, when you newly came out of France, and wore pantaloon breeches, at which time your late honoured father dwelt in the Navy Office, in that apartment the Lord Viscount Brouncker died in afterwards, which was on the north part of the Navy Office garden." And in the same letter Gibson says, "Your late honoured father was appointed general of the fleet, in 1655, to take St. Domingo; at which time he dwelt upon Great Tower-hill, on the east side, within a court adjoining to London-wall. And he frequently came upon the hill next his dwelling, to be applied to by persons under the degree of commanders. One day of which, I was presented to your late honoured father by my late master Mr. John Carter, purser of the Assurance when your late honoured father commanded her," etc. Pepys makes many allusions to the contiguity of his residence at the Navy Office with that of the Penns. The enlargement, under official authority, of their houses is repeatedly referred to, and an allusion to it may be noted in the paragraph, July 9, 1662, already cited, where, walking in the garden with Penn, "the care of his building" was considered. At the time of the Great Fire of London, in September, 1666, Pepys records that he and Sir William "did dig another [pit in the garden] and did put our wine in it, and I my Parmesan cheese," etc. And on two or three 1 "Memorials," Appendix M, Vol. II. p. 612. Page 28 nights at this time, distressed and alarmed by the fire, he slept in the Admiral's house. It was at the house on Great Tower Hill, described by Gibson as occupied by the Admiral in 1655, that William Penn the Founder is presumed to have been born, in 1644. The portrait of the Admiral, painted by Lely for the Duke of York, as recorded by Pepys (April 18, 1666), is now in the hospital at Greenwich. A copy of it forms the frontispiece to Granville Penn's "Memorials." There has been in recent years a portrait found at Blackwell Grange, in Durham, which has been thought by some to be that of William Penn the Founder, and a copy of it has been placed, under that supposition, in the National Museum collection in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. This, says the biographer of the Admiral in the "National Dictionary of Biography," Mr. J. M. Rigg, "is really the portrait of the Admiral." I have myself no doubt that Mr. Rigg is correct in this statement. The gold chain voted the Admiral by the Naval Council, in August, 1653, remains in the family of his descendants. In the Admiral's will he devised to his son William "my gold chain and medal, with the rest and residue of all my plate," etc. Of his personal appearance, the old seaman Gibson says, in the letter before cited, "Your late honoured father was fair-haired; of a comely round visage; a mild spoken man; no scoffer, nor flatterer; easy of access, so as no man went away from him discontented." The Admiral's "letters to his son in Ireland," says Granville Penn, "of which many remain, are almost wholly filled with instructions respecting his estates; yet among these some few passages occur which tend to show his mind and disposition. . . . I have now by me letters he [the son] received from his father in the years 1666, '67, '68, and '69, in all which I find but one passage expressive of offence." This (October 6, 1669) evidently refers to the son's adoption of the views of the Friends and his renunciation of a courtly career. Page 29 The "dying words" of the Admiral are familiar, being quoted by many writers. They come from William Penn the Founder's "No Cross, No Crown," originally written in 1668, while the Bishop of London had him imprisoned in the Tower for his tract, "The Sandy Foundation Shaken," these portions being added in the second edition, published in 1681. They are of permanent interest in this connection, as showing the Admiral's reflections upon reviewing his career. "My father," says the son, "not long before his death, spoke to me in this manner: " 'Son William, I am weary of the world; I would not live over my days again, if I could command them with a wish; for the snares of life are greater than the fear of death. This troubles me, that I have offended a gracious God, that hath followed me to this day. Oh, have a care of sin; that is the sting both of life and of death. Three things I commend unto you: First, let nothing in this world tempt you to wrong your conscience; so you will keep peace at home, which will be a feast to you in a day of trouble. Secondly, whatever you design to do, lay it justly, and time it seasonably, for that gives security and dispatch. Lastly, be not troubled at disappointments; for, if they may be recovered, do it; if they can't, trouble is vain. If you could not have helped it, be content; there is often peace and profit in submitting to Providence, for afflictions make wise. If you could have helped it, let not your trouble exceed your instruction for another time. These rules will carry you, with firmness and comfort, through this uncertain world. . . .' "Wearied to live, as well as near to die, he took his leave of us; and of me, with this expression, and a most composed countenance: 'Son William, if you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching, and keep to your plain way of living, you will make an end of the priests to the end of the world. Bury me by my mother: live all in love; shun all manner of evil; and I pray God to bless you all, and he will bless you.' " Page 30 IV. WILLIAM PENN: CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. The Founder of Pennsylvania, the son of Captain, afterwards Admiral, William Penn, was born in London on the 14th of October, 1644. Captain Penn had just been appointed to the command of the "Fellowship," in the navy controlled by the Parliament. The extracts from his journal of his cruise in this ship, printed by Granville Penn in his "Memorials" of Admiral Penn, show that on Saturday, the 12th of October, he being on board, the ship, which had been lying in the Thames, left Deptford at six o'clock A.M. and dropped down the river. But the next entry is not made until the 4th of November, when she weighed anchor "and came into the Downs." The common, and no doubt a fair, presumption has been that she was delayed on her voyage to the Irish coast--where she subsequently took part in the operations against the royalists--by the stay of Captain Penn on shore, on account of the birth of his son, on the Monday following the start from Deptford. It has been assumed by biographers of Penn1 that Captain Penn, in October, 1644, at the time of the birth of his son, was living in the house described by the seaman Gibson (already cited) as the Admiral's residence in 1655, "upon Great Tower-hill." This may be correct, but there is narrow ground for the assumption. In the fourteen years that intervened Captain Penn was much of the time at sea, and his family were living elsewhere. That the same house would be occupied in 1644 and in 1655 is at least doubtful, and in the absence of fuller knowledge the assumption appears excessive. The biographical sketch of Penn prefixed to his "Select Works" says he "was born in the parish called St. Katherine's, near the Tower of London." The baptism register of the Church of Allhallows, Barking (London), contains this entry: 1 Dr. Stoughton, in his "William Penn, Founder of Pennsylvania," London, 1882, and perhaps others. "1644, October 23. William, son of William Penn, and Margarett his wife, of the Tower Liberty." Page 31 Allhallows, Barking, is an interesting old church at the east end of Great Tower Street, in the ward of that name, dedicated to Allhallows and St. Mary, and said to be "the most complete mediëval church remaining in London." Its distinguishing title, Barking (for there are several Allhallows churches in London), is derived from the fact that its vicarage originally belonged to that of Barking, outside the city, in Essex.1 The "Fellowship" having sailed, Margaret Penn presently went with her child to Wanstead, in Essex, in the suburbs of London, and that place, down to the time of the Admiral's death there in 1670, becomes prominent in the family history. In what house they stayed at Wanstead does not appear, but a misconception of Captain Penn's worldly condition has led some of the biographers of his son to say that they resided at Wanstead, in "one of the country seats" belonging to the captain. This is, of course, simply imaginative. Unless we are grossly misinformed concerning him, Captain Penn's circumstances at that time did not permit him the ownership of either town house or country-seat. Wanstead is close by Chigwell. At the latter place there were free schools, founded in 1629 by Harsnet, Archbishop of York.2 To these young William Penn was 1 The Great Fire of London, September, 1666, was stopped at this point, at the church, its dial and porch being burned. Pepys: September 5, 1666.--". . . I find by the blowing up of houses, and the greate helpe given by the workmen out of the King's yards, sent up by Sir W. Pen, there is a good stop given to it [the Great Fire] as well at Marke-lane end as ours; it having only burned the dyall of Barking Church, and part of the porch, and there quenched. I up to the top of Barking steeple, and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw. . . ." John Quincy Adams was married in this church (July 26, 1797). Many of the state prisoners executed on Tower Hill were buried there. 2 Samuel Harsnet (1561-1631), vicar of Chigwell from 1597 to 1605, a pluralist of considerable scope, a vigorous polemic, inclined to high church, and charged with "papistical," views, was made archbishop under Charles I., 1629, owing his elevation, it is said, to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. He was buried in the parish church at Chigwell, at the feet of his wife, in a tomb in the chancel floor, and there is a "fine brass," after a design of his own, in his memory, on the wall. Page 32 sent. One of them was for instruction in English, the other a Latin school. The quaint and strictly framed rules of the archbishop's foundation give us a clue to the boy's education. Those of the school "for teaching the Greek and Latin tongues" required that the master should be "a good poet; of a sound religion, neither papal nor puritan; of a grave behavior; of a sober and honest conversation; no tipler or haunter of alehouses; no puffer of tobacco; and above all, apt to teach, and severe in his government." Waiving controversy upon the religious clause, it cannot be said but that these exacting specifications were likely to give a pronounced character to the school, and probably secure a teacher of some ability. It was directed also by the archbishop that the text-books in the higher school should be "Lilly's Latin and Cleonard's Greek grammar," that, for "phrase and style," the scholars should read "no other than Tully and Terence," that for poetry they should have "the ancient Greek and Latin, no novelties, nor conceited modern writers." As to the teacher of the English school, it was required that he write "fair secretary and Roman hands," "that he be skillful in ciphering and casting of accounts, and that he teach his scholars the same faculty."1 These schools at Chigwell the lad attended, it is said, until he was twelve years old.2 That he acquired a good knowledge of Latin there is fairly certain, and as to Greek, the foundation of his acquaintance with it may also have been laid in this period. His writings in later time show him to have been a fair Greek scholar, and his copy of the Greek Testament was sold at auction in London in 1872. Without intending to speak minutely of any part of 1 Lyson's (Rev. Daniel) "Environs of London," 1796, Vol. IV. p. 128. 2 Clarkson, p. 3. Stoughton speaks of his life at Wanstead "for about eleven years." Page 33 Penn's life, it seems proper to dwell a moment at this point on the surroundings of these early years, while living at Wanstead and attending the Chigwell schools. Dr. Stoughton devotes some pages to an intelligent and suggestive sketch of them, pointing out that this part of Essex in those years "was steeped in Puritanism," and that the conditions of the boy's life there may well have influenced his subsequent career. Dr. Emanuel Utey, vicar of Chigwell, had been ejected from his place for alleged ritualistic practices in church in 1641, and in 1650 it was reported by commissioners that there had been no settled minister there since his departure. The disputes in the church at Wanstead, also, between Presbyterianism and Episcopacy began about 1642, and ran high. A number of the people drew up and signed a celebrated "Protest" against all "innovations" which, as they considered, would lead away from "the true reformed Protestant religion." His years in the country, in the midst of a community of strenuously earnest advocates of religious change, attending a small and strictly administered school, hearing the anxious discussion of great and serious events going on in England, must have left their deep impression on William Penn. Adjacent to Wanstead and Chigwell there lay--until 1851, when it was disafforested--the woods known as Hainault Forest, and in these, it may reasonably be supposed, the active, spirited boy rambled and played, acquiring that love for nature and that acquaintance with it by which his subsequent career was marked.1 The region is 1 Of the period of his youth in Ireland, say 1656-60, Hepworth Dixon says, "In person he was tall and slender, but his limbs were well knit, and he had a passionate fondness for field sports, boating, and other manly exercises." ("Life of Penn," p. 26.) Of his residence at Oxford, Anthony Wood says, "he delighted in manly sports at times of recreation." These recall the familiar story, derived from Samuel Preston's grandmother, that Penn, when he met with the Indians in this country, on his second visit, "walked with them, sat with them on the ground, and ate with them of their roasted acorns and hominy. At this they expressed great delight, and soon began to show how they could hop and jump; at which exhibition, William Penn, to cap the climax, sprang up and beat them all!" Page 34 still "very picturesque in parts, abounds in nightingales, and can show some fine trees, although none so large nor so celebrated as the Fairlop oak, which stood not far from Chigwell."1 Returning to London about 1655 or 1656, it is said that Admiral Penn had a private tutor for the lad at the house on Tower Hill.2 But this could have been only for a brief period, if the account given by Granville Penn can be confidently followed at this point. He says that the Admiral, after his release from the Tower, in 1655, took his family to Ireland, and indicates that they practically remained there until 1660, when Charles II. returned from Holland and the monarchy was restored. It may thus be assumed that, until he went to the University, Penn's education had been received at Chigwell and at the hands of private tutors,--the latter for a short time in London, and for a longer period at Macromp, in Ireland. In 1660, in October, he went to Oxford, and on the 26th of that month was entered as a "gentleman commoner" at Christ Church College.3 Who his tutors were, or what the circumstances of his life in Ireland, is not disclosed by the biographies; but it seems quite plain that the lad of 1660 arrived at Oxford very much of a Puritan in his religious temper, and that his subsequent tribulations there were a not unnatural consequence of this disposition. In his own account of his second tour in Germany, 1677, he summarizes the narrative which he gave 1 Citation in Stoughton, p. 6. The Fairlop oak was one of the showtrees of England until it fell, partly as the result of fire, in February, 1870. Its girth at the ground was forty-eight feet, and three feet up thirty-six feet. Its branches covered a circumference of three hundred feet. 2 Clarkson, p. 3. 3 From the account in Janney, it would be inferred that he went to Oxford in 1659, the expression of the former being that he did so "at the age of fifteen." This error occurs by following Clarkson, who uses substantially the same language. Foster's "Alumni Oxon." is cited by Mr. Rigg, in his article in the "Dictionary of National Biography," for the exact date. Page 35 to Anna Maria von Schurmann, and the Somerdykes, in their house at Wiewerd, at the morning interview on the 13th of September, and unless we could take the view that he was a deceiving or self-deceived man, its pregnant sentences must command our attention. He says, "Here I began to let them know how, and when, the Lord first appeared unto me, which was about the twelfth year of my age, anno 1656. How at times betwixt that and the fifteenth, the Lord visited me, and the Divine impressions he gave me of himself; of my persecution at Oxford, and how the Lord sustained me in the midst of that hellish darkness and debauchery; of my being banished the college; the bitter usage I underwent when I returned to my father; whipping, beating, and turning out of doors in 1662. Of the Lord's dealings with me in France, and in the time of the Great Plague in London. In fine, the deep sense he gave me of the vanity of this world; of the Irreligiousness of the religions of it." The biographic value of this passage is important. Granville Penn, with scant sympathy for the Quaker, but more for the Admiral, in his memorial of the latter minimizes the breach between father and son at the time of the Oxford troubles, but it is evident that he does so unduly; the impressive details above are too plain to be set aside. Dr. Stoughton, pointing out the manner--not at all unfavorable--in which Anthony Wood, the minute and caustic annalist of Oxford University, describes Penn's stay there, questions the accuracy of the stories that he joined in tearing off the gowns of the students, etc., and even suggests a doubt whether he was expelled by the authorities. But as to the latter point his own expression above, "my being banished the college," appears conclusive. Anthony Wood describes the young man at some length, "enumerates a number of his works, and treats him with considerable civility."1 Paragraphs in Pepys, at this period, throw light on the situation. The following are of interest: 1 Stoughton, p. 36. Page 36 "Nov. 1, 1661.--At my house, Sir William sent for his son, Mr. William Pen, lately come from Oxford."1 "Jan. 1, 1661-2.-- . . . Home again, and sent to young Mr. Pen and his sister to go anon with my wife and I to the theatre. That done, Mr. Pen came to me, and he and I walked out . . . so home again to dinner, and by and by came the two young Pens, and after we had eat a barrel of oysters, we went by coach to the play ["The Spanish Curate."] . . . From thence home, and they sat with us till late at night, at cards very merry, but the jest was Mr. Pen had left his sword in the coach, and so my boy and he run out after the coach, and by very great chance did at the Exchange meet with the coach, and got his sword again." "Jan. 25, 1661-2.--At home. . . . Walking in the garden. . . . Sir W. Pen came to me, and did break a business to me about removing his son from Oxford to Cambridge to some private college. I proposed Magdalene, but cannot name a tutor at present; but I shall think and write about it." "Feb. 1.--I and Sir William Pen walked in the garden, talking about his business of putting his son to Cambridge; and to that end I intend to write to-night to Fairebrother, to give me an account of Mr. Burton of Magdalene." "March 16.--Walking in the garden with Sir W. Pen: his son William is at home, not well. But all things, I fear, do not go well with them--they both look discontentedly, but I know not what ails them." "April 28, 1662.--[At Portsmouth] Sir W. Pen much troubled upon letters came last night. Showed me one of Dr. Owen's to his son, whereby it appears his son is much perverted in his opinion by him; which I now perceive is one thing that hath put Sir William so long off the hookes." With Penn's stay at Oxford the Pennsylvania undertaking is in some degree connected. Twenty years later, his letter,--dated at Westminster, 12th of Second Month (April), 1681, just after the grant had been made him by the King,--addressed to Robert Turner, Anthony Sharp, and Roger Roberts, at Dublin, contained a passage which has been repeatedly noted: "For many are drawn forth to be concerned with me [in Pennsylvania], and perhaps this way of satisfaction [for losses which he had previously 1 This passage Hepworth Dixon cites ("Life of Penn," p. 31) as authority for the statement that he was expelled from the University. But it is plain from Pepys's further entries that the expulsion was not at this time, but several months later. Page 37 mentioned, due to his being a Quaker] has more of the hand of God in it than a downright payment: this I can say that I had an opening of joy, as to these parts, in the year 1661, at Oxford, twenty years since; and as my understanding and inclinations have been much directed to observe and reprove mischiefs in government, so it is now put in my power to settle one."1 What is signified in the expression "an opening of joy," etc., is somewhat uncertain, but Dr. F. D. Stone has pointed out, in connection with it,2 that as early as 1660, George Fox was thinking of forming a colony of Friends in the region subsequently granted to Penn, and corresponded with Josiah Coale, who was then in Maryland, on the subject. Following upon his departure from Oxford, and a brief stay in London, came the tour in France, the studies under Moses Amyraut, the Protestant theologian,3 at Saumur, and the excursion into Italy. Penn returned from Turin in the summer of 1664, being recalled by his father, who now expected active employment in the naval war with the Dutch. Pepys has these two allusions: "Aug. 26, 1664.--Mr. Pen, Sir William's son, is come back from France, and come to visit my wife; a most modish person, grown, she says, a fine gentleman." "30th.--Comes Mr. Pen to visit me. I perceive something of learning he hath got, but a great deal, if not too much, of the vanity of the 1 Letter in full in Janney, p. 163, and Vol. I., "Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania," p. 210. 2 Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America," III. 475. 3 In the biographies Amyraut's name has suffered. Dr. Stoughton calls it Amyrant, and Janney's printers have made it Auryrault! Amyraut, himself an interesting man, derives some addition of importance to us because of Penn's studies with him. He was "one of the most celebrated divines of the reformed church of France, during the 17th century," a modified Calvinist, charged by his enemies as holding doctrines that opened "a door to Arminianism, even to Pelagianism itself," but "repeatedly absolved," nevertheless, "from charges of heresy, by synods of his own church." He had been appointed to the church at Saumur in 1626, and to the chair of theology in the university there in 1633; in the latter he remained till his death, in 1664, soon after Penn's stay with him at Saumur. Page 38 French garb, and affected manner of speech and gait. I fear all real profit he hath made of his travel will signify little."1 Upon which it may be remarked simply that Mr. Pepys had little prevision of the future, so far as young "Mr. Pen" was concerned. "Sept. 5, 1665.--Home pretty betimes, and there found W. Pen, and he staid supper with us and mighty merry talking of his travells, and the French humours, etc., and so parted and to bed." The events following the return from Italy down to the writing of "The Sandy Foundation Shaken," and his imprisonment in the Tower in 1668, are all interesting, but must be passed over without much detail. He began the study of law at Lincoln's Inn (February 7, 1664-65), was presented at court, attended upon his father, was on board the fleet,2 and brought despatches to the King. Letters sent to his father at this time are worth reproduction, as showing the filial attitude of the writer. They are in Granville Penn's "Memorials," Vol. II. p. 318, and are also reproduced by Janney: "FROM HARWICH, 28d April, 1665. "HONOURED FATHER,--We could not arrive here sooner than this day, about twelve of the clock, by reason of the continued cross winds, and, as I thought, foul weather. I pray God, after all the foul weather and dangers you are exposed to, and shall be, that you come home as secure. And I bless God, my heart does not in any way fail, but firmly believe that if God has called you out to battle, he will cover your head in that smoky day. And, as I never knew what a father was till I had wisdom enough to prize him, so I can safely say, that now, of all times, your concerns are most dear to me. It's hard, meantime, to lose both a father and a friend. . . . "W. P." "NAVY OFFICE, 6th May, 1665. "At my arrival at Harwich, (which was about one of the clock on the Sabbath day, and where I staid till three), I took post for London, and 1 We may recall the statement of the seaman, Gibson, already cited, "I remember your honour very well, when you newly came out of France, and wore pantaloon breeches." 2 Pepys: April 25, 1665.--"This afternoon, W. Pen, lately came from his father in the fleete, did give me an account how the fleete did sail, about 103 in all. . . ." Page 39 was at London the next morning by almost daylight. I hasted to Whitehall, where, not finding the King up, I presented myself to my Lord of Arlington and Colonel Ashburnham. "At his majesty's knocking, he was informed there was an express from the Duke; at which, earnestly skipping out of his bed, he came only in his gown and slippers; who, when he saw me, 'Oh! is't you? how is Sir William?' "He asked how you did at three several times. He was glad to hear your message about Ka. [?] After interrogating me above half an hour, he bid me go about your business and mine too. As to the Duchess, he was pleased to ask several questions, and so dismissed me. "I delivered all the letters given me. My mother was to see my Lady Lawson, and she was here. "I pray God be with you, and be your armor in the day of controversy! May that power be your salvation, for his name's sake. And so will he wish and pray, that is with all true veneration, honored father, "Your obedient son and servant, "WILLIAM PENN." The naval battle with the Dutch, in which Admiral Penn was "Great Captain Commander," and in which he won a signal success, occurred June 3, 1665, and soon after the frightful increase of the plague in London drove Penn to the country. In the autumn of that year his father sent him to Ireland. There he remained for the most of two years. In this period occurred the episode of his military service, under Lord Arran (second son of the Duke of Ormond), at the siege of Carrickfergus, and about the time of this affair--May, 1666--there was painted the "portrait in armor," of which the Historical Society of Pennsylvania possesses a copy, presented by Granville Penn in 1833. This is a half-length; the artist is unknown. It is doubtless the only portrait extant of William Penn painted from life, unless it be considered that the Blackwell Grange picture is really his, and not that of the Admiral. The original of the portrait in armor is at Pennsylvania Castle, in the Isle of Portland, formerly the property of the Penns, now owned by J. Merrick Head, Esq.; another copy belongs to Captain William Dugald Stewart, of Tempsford Hall, in Bedfordshire.1 1 The portrait in armor is so familiar that it needs no particular description. It has been engraved by S. A. Schoff, Boston, with the aid of a crayon reduction by William Hunt, by Thomas Sartain, by W. G. Armstrong, and probably by others. The Schoff picture is in Winsor's History, Vol. III. p. 474; the Sartain in Watson's Annals, in Janney's "Life of Penn," and in the "Memorial History of Philadelphia," as a frontispiece to Vol. I. The three engravings vary somewhat in the expression of the face: that of Sartain makes it more mature and refined than either of the others; the Armstrong engraving is a very satisfactory reproduction of the portrait. Page 40 The incident of the attendance by Penn on Thomas Loe's preaching at Cork, his further and renewed convincement of the views of the Friends, and his arrest by officers at a Friends' meeting in that city now followed,--the arrest being upon September 3, 1667. He returned soon after that to London, then became openly and actively identified with the Friends,1 and presently began to write and speak in their behalf.2 In 1668 he published "The Sandy Foundation Shaken," and on the 12th of December of that year he was committed to the Tower on account of it. He had been, as he himself tells in the manuscript fragments of an "Apology,"3 twice to court earlier in the year, once in company with George Whitehead, Josiah Coale, and Thomas Loe, and next time with Whitehead and Coale, to urge a relaxation of the persecution of the Friends. Their sufferings by "Stocks, Whips, Gaols, Dungeons, Pr'munires, Fines, Sequestrations, and Banishment," compelled his deep sympathy, and they were entitled, he thought, to better treatment. "Accordingly," he says, "I had formed a scheme to myself for that purpose. But it so fell out that, towards the close of that year, I was made incapable of 1 Pepys: "Dec. 29, 1667. (Lord's day).--At night comes Mrs. Turner to see us; and there among other talk, she tells me that Mr. William Pen, who is lately come over from Ireland, is a Quaker again, or some very melancholy thing; that he cares for no company, nor comes into any; which is a pleasant thing after his being abroad so long. . . ." 2 According to Hepworth Dixon ("Life of Penn," p. 44), it was in 1668 that, after a painful interview, "the indignant Admiral turned him out of doors." There seems to be no good authority for this statement. Penn's own narrative to Anna Maria von Schurmann, already given, definitely mentions the "turning out of doors" as "in 1662." This date seems to have been overlooked by Dixon. 3 "Memoris of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania," III., Part 2. Page 41 prosecuting the resolution I had taken, and the plan I had layd of this affair, by a long and close imprisonment in the Tower1 for a book I writ, called [etc.]2 . . . I was committed the beginning of December, and was not discharged till the Fall of the Leaf following; wanting about fourteen days of nine months. . . . Within six weeks after my enlargement I was sent by my Father to settle his Estate in Ireland," etc. In the Tower he had written "No Cross, No Crown," which must be considered, no doubt, the most important of his numerous religious writings.3 The subject--a crown of reward for the cross of suffering--sprang naturally from his own situation. Hepworth Dixon says that, "considering the shortness of time, and other untoward circumstances under which it was produced, the reader is struck with the grasp of thought, the power of reasoning, the lucid arrangement of subject, and the extent of research displayed. Had the style been more condensed, it would have been well entitled to claim a high place in literature."4 His release from the Tower must have been, from his own account, near the end of August, 1669. On the 15th of September he left London, and on the 24th of October he sailed from Bristol for Cork, where he arrived on the 26th, to resume his charge of the Irish property. He found, as he tells us in his fragmentary "Apology," the Friends under "general persecution, and those of the City of Cork 1 This imprisonment was a harsh one. He says ("Apology"), "As I saw very few, so I saw them but seldom, except my own Father and Dr. Stillingfleet, the present Bishop of Worcester. The one came as my relation, the other at the King's command to endeavour my change of judgment." Bishop Stillingfleet treated him considerately. "I am glad," proceeds Penn, "I have the opportunity to own so publickly the great pains he took, and humanity he showed, and that to his moderation, learning, and kindness I will ever hold myself obliged." 2 Pepys: "February 12, 1668-9.--Got William Pen's book against the Trinity, and I find it so well writ, as I think it is too good for him to have writ it; it is a serious sort of book, and not fit for everybody to read." 3 A second edition was issued in 1682, the twenty-fourth (English) edition in 1857. 4 "Life of Penn," p. 63. Page 42 almost all in prison," so that he promptly "adjourned all private affairs," and hastened to Dublin to the authorities to intercede in their behalf. Rutty's "History of Friends in Ireland" says that "William Penn, who was here this year, did frequently visit his friends in prison, and hold meetings with them, omitting no opportunity he had with those in authority to solicit on their behalf; and as the Ninth month [November] national meeting was this year held at his lodgings in Dublin, an account of Friends' sufferings was then drawn up by way of address, which he presented to the Lord Lieutenant, (John, Lord Berkeley, Baron Stratton), whereupon an order of Council was obtained for the release of those that were imprisoned."1 Penn remained in Ireland until the summer of 1670. He resided at Cork and at Dublin, preached at the Friends' meetings, wrote religious pamphlets, appealed not only to the Lord Lieutenant, but to Lord Arran, the Lord Chancellor, and others, in behalf of the Friends, and attended meantime to the care of his father's property. In April, 1670, the Admiral wrote to him, "I wish you had well done all your business there, for I find myself to decline." Penn, therefore, presently returned to England, and joined his father at Wanstead. Margaret, as we have seen, was married, and was living with her husband in Yorkshire; while Richard, in June, as appears from Captain Poole's letter, already cited, was in Italy. The Admiral's career was nearly closed. His son-in-law Lowther had written to him in April, recommending for his purchase an estate near his own in Yorkshire, but the time for that was past. Penn, however, was to undergo one more remarkable 1 This passage in Rutty's History (which is a continuation and enlargement of a brief account by Thomas Wight) is repeated almost verbatim by Gough in his "History of the Quakers," and is cited by Janney, p. 55. The release of the Friends was ordered June 4, 1670. In the "Life of Penn" prefixed to his "Select Works" it is stated that, "being arrived at Cork, he immediately visited his friends there, and the next day had a meeting with them . . . having tarried there some days, he went from thence to Dublin, and on the 5th of the 9th month was at the National Meeting of Friends, which was held at his lodgings." Page 43 experience before he parted from his father. On August 14, 1670, it being the first day of the week, he went with William Mead to the meeting of Friends in White Hart Court, Gracechurch Street. William Mead, a country gentleman of some estate in Essex, had been a captain in the Parliamentary service, and for a time, like John Gilpin, a "linen-draper bold" in the city. He was now one of those recently converted to the views of George Fox, and active in spreading "the Truth," as the Friends held it.1 The meeting-house in Gracechurch Street had been, like the others in London, for some weeks closed under the operation of the "Conventicle Act,"2 and guarded by soldiers 1 He married, in 1681, at the Devonshire House Friends' meeting, in London, Sarah Fell, one of the daughters of Margaret Fox by her first husband, Judge Fell, of Swarthmoor Hall, in Lancashire. 2 The "Conventicle Act," passed by Parliament in 1664, embodied clauses contained in a previous harsh act of 1661. It was renewed in 1667, and in April, 1670, after quite a struggle in Parliament, was again enacted, to take effect May 10 of that year. It was one of the most oppressive of the long series of persecuting measures enacted in the Restoration period, levelled at the Dissenters, and fell heavily upon the Friends, who would not give up their meetings. It forbade the assembling of five persons or more, "besides those of the same household," in "any assembly, conventicle or meeting, under colour or pretence of any exercise of religion, in any other manner than according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England," and imposed a ruinous series of fines, part of the proceeds of which went to informers. "By this law," says Sewel ("History of the Quakers"), "many an honest family was impoverished; for the Quakers did not leave off meeting together publicly. . . . At London, as well as at other places, many were spoiled of their goods very unmercifully, and many times people of good substance brought to mere poverty, seeing not only the shop goods of some but also their household goods have been seized, insomuch that the very sick have had their beds taken from under them, . . . nay, they have been so cruel as to leave them nothing; insomuch as when the child's pap hath stood in a pannikin, they have thrown out the pap to take the pannikin away." Sewel adds, however, that the greed of the informers was sometimes checked by humane magistrates. The text of the "Conventicle Act" of 1670 is given in full by Sewel; also by Besse, who gives, besides, the previous acts of 1661 and 1664. The law of 1670, though capable of being made to work great hardship, was less severe than that of 1664, which imposed heavier fines, and added imprisonment and transportation. Page 44 against use by the Friends, and on each Sabbath since the law took effect (May 10) there had been some of them arrested and imprisoned or fined. On May 15, George Fox was taken, in front of the meeting, but the informer failed to appear against him, and he was released; later John Burnyeat, George Whitehead, and others had fallen victims to the sharp enforcement of the law by the lord mayor, Sir Samuel Starling. On this 14th of August the Friends had repaired to their meeting-house (Gracechurch Street), but had found it closed and guarded as before. A group had remained outside in the street, and Penn, removing his hat, had begun to address them, when in a moment constables appeared, with a warrant from the lord mayor, and arrested him and Mead; and being thereupon haled before Sir Samuel in short order, and duly reviled by him, they were committed for trial. Penn's letter to his father, dated next day, the 15th, from "the sign of the Black Dog, in Newgate Market,"--"a wretched sponginghouse," Hepworth Dixon calls it,--informed the sick Admiral at Wanstead what had happened. The trial of Penn and Mead is a tempting theme. It forms an episode in English history at once dramatic and diverting. In its historical and legal aspects it is important, and as a picture of manners in London under Charles II. it has elements which Shakespeare would have made immortal. As to the chief actor, Penn, nothing in his extended life and varied activities better discloses his qualities.1 The trial began September 1, and was continued on the 3d, 4th, and 5th. Ten magistrates were upon the bench: the mayor, Sir Samuel Starling; the recorder, Sir John Howell; five aldermen, among them Sir John Robinson, the oppressive and persecuting lieutenant of the Tower; and three sheriffs. The browbeating and bullying from 1 The impression made by his conduct at this trial is suggested by Lafayette's toast at Philadelphia, at the dinner to Richard Rush, July 20, 1825. Lafayette gave: "The memories of Penn and Franklin--the one never greater than when arraigned before an English jury, or the other than before a British Parliament." Page 45 the court, especially from the recorder, the spirit, readiness, and wit of Penn's defence (and Mead, it must in justice be said, bore himself equally well), the courage and endurance of the jury, the ridiculous break-down of the whole proceeding,--though the court indulged its spitefulness to cover its mortification at the end,--make up a chapter which every biographer of Penn is irresistibly led to cite as fully as possible. Penn's promptly issued account of it, "The People's Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted," has been many times reprinted, and its simple and graphic details make it worthy of a place beside classics of Defoe or Bunyan. The sequel of the trial, too,--the imprisonment of the jury in default of payment of forty marks fine for refusing to find a verdict of guilty, their release upon habeas corpus in a suit against the lord mayor and recorder for illegal imprisonment, the trial of the suit in the Court of Common Pleas before a bench of twelve judges, the elaborate argument of the question by distinguished counsel, the unanimous decision that a jury is to judge of the facts and that it cannot be coerced,--that the court may try "to open the eyes of the jurors, but not to lead them by the nose,"--and the ultimate triumphant discharge in open court of Edward Bushel1 and his eleven resolute companions,--is set down in the law reports of England as a famous case. "It established a truth," says Hepworth Dixon, "which William Penn never ceased to inculcate--that unjust laws are powerless weapons, when used against an upright people." 1 The browbeating of Bushel by the court, all unavailing as it was, is a notable feature of the trial. "Sir," said the recorder to him, when the jury first reported they could not agree, "you are the cause of this disturbance, and manifestly show yourself an abetter of faction; I shall set a mark upon you, sir!" "Sirrah," interjected the mayor a moment later, "you are an impudent fellow; I will put a mark upon you!" Again the mayor, infuriated at the verdict of not guilty as to Mead, shouted, "What, will you be led by such a fellow as Bushel? an impudent, canting fellow! I warrant you, you shall come upon no more juries in haste!" Sheriff Bludworth declared he knew when he saw Bushel on the jury there would be trouble, and the lord mayor threatened, "I will cut his nose!" Page 46 Penn, with Mead, had been recommitted to Newgate September 5, in default of the payment of fines for "contempt of court" in declining to remove their hats during the trial. Some one, however, paid their fines two days later, and they were released. The Admiral, at Wanstead, was now within a few days of his close. Penn's discharge from Newgate took place on the 7th of September, and it was but nine days later, the 16th, that his father died. SUMMARY: ADMIRAL PENN. SIR WILLIAM PENN, KNIGHT, son of Captain Giles and Joan Penn, born at Bristol; baptized in the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle April 23, 1621; married, 1643-44, Margaret, daughter of John Jasper, of Rotterdam. He died September 16, 1670, at Wanstead, Essex, and was buried September 30, at St. Mary's Redcliffe, Bristol. His wife, born (?); died 1681-82, and was buried March 4 of that year in the church at Walthamstow, Essex. Their issue: 1. WILLIAM PENN, Founder of Pennsylvania. 2. Margaret, born (?); married, February 14, 1666-67, Anthony Lowther, of Maske, Yorkshire, and left issue, a son (and perhaps others) William, created a baronet in 1697. Margaret died 1718, and was buried at Walthamstow. Her husband died 1692, and was buried at Walthamstow, where there is a "monument" to him. (In a letter, 9th of Third month (May), 1720, to Rebecca Blackfan, at Pennsbury, Pennsylvania, Hannah Penn said, "My cousin John Lowther is married, has one child, a daughter, and lives at Mask, as yet. My cousin Sir Thomas, the heir of Sir William, is just returned from his travels in France and Flanders. He went out a very promising hopeful young man, and I greatly hope is not worsted but improved by his journey." It was this Sir Thomas Lowther, Bart., who married Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, see p. 25.) 3. Richard, born (?); died without issue 1673. Extract from Walthamstow parish register: "Richard Penn, gent., second son of Sir William Penn, Knight, from Rickmersworth, buried Ap'l 9, 1673." End of First Section