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For this supposition we find no other foundation than that Cromwell, who lived very privately in the neighbourhood, had known Mr. Pengelly from his youth, afterwards kept up a friendship with him, and died at his seat at Cheshunt, in August 1712. Mr. Pengelly was brought up to the bar, and becoming eminent in his profession, was made a serjeant May 6, 1710; knighted May 1, 1719, and in June following appointed his majesty's prime serjeant at law, on the decease of sir Thomas Powis. He sat as member for Cockermouth, in Cumberland, in the parliaments called in 1714 and 1722. He was made chief baron of the exchequer Oct. 16, 1726, on the death of sir Jeffery Gilbert; and his conduct on the bench corresponded with the high reputation he had acquired at the bar. He died of an infectious fever, caught at Taunton assizes, April 14, 1730. He excelled in profound learning, spirit, justice, and generosity, and dared to offend the most powerful, if he thought their conduct reprehensible. He was a florid, yet convincing orator, an excellent judge, a pious Christian, and an accomplished, sprightly companion. By a humane codicil in his will, dated in 1729, he left a considerable part of his fortune to procure the discharge of persons confined for debt, which was accordingly done by his executor Mr. Webb. There is a copy of this will published in his life, but the name of his residuary legatee is for some reason omitted. The anonymous history of Oliver Cromwell, first printed in 1724, has been supposed to have been written by him, but this is doubtful. It has been also attributed to Dr. Gibson, bishop of London.'

PENINGTON (ISAAC), a writer of considerable estimation among the people called Quakers, was the son of an alderman of London during Cromwell's time, who was lord mayor in 1642, and appointed one of the judges on the trial of the king. For this he was at the restoration prosecuted, and died in the Tower. Isaac the son, was born about 1617, and in his education is said to have had the advantages which the schools and universities of his country could give; but what school or university had the honour of his education, is not mentioned. From his father's station, we are told, he had a reasonable prospect of rising in the world, but chose a life devoted to religion and retire

1 Some private passages of the Life of Sir Thomas Pengelly, 1735, 8vo.Noble's Supplement to Granger,

ment; and, as he has himself said, received impressions of piety from his childhood. He is represented by himself and his sect, as one who passed much of the early part of. his life in a state of spiritual affliction, perceiving in himself, and in the world at large, a want of that vital religion and communion with the divine nature, which he believed the holy men of ancient time to have possessed. Whatever he read in the Scripture, as opened to his understanding, he determined fully to practise, and was contented to bear the reproach, opposition, and suffering which it occasioned. It appears also, that he met with opposition from his relations, and, among the rest, from his father; but he declares that his heart was preserved in love to them amidst all he suffered from them. On his first hearing of the Quakers, he thought them a poor, weak, and contemptible people, although, while his judgment seemed to reject them, the conferences which he occasionally had with them, seemed to increase his secret attachment. At length, in 1658, he became fully satisfied respecting them, partly through the preaching of George Fox; and became himself an unshaken and constant asserter of their peculiar tenets, as a minister and author.

He married about 1648 Mary Springett, a widow, whose daughter, by her former husband, became the wife of William Penn. He resided on his own estate, called the Grange, at Chalfont, in Buckinghamshire. It does not appear that he travelled much as a minister; for of six imprisonments which he suffered, during the reign of Charles II. five were in his own county. The first was in 1661, when the nation was alarmed on account of the fifth monarchy men, which occasioned much disturbance to the meetings of Dissenters. He was taken from a meeting in his own family, and committed to Aylesbury gaol, where, although a weakly man, he was kept for seventeen weeks (great part of which was in winter) in a cold room without a fire-place, by which means he became unable to turn himself in bed. In 1664, he was again taken out of a meeting, and remained a second time prisoner in the same gaol for nearly the same time. In 1665, he was taken up at Amersham as he was attending the corpse of a friend to the burial-ground of the Quakers. The concourse of that people who walked after it in the street, seems to have been construed into a conventicle, for he was committed to Aylesbury gaol for one month only, on the Con

venticle Act, in order to banishment. It is remarkable that the justice, because it was not then convenient to send him from Amersham to Aylesbury, dismissed him on his word to come again the next day but one, when he ac cordingly came, and was committed: as did on the same occasion several other Quakers. The same year he was arrested in his house by a soldier without a warrant, and carried before a deputy-lieutenant, by whom he was again sent to his old quarters at Aylesbury; and, though the pestilence was suspected to be in the gaol, and no crime was laid to his charge, he was kept there till a person died of it. After about nine months' confinement he was discharged; but when he had been at home about three weeks, a party of soldiers came and seized him in bed, carrying him again to prison at Aylesbury. The cold, damp, and unhealthiness of the room, again gave him a fit of illness, which lasted some months. At length he was brought by Habeas Corpus to the bar of the King's-bench, and (with the wonder of the court that a man should be so long imprisoned for nothing) he was discharged in 1668. During one of these imprisonments his estate was seized, and his wife and family turned out of his house.

In 1670, he was imprisoned a sixth time. He was visiting some of his friends, confined at that time in Readinggaol; on which he was taken before a justice and confined there himself. Ellwood relates, that during this confinement, which lasted a year and nine months, he incurred a premunire, as did many of the Quakers. For being from time to time examined at the assizes, it was common to tender them the oath of allegiance, which they refusing, from their scruple to swear at all, they became criminals in the view of the law when they went out of court, however innocent they might have been on their coming in. It seems probable, that the political principles of the father had some share in occasioning the sufferings of the son; who, from his writings, appears to have been of a meek and quiet spirit. He died at Goodnestone-court, Sussex, in 1679, being about sixty-three years of age. Ellwood says, that his disposition was courteous and affable; his ordinary discourse cheerful and pleasant, neither morose nor light, but innocently sweet, and tempered with such a serious gravity, as rendered his conversation both delightful and profitable. His numerous writings were collected into one volume folio, and published 1681;

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afterwards reprinted in two volumes 4to, and next in 4 vols. Svo. Some select pieces have also been reprinted, and lately, some of his letters, 1796, in octavo; many of them are dated from Aylesbury. They breathe a spirit of genuine philanthropy, but, being deeply tinctured with mysticism, have been more sought for by such as are fond of that species of writing, than by other readers. '

PENN (WILLIAM), afterwards sir William Penn, knt. admiral of England, and one of the commanders at the taking of Jamaica, was born at Bristol in 1621, of an ancient family. He was addicted from his youth to maritime affairs; and before he had reached his thirty-second year, went through the various promotions of captain; rear-admiral of Ireland; vice-admiral of Ireland; admiral to the Straits; vice-admiral of England; and general in the first Dutch war, and commander in chief under the duke of York, in the signal victory over the Dutch in 1665, on which occasion he was knighted. On his return he was elected into parliament for the town of Weymouth; in 1669, commissioner of the admiralty and navy, governor of the fort and town of Kinsale, vice-admiral of Munster, and a member of that provincial council. He then took leave of the sea, but still continued his other employments till 1669; when, through bodily infirmities, he withdrew to Wanstead in Essex, and there died in 1670. Though he was thus engaged, both under the parliament and king, he took no part in the civil war, but adhered to the duties of his profession. Besides the reputation of a great and patriot officer, he acquired credit for having improved the naval service in several important departments. He was the author of several little tracts on this subject, some of which are preserved in the British Museum. The monument erected to his memory by his wife in Radcliffe church, Bristol, contains a short account of his life and promotions.. But in Thurloe's State Papers there are minutes of his proceedings in America, not mentioned on his monument, which he delivered to Oliver Cromwell's council in Sept. 1655. He arrived at Portsmouth in August, and thence wrote to Cromwell, who returned him no answer: and, upon his first appearing before the council, he was committed to the Tower, for leaving his command without leave, to the hazard of the army; but soon after discharged. *

1 Penn's and Ellwood's Testimonies, prefixed to his works. Biog. Brit.-Clarkson's Life of William Penn.

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PENN (WILLIAM), the son of the preceding, was born in the parish of St. Catherine, near the Tower of London, Oct. 14, 1644. He was sent to school at Chigwell in Essex, which was near his father's residence at Wanstead; and afterwards, in his twelfth year, to a private school on Tower-hill; and he had also the advantage of a domestic tutor. Penn relates, in a conference he had with some religious persons on the continent, that "the Lord," as he expresses it, "first appeared to him about the twelfth year of his age; and that, between that and the fifteenth, the Lord visited him, and gave him divine impressions of himself." Wood informs us, that during the time of Penn's residence at this school at Chigwell, "being retired in a chamber alone, he was so suddenly surprized with an inward comfort, and (as he thought) an external glory in the room, that he has many times said how from that time he had the seal of divinity and immortality; that there was a God, and that the soul of man was capable of enjoying his divine communications." It appears, that before this time, he had been impressed by the preaching of one Thomas Loe, a quaker, but no particulars of the circumstance are known; it is however incidentally mentioned, that it was by the same person that he was afterwards confirmed in his design of uniting himself with that sect.

In 1660, he was entered a gentleman-commoner at Christchurch, Oxford; where, although he is said to have taken great delight, at the times of recreation, in manly sports, he, with some other students, withdrew from the national forms of worship, and held private meetings, where they both preached and prayed among themselves. This gave great offence to the heads of the college, and Penn, at the age of sixteen, was fined for nonconformity; but, having then a degree of that inflexibility, where he thought himself right, which he shewed on subsequent occasions, he not only persisted in his religious exercises, but in his zeal joined a party who tore in pieces the surplices of every student whom they met with one on an outrage so flagrant, that he was expelled from the college.

On his return home his lot was not more easy. His father, observing his delight to be in the company of sober and religious people, such as in the gay and licentious reign of Charles II. was more likely to prevent, than to promote, his rising in the world, endeavoured by severity to divert him from his purpose. Penn, as he relates him

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