Author: Penn, John
Biography:
PENN, John (1760-1834: ODNB)
The elder brother of Granville Penn (q.v.), he was born in London on 22 Feb. 1760 and baptised on 21 Mar. at St. Martin in the Fields, the son of Thomas Penn (1702-75) and his wife Juliana Fermor (1729-1801). His grandfather was William Penn (1644-1718), founder of Pennsylvania; his father owned Stoke Poges Park, Buckinghamshire, and large tracts of land in Pennsylvania; his mother was a daughter of the Earl of Pomfret. He attended Eton and Clare College, Cambridge (matric. 1777, MA 1779, LLD 1811). In 1775 he inherited his father’s property and after the end of fighting in the American Revolution he spent from 1782 to 1789 in Pennsylvania, where he built a house although all his lands had been confiscated. Compensation for his losses funded new building works in England after his return. He had a Gothic mansion (Pennsylvania Castle) built for himself on Portland Island, Devon 1797-1800, after which he commissioned a new residence, a rectory, in Stoke Poges Park as well as a monument to the memory of Thomas Gray (q.v.). Penn remained unmarried but was active in local government as well as in literature. In 1798 he was Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, from 1802 to 1805 MP for Helston in Cornwall, and from 1805 to his death Governor of Portland Castle. His American play, The Battle of Eddington (1792), was performed with some success and reprinted. At Stoke Poges he established a private press and oversaw the printing of some of his later collections of verse and critical prose. Another unconventional project was the Outinian Society, essentially a match-making organization which he founded to combat the scourge of hasty marriages: Penn acted as president, held meetings at Stoke and at his London house, and edited the annual proceedings from 1819 to 1823. He died at Stoke on 21 June 1834 and was buried there, with a monumental inscription at St. George, Portland. (ODNB 12 Sept. 2023; ancestry.com 12 Sept. 2023; findmypast.com 12 Sept. 2023; ACAD)
Other Names:
- J. Penn