PENN, William Sir

1548 - 1610  (62 years)

• Name	PENN, William  [1, 2, 3]
  Suffix	Sir
  Birth	1548	Gloucestershire, England
  Gender	Male
  LDS	• L7GQ-4JJ  [3]
  	20251112GHLn- LDS not a tanscription, ie. LDS notes: William Penn about 1546 – before 1590 • L7GQ-4JJ Notes PLEASE READ - William Penn Summary Little is known about the William Penn who married Margaret Rastell. His father’s 1590 will confirms William’s wife was named Margaret. A 1665/66 letter written to Admiral Sir William Penn confirms Margaret was the daughter of John Rastell. No documentation of the marriage of Margaret Rastell and William Penn has been found. William died young. His father’s 1590 will states that William was deceased but Margaret was still living, with six children, George, Giles, William, Marie, Sara, and Susanna. There is little information about most of children except for their second son, Giles, whose life is well documented. He was the father of Admiral Sir William Penn who was in turn the father of William Penn, the founder of the State of Pennsylvania. A list of lay subsidies for Wiltshire in 1587 has a reference to William Penn of Malmesbury, a law clerk, who could have been the husband of Margaret. Nothing more is known about the life of William Penn as there is simply no documented information. Less Last Changed: April 2, 2025 B Bryan54 Descendants of William Penn A letter purported to have been written on 27 January 1665/66 by John Georges MP to Admiral Sir William Penn (see attached source) names one of John Rastell's wives as Ann Georges, sister of Christopher Georges, and states that John's daughter married William Penn. The letter does not name the daughter, but William Penn's father left a 1590 will that names his son's wife as Margaret. No documentation of the marriage of Margaret Rastell and William Penn has been found. The PENN family had farmed in Minety, a north Wiltshire village between Malmesbury and Swindon, for a number of generations. When William PENN’s father died in 1591/92 he was of sufficient standing locally to be buried before the altar of Minety church. Margaret’s husband William died young, sometime before 1 May 1590. His father wrote his will on that day and it stated that his son was already deceased. William and Margaret had six children; little is known about most of them except for their second son, Giles, whose life is well documented. The oldest brother, George, probably took over the family estates in Minety, and it is possible that Margaret (RASTELL) spent her final years with him there, but he left Wiltshire, perhaps after his mother’s death, and emigrated to Massachusetts, where he died in 1632. William and Margaret’s second son, Giles PENN, married Joan GILBERT on 5 November 1600 at St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. He and his younger brother William became merchants in Bristol, Giles becoming a Burgess [Freeman] of the City. It is thought that the brothers became bankrupt which resulted in Giles joining the Royal Navy. In due course he became a Captain and on 30 December 1627 was appointed the first English Resident Consul to Barbary [the north African area which is now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya]. Barbary had become an important trading area for England; it was a market for English cloth and a provider of gold and sugar, as well as a supplier of provisions to the English outpost in Gibraltar. His letter of appointment from Charles I included a statement that he was to hold the post ‘with such allowances as consults in other parts of Turkey have from the merchants, or otherwise as Penn and the merchants shall agree’. These ‘allowances’ resulted in significant financial rewards for Giles and enabled him to create valuable personal contacts. He applied for a commission as Vice-Admiral to lead an expedition against Moroccan pirates who were attacking English ships, but the outbreak of the English Civil War prevented this. As Vice-Admiral he would have had the largest share of bounty. Giles died around 1656, probably in North Africa. His wife Joan was buried in St Mary Redcliffe, the church where she had married. Giles and Joan PENN had at least four children, the youngest of which was: Admiral Sir William PENN William PENN junior (Margaret RASTELL’s grandson) was born in Bristol in 1621 and baptised at St Thomas church there on 23rd April. He went to sea and served initially under his father. By 1642 he had been promoted to Captain. On 6 January 1643/44, at St Martin-within-Ludgate, London, he married Margaret van de SCHUREN, née JASPER, the widow of a wealthy Dutch merchant who had left her an estate in Ireland, to which William became entitled. William was rapidly promoted. In the year of his marriage, aged just 23, he was appointed Rear-Admiral of Ireland, and Vice-Admiral two years later. In 1651 William was sent with a Parliamentarian naval fleet to locate Prince Rupert, who had secretly fled England. He failed to find the Prince but during the voyage captured 36 ships which he took as prizes. At the age of 31 he became Vice-Admiral of England (1652) and the following year Admiral of the Blue, the third most senior of the three English Admirals. A year later, in December 1653 the Admiralty promoted him to ‘General-at-Sea’, the highest rank in the Parliamentary navy (one of four such posts) and at the same time he became a Commissioner for the Admiralty and Navy. In August 1654 he was sent by Oliver CROMWELL to seize Spanish territory in the West Indies and to secure a base for English expansion there. He fell out with the General commanding the land forces and as a result the expedition failed. Taken ill, PENN returned to England. Angered by his failure and by his return without permission, CROMWELL imprisoned him in the Tower of London. PENN apologized, was released after about four months and retired to his estates in Ireland. At the end of the Protectorate in 1659 William was persuaded to come out of retirement and he supervised the fleet that brought King Charles II back to England in 1660. He was knighted on 9 June 1660 and became a chief advisor on the restructuring of the navy. One of his junior colleagues at the Admiralty, and his next-door neighbour in London, was Samuel PEPYS, who made many mentions of him in his diaries. Despite his obvious ability as a sailor, the Admiral (and his wife) was not held in high regard by PEPYS. For example, he quoted a Mrs. TURNER who knew the PENNs in the early days after their marriage: ‘She says that he was a pitiful [fellow] when she first knew them; his lady was one of the sourest, dirty women, that ever she saw; that they took two chambers, one over the other, for themselves and child in Tower Hill; that for many years together they eat more meals at her house than at their own that she brought my lady who was then a dirty slattern with her stockings hanging about her heels so that afterwards the people of the whole Hill did say that Mrs Turner made Mrs Pen a gentlewoman.’ In another entry (on 31 December 1663) he referred to the Admiral as a ‘mean fellow’ and a ‘false knave’. And, on 5 April 1666 PEPYS wrote, ‘To the office, where the falsenesse and impertinencies of Sir W. Pen would make a man mad to think of’. PEPYS also had problems with the stench that emanated from the PENN’s house next-door because of Sir William’s disregard for where he emptied his ‘shitten pot’. William was elected MP for Weymouth in 1660 but returned to active naval service in 1664. In 1667 he was forced to resign his commission after being brought before parliament charged with seizing prizes illegally. He died on 16 September 1670 at his country house in Wanstead, Essex, aged 49 years and 4 months. His wife accompanied his funeral cortege to Bristol where he was buried in St Mary Redcliffe. His memorial, surmounted by his armour, and two pennants (now reproduction pennants) are still prominent in the church. William PENN, founder of Pennsylvania One of Sir William PENN’s three children was William PENN, the founder of the State of Pennsylvania. William (Margaret RASTELL’s great-grandson) was born on 14 October 1644 in London. After school in Essex he went to Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1660, but was expelled for criticising the Church of England. His father then sent him to France to study theology and afterwards to Ireland to manage the family estates. There he joined the Quakers and wrote several books criticising mainstream Christianity. He was imprisoned in the Tower for blasphemy and after his release in 1669 continued to proclaim the Quaker faith and was arrested several further times. William sought a solution to the relentless persecution of Quakers and approached King Charles II with the proposal to create a colony in America where they could practice their religion without persecution and prosecution. The King responded by granting him a very generous 45,000 square miles of land near the American East coast, making William the largest non-royal landowner. A charter for the new colony of Pennsylvania was granted in 1682 and William travelled there the same year. As envisaged, it became a haven for Quakers and other groups seeking religious tolerance but was beset by financial problems, disputes and political conflict. William paid great attention to writing the colony’s puritan constitution (he had briefly studied law) but was sloppy when it came to administration, paying little attention to detail and signing papers without reading them so that others found it easy to take advantage of him. William only stayed for two years, leaving the colony to be governed by deputies. He returned briefly from 1699 to 1701 but otherwise spent the rest of his life in England. William suffered a stroke in 1712, after which his second wife, Hannah, played a major part in administering the colony from England. William died on 30 July 1718 at Ruscombe in Berkshire and was buried in a nearby Quaker burial ground. He had 16 children by his two wives. Less Last Changed: January 17, 2025 B Bryan54
  FSID	PSMM-CFP
  Death	12 Mar 1610	Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England
  	age 62. Malmesbury, Minety, Gloucesterhire, England
  Person ID	I24972	WETZEL-SPRING

  
  

  Father	PENN, William,   b. 1525, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England d. 12 Mar 1591, Gloucestershire, England (Age 66 years)
  Relationship	natural
  Mother	Chaplet, Georgianna Evelina,   b. 1522, Evercreech, Somerset, England d. 22 May 1596, Broadway, Somerset, England (Age 74 years)
  Relationship	natural
  Marriage	1548	Gloucestershire, England
  Family ID	F1724	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	RASTALL, Margaret Lady,   b. Abt 1547, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England d. 1658, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England (Age 111 years)
  Marriage	1570	England
  Children	1. Penn, Giles Capt,   b. 1573, Minety, Wiltshire, England d. 1642, Africa (Age 69 years)  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]   2. PENN, George,   b. Abt 1582, Gloucestershire, England d. 4 Nov 1642, Brinkworth, Wiltshire, England (Age 60 years)  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]   3. Penn, William jr,   b. 1580, Gloucestershire, England d. 1590, Gloucestershire, England (Age 10 years)  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]   4. Penn, Susannah,   b. 1590, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]   5. Penn, Marie  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]   6. Penn, Sarah,   b. Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
  Family ID	F6873	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Event Map

  Birth - 1548 - Gloucestershire, England Marriage - 1570 - England Death - 12 Mar 1610 - Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England  = Link to Google Earth

  
  

• Photos

  PENN, Wm LDS 20251112GHLn- LDS not a tanscription, ie. LDS notes: William Penn about 1546 – before 1590 • L7GQ-4JJ Notes PLEASE READ - William Penn Summary Little is known about the William Penn who married Margaret Rastell. His father’s 1590 will confirms William’s wife was named Margaret. A 1665/66 letter written to Admiral Sir William Penn confirms…

  
  

• Sources

  [S161] FamilySearch.com, (Name: AFamily Search Ancestral File;). Husband's Name William PENN (AFN:NVBR-T0) Born: 1525 Place: Minety, Gloucestershire, England Died: 12 Mar 1591 Place: Minety, , Gloucestershire, England Buried: Place: Church At Mintye, Wiltshire, England Married: 12 Mar 1591 Place: Of, Minety, Gloucestershire, Engl Father: John PENNE (AFN:NVBR-RM) Mother: Mrs John PENN (AFN:19BT-QSV) Wife's Name William Mrs. PENN (AFN:P20N-CH) Born: 1534 Place: , Minety, Glouc, England Married: 12 Mar 1591 Place: Of, Minety, Gloucestershire, Engl Father: Mother: Children 1. Sex Name F Anne PENN (AFN:NVBR-P9) Born: Abt 1546 Place: , Minety, , England 2. Sex Name M William PENN (AFN:MRWK-42) Born: 1548 Place: Of Bristol, Gloucester, England Died: 12 Mar 1610 Place: Malmesbury, Minety, Gloucester, Eng 3. Sex Name F Ann PENN (AFN:11CX-STD) Born: Abt. 1550 Place: , , England 4. Sex Name F Ann PENN (AFN:1DGB-179) Born: Abt 1558 Place: , , Glou, Eng 5. Sex Name M William PENN (AFN:19WH-LHP) Born: 1582 Place: <Of Bristol, Gloucester, England> [S161] FamilySearch.com, (Name: AFamily Search Ancestral File;). Husband's Name William PENN (AFN:NVBR-T0) Born: 1525 Place: Minety, Gloucestershire, England Died: 12 Mar 1591 Place: Minety, , Gloucestershire, England Buried: Place: Church At Mintye, Wiltshire, England Married: 12 Mar 1591 Place: Of, Minety, Gloucestershire, Engl Father: John PENNE (AFN:NVBR-RM) Mother: Mrs John PENN (AFN:19BT-QSV) Wife's Name William Mrs. PENN (AFN:P20N-CH) Born: 1534 Place: , Minety, Glouc, England Married: 12 Mar 1591 Place: Of, Minety, Gloucestershire, Engl Father: Mother: Children 1. Sex Name F Anne PENN (AFN:NVBR-P9) Born: Abt 1546 Place: , Minety, , England 2. Sex Name M William PENN (AFN:MRWK-42) Born: 1548 Place: Of Bristol, Gloucester, England Died: 12 Mar 1610 Place: Malmesbury, Minety, Gloucester, Eng 3. Sex Name F Ann PENN (AFN:11CX-STD) Born: Abt. 1550 Place: , , England 4. Sex Name F Ann PENN (AFN:1DGB-179) Born: Abt 1558 Place: , , Glou, Eng 5. Sex Name M William PENN (AFN:19WH-LHP) Born: 1582 Place: <Of Bristol, Gloucester, England> 20251112GHLn- Husband's Name William PENN (AFN:NVBR-T0) Born: 1525 Minety, Gloucestershire, England Died: 12 Mar 1591 Minety, , Gloucestershire, England Buried: Church At Mintye, Wiltshire, England Married: 12 Mar 1591 Of, Minety, Gloucestershire, Engl Father: John PENNE (AFN:NVBR-RM) Mother: Mrs John PENN (AFN:19BT-QSV) Wife's Name William Mrs. PENN (AFN:P20N-CH) Born: 1534 Place: , Minety, Glouc, England Married: 12 Mar 1591 Of, Minety, Gloucestershire, Engl Father: Mother: Children 1. Sex Name F Anne PENN (AFN:NVBR-P9) Born: Abt 1546 Place: , Minety, , England 2. Sex Name M William PENN (AFN:MRWK-42) Born: 1548 Place: Of Bristol, Gloucester, England Died: 12 Mar 1610 Place: Malmesbury, Minety, Gloucester, Eng 3. Sex Name F Ann PENN (AFN:11CX-STD) Born: Abt. 1550 Place: , , England 4. Sex Name F Ann PENN (AFN:1DGB-179) Born: Abt 1558 Place: , , Glou, Eng 5. Sex Name M William PENN (AFN:19WH-LHP) Born: 1582 Place: <Of Bristol, Gloucester, England> [S161] FamilySearch.com, (Name: AFamily Search Ancestral File;). Wm PENN, sr (1) fact 20251112GHLn- 20251112GHLn- 20251112GHLn- LDS not a tanscription, ie. LDS notes: William Penn about 1546 – before 1590 • L7GQ-4JJ Notes PLEASE READ - William Penn Summary Little is known about the William Penn who married Margaret Rastell. His father’s 1590 will confirms William’s wife was named Margaret. A 1665/66 letter written to Admiral Sir William Penn confirms Margaret was the daughter of John Rastell. No documentation of the marriage of Margaret Rastell and William Penn has been found. William died young. His father’s 1590 will states that William was deceased but Margaret was still living, with six children, George, Giles, William, Marie, Sara, and Susanna. There is little information about most of children except for their second son, Giles, whose life is well documented. He was the father of Admiral Sir William Penn who was in turn the father of William Penn, the founder of the State of Pennsylvania. A list of lay subsidies for Wiltshire in 1587 has a reference to William Penn of Malmesbury, a law clerk, who could have been the husband of Margaret. Nothing more is known about the life of William Penn as there is simply no documented information. Less Last Changed: April 2, 2025 B Bryan54 Descendants of William Penn A letter purported to have been written on 27 January 1665/66 by John Georges MP to Admiral Sir William Penn (see attached source) names one of John Rastell's wives as Ann Georges, sister of Christopher Georges, and states that John's daughter married William Penn. The letter does not name the daughter, but William Penn's father left a 1590 will that names his son's wife as Margaret. No documentation of the marriage of Margaret Rastell and William Penn has been found. The PENN family had farmed in Minety, a north Wiltshire village between Malmesbury and Swindon, for a number of generations. When William PENN’s father died in 1591/92 he was of sufficient standing locally to be buried before the altar of Minety church. Margaret’s husband William died young, sometime before 1 May 1590. His father wrote his will on that day and it stated that his son was already deceased. William and Margaret had six children; little is known about most of them except for their second son, Giles, whose life is well documented. The oldest brother, George, probably took over the family estates in Minety, and it is possible that Margaret (RASTELL) spent her final years with him there, but he left Wiltshire, perhaps after his mother’s death, and emigrated to Massachusetts, where he died in 1632. William and Margaret’s second son, Giles PENN, married Joan GILBERT on 5 November 1600 at St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. He and his younger brother William became merchants in Bristol, Giles becoming a Burgess [Freeman] of the City. It is thought that the brothers became bankrupt which resulted in Giles joining the Royal Navy. In due course he became a Captain and on 30 December 1627 was appointed the first English Resident Consul to Barbary [the north African area which is now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya]. Barbary had become an important trading area for England; it was a market for English cloth and a provider of gold and sugar, as well as a supplier of provisions to the English outpost in Gibraltar. His letter of appointment from Charles I included a statement that he was to hold the post ‘with such allowances as consults in other parts of Turkey have from the merchants, or otherwise as Penn and the merchants shall agree’. These ‘allowances’ resulted in significant financial rewards for Giles and enabled him to create valuable personal contacts. He applied for a commission as Vice-Admiral to lead an expedition against Moroccan pirates who were attacking English ships, but the outbreak of the English Civil War prevented this. As Vice-Admiral he would have had the largest share of bounty. Giles died around 1656, probably in North Africa. His wife Joan was buried in St Mary Redcliffe, the church where she had married. Giles and Joan PENN had at least four children, the youngest of which was: Admiral Sir William PENN William PENN junior (Margaret RASTELL’s grandson) was born in Bristol in 1621 and baptised at St Thomas church there on 23rd April. He went to sea and served initially under his father. By 1642 he had been promoted to Captain. On 6 January 1643/44, at St Martin-within-Ludgate, London, he married Margaret van de SCHUREN, née JASPER, the widow of a wealthy Dutch merchant who had left her an estate in Ireland, to which William became entitled. William was rapidly promoted. In the year of his marriage, aged just 23, he was appointed Rear-Admiral of Ireland, and Vice-Admiral two years later. In 1651 William was sent with a Parliamentarian naval fleet to locate Prince Rupert, who had secretly fled England. He failed to find the Prince but during the voyage captured 36 ships which he took as prizes. At the age of 31 he became Vice-Admiral of England (1652) and the following year Admiral of the Blue, the third most senior of the three English Admirals. A year later, in December 1653 the Admiralty promoted him to ‘General-at-Sea’, the highest rank in the Parliamentary navy (one of four such posts) and at the same time he became a Commissioner for the Admiralty and Navy. In August 1654 he was sent by Oliver CROMWELL to seize Spanish territory in the West Indies and to secure a base for English expansion there. He fell out with the General commanding the land forces and as a result the expedition failed. Taken ill, PENN returned to England. Angered by his failure and by his return without permission, CROMWELL imprisoned him in the Tower of London. PENN apologized, was released after about four months and retired to his estates in Ireland. At the end of the Protectorate in 1659 William was persuaded to come out of retirement and he supervised the fleet that brought King Charles II back to England in 1660. He was knighted on 9 June 1660 and became a chief advisor on the restructuring of the navy. One of his junior colleagues at the Admiralty, and his next-door neighbour in London, was Samuel PEPYS, who made many mentions of him in his diaries. Despite his obvious ability as a sailor, the Admiral (and his wife) was not held in high regard by PEPYS. For example, he quoted a Mrs. TURNER who knew the PENNs in the early days after their marriage: ‘She says that he was a pitiful [fellow] when she first knew them; his lady was one of the sourest, dirty women, that ever she saw; that they took two chambers, one over the other, for themselves and child in Tower Hill; that for many years together they eat more meals at her house than at their own that she brought my lady who was then a dirty slattern with her stockings hanging about her heels so that afterwards the people of the whole Hill did say that Mrs Turner made Mrs Pen a gentlewoman.’ In another entry (on 31 December 1663) he referred to the Admiral as a ‘mean fellow’ and a ‘false knave’. And, on 5 April 1666 PEPYS wrote, ‘To the office, where the falsenesse and impertinencies of Sir W. Pen would make a man mad to think of’. PEPYS also had problems with the stench that emanated from the PENN’s house next-door because of Sir William’s disregard for where he emptied his ‘shitten pot’. William was elected MP for Weymouth in 1660 but returned to active naval service in 1664. In 1667 he was forced to resign his commission after being brought before parliament charged with seizing prizes illegally. He died on 16 September 1670 at his country house in Wanstead, Essex, aged 49 years and 4 months. His wife accompanied his funeral cortege to Bristol where he was buried in St Mary Redcliffe. His memorial, surmounted by his armour, and two pennants (now reproduction pennants) are still prominent in the church. William PENN, founder of Pennsylvania One of Sir William PENN’s three children was William PENN, the founder of the State of Pennsylvania. William (Margaret RASTELL’s great-grandson) was born on 14 October 1644 in London. After school in Essex he went to Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1660, but was expelled for criticising the Church of England. His father then sent him to France to study theology and afterwards to Ireland to manage the family estates. There he joined the Quakers and wrote several books criticising mainstream Christianity. He was imprisoned in the Tower for blasphemy and after his release in 1669 continued to proclaim the Quaker faith and was arrested several further times. William sought a solution to the relentless persecution of Quakers and approached King Charles II with the proposal to create a colony in America where they could practice their religion without persecution and prosecution. The King responded by granting him a very generous 45,000 square miles of land near the American East coast, making William the largest non-royal landowner. A charter for the new colony of Pennsylvania was granted in 1682 and William travelled there the same year. As envisaged, it became a haven for Quakers and other groups seeking religious tolerance but was beset by financial problems, disputes and political conflict. William paid great attention to writing the colony’s puritan constitution (he had briefly studied law) but was sloppy when it came to administration, paying little attention to detail and signing papers without reading them so that others found it easy to take advantage of him. William only stayed for two years, leaving the colony to be governed by deputies. He returned briefly from 1699 to 1701 but otherwise spent the rest of his life in England. William suffered a stroke in 1712, after which his second wife, Hannah, played a major part in administering the colony from England. William died on 30 July 1718 at Ruscombe in Berkshire and was buried in a nearby Quaker burial ground. He had 16 children by his two wives. Less Last Changed: January 17, 2025 B Bryan54 PENN, Wm LDS 20251112GHLn- LDS not a tanscription, ie. LDS notes: William Penn about 1546 – before 1590 • L7GQ-4JJ Notes PLEASE READ - William Penn Summary Little is known about the William Penn who married Margaret Rastell. His father’s 1590 will confirms William’s wife was named Margaret. A 1665/66 letter written to Admiral Sir William Penn confirms…

  
  

TEST MARKER

TNG ID: I24972

FSID: PSMM-CFP