John Penn was the grandson of William Penn (the founder of Pennsylvania, USA). His father, Thomas, had bought Stoke Park, Stoke Poges. At the age of fifteen he owned half of Pennsylvania and the governership of the province. With great wealth, he had Humphry Repton landscape Stoke Park; monuments erected and the new palladium Mansion house built in Stoke Park. He had the cloisters built at St Giles’ church. John spent most of his life in Stoke Poges. He had built Pennsylvania Castle beside the seaside on the Isle of Portland where he was Govenor of the Isle, close to George III’s holiday resort of Weymouth. He devoted himself to belles lettres and projects of social utility such as the Outinian Society (1817), which he founded to promote domestic happiness among married people. He died unmarried in 1834.
John Penn by Robert Dighton, 1804 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. © National Portrait Gallery, London
Motto: Dum clavum teneam – while holding to the course
(A replica of one sculpted by John Deare)
Heraldry: All black back ground. Argent on a fess sable three roundels argent (Penn). Crest: A demi-lion rampant argent collared sable, the collar charged with three roundels argent. Above the crest on a scroll, Mercy and justice. Mantling: Gules and argent