Life
John Penn was born in London, England, the son of Thomas Penn and his wife Juliana (the daughter of Thomas Fermor, first earl of Pomfret), elder brother to Granville Penn, and a grandson of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania. He studied at Eton College. On the death of his father in 1775, John Penn succeeded to his father's interests, and inherited three-quarters of the proprietorship of Pennsylvania. He and his cousin, also named John Penn ("John Penn the Governor"), later lost the proprietorship as a result of the American Revolution.
In 1776 he entered Clare College, Cambridge as a fellow commoner. He made an extended visit to Pennsylvania after the Revolution, staying from 1783 to 1788. During this time, he rented a Philadelphia city house, and designed and built a country house, The Solitude, which survives; it is now part of the grounds of the Philadelphia Zoo.
He returned to England in 1789 with his three-fourths' share of the ₤130,000 compensation for the loss of the family's unsold property of the proprietorship in Pennsylvania, a total of 24,000,000 acres (97,000 km2), which he shared with his cousin John Penn, the former colonial governor of the province. He rebuilt the Penn mansion in the family estate of Stoke Park. He and his cousin John Penn also appealed to Parliament for compensation, from which they received a total of ₤4,000 annually, in perpetuity.
In 1798 Penn was appointed High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Helston from 1802 to 1805. In 1805 he was appointed as governor of the Isle of Portland, where he built Pennsylvania Castle and later the sea bathing stone bath known as John Penn's Bath, close to the gardens of the castle.
In 1818, still a bachelor at age 58, Penn founded the "Matrimonial Society", soon renamed the "Outinian Society." whose purpose was to encourage young men and women to marry.
He died, unmarried, at Stoke Park in Stoke Poges on 21 June 1834. He was succeeded by his brother Granville Penn.
Read more about this topic: John Penn (writer)
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