George PENN

1601 - 1664  (63 years)

• Name	George PENN
  Birth	1601
  Gender	Male
  Death	Aug 1664
  Notes	(1) Hogg, Oliver Frederick Gillilan, Further Light on the Ancestry of William Penn, London, England: Society of Genealogists, 1992, pp. 31-32: GEORGE PENN, the elder son of Giles Penn, had an eventful though tragic career. He learned the elements of his profession under his father's tuition and spent his youth between Cadiz, Antwerp and Rotterdam. In Antwerp, he fell in love with a Spanish girl, a member of the Roman church. After marriage, George Penn and his wife settled in San Lucar, the port of Seville. Having no children of his own he invited his wife's sisters from Antwerp to share his home. Granville Perm in his Memorials says that George Penn became an opulent merchant in Spain and resided many years in Seville. In 1643, however, he was apprehended by officers of the Inquisition at his house in San Lucar. They first executed the ceremony of excommunication "body and soul", then broke open his rooms and his warehouses, seized his property and confiscated all debts owing to him. He was then taken to Seville and thrown into a dark dungeon eight feet in diameter and condemned to solitary confinement. He was brought every Monday a week's allowance of bread and water. Once a month he was tied to the dungeon door and given fifty lashes with a knotted whipcord. This harsh treatment lasted three years without any charge being preferred against him. Finally, he was accused before seven inquisitors and put on the rack for four hours until the torture being beyond his endurance he recanted and confessed to all the false accusations brought against him. These were that he was "a most damnable heretic by birth, breeding and perseverance, that he had married a woman of the Catholic faith, a Spanish subject born in Antwerp, that he had endeavoured to pervert her and her sisters and transport them to England, a land which of all others in the world overfloweth with all sorts of damnable heresies and disobedience to the see of Rome". Ultimately, after the unfortunate man had abjured the Protestant faith, a public procession was formed in Seville and in a church his offences, confession and sentence were proclaimed in the presence of a vast congregation. His property, estimated at ??10,000 was confiscated, his wife was divorced from him and given in marriage to a Spaniard "for the better safeguard and the securing of her soul from her former husband's heretical suggestions", and he was ordered to leave Spain within three months on pain of death. At the same time he was informed that if he were arrested again and found to have renounced the Roman faith he would be burned at the stake. George Penn, a broken man, thus returned to his native country without wife or fortune. History is silent as to where he lived during the remaining eighteen years of his life or what he did after his expulsion from Spain. He applied for help to Cromwell and subsequently to Charles II who considered his case with patience and sympathy. Though not to be found in State papers, it is said that in 1664 the king out of compassion and justice appointed him an envoy at the Spanish court in order to, and with the command that he should, demand satisfaction from his Most Catholic Majesty for his suffering, loss and damage. However, were this post created his sudden death in the summer of 1664 would have precluded him from assuming it. Death was probably a merciful release.
  Person ID	I29152	Frost, Gilchrist and Related Families
  Last Modified	17 Apr 2024

  
  

  Father	Capt. Giles PENN,   b. Abt 1573   d. Bef 1656 (Age ~ 82 years)
  Mother	Joan GILBEART
  Marriage	5 Nov 1600	St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England
  Family ID	F8232	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	--- (PENN)
  Divorce	1646
  Family ID	F12679	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	17 Apr 2024