the fact that he received an advance of 100l. for his service (Penn, ii. 221); but it is not known what the service was. On 23 May, when the king came on board the Naseby and changed her name to Royal Charles, he knighted Penn, who was afterwards appointed a commissioner of the navy. In this capacity he was closely associated with Pepys, whose ‘Diary’ overflows with terms of vituperation. According to this, Penn was ‘a rogue,’ ‘a counterfeit rogue,’ ‘a cunning rogue,’ ‘a very cowardly rogue,’ ‘a mean rogue,’ ‘a hypocritical rogue,’ ‘a coward,’ ‘a coxcomb,’ ‘a very villain,’ ‘the falsest rascal,’ ‘as false a fellow as ever was born,’ all which, when read by the light of other entries, would seem to mean that Penn, as Pepys's official superior, had sometimes to give him orders, sometimes, perhaps, to find fault with him; sometimes, it may be, to interfere inconveniently with some little scheme for Pepys's pecuniary advantage (cf. Pepys, 17 March 1666). We must believe that there was no affection between the two; but Pepys kept his expressions of disgust for the ‘Diary,’ and was always ready to dine with Penn or to enter into a speculation in partnership with him (ib. 26, 29 Sept. 1666).
On 10 March 1665 Penn obtained a grant from the king confirming him in the possession of his Irish estates, and on the 24th he accompanied the Duke of York to the fleet, and served with him during the campaign, on board the Royal Charles, with the title of Great Captain Commander, which afterwards became first captain, and, still later, captain of the fleet. There is, however, this difference, that no first captain or captain of the fleet has ever been an officer of the high rank that Penn had held under the Commonwealth. On the other hand, no other commander-in-chief has had the high rank of the Duke of York, at once lord high admiral and next in succession to the crown; and as James was without any knowledge or experience of the sea, it may well have been judged fitting to assign him the most experienced officer of rank as his chief of the staff. In this way there can be little doubt that Penn's share in the conduct of the fleet was exceptionally great, and that the code of instructions then issued, and long known as ‘The Duke of York's Sailing and Fighting Instructions,’ were virtually, if not absolutely, drawn up by him.
It was in this capacity that Penn was present in the battle off Lowestoft on 3 June. He is said to have been suffering at the time from a severe attack of gout, and to have gone to bed in the evening quite exhausted with the labour and excitement of the day. He was thus ignorant, till afterwards, of the orders to bring to, which were given or brought to Harman by Brouncker, although necessarily he did not escape the lash of public opinion. Officially he was held guiltless; but when the Duke of York was relieved from the command, Penn came on shore with him, and was not again employed afloat, though he continued at the navy office till his death on 16 Sept. 1670. His remains were taken to Bristol and buried there in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, ‘where his flags and trophies are still carefully preserved, and where his monument records briefly and chronologically the dates of his several commissions and appointments, both under the parliament and under the king.’ So wrote Granville Penn sixty years ago. The flags are still there, but defaced by time and damp; one of them seems to be charged with Penn's arms (Penn, ii. 567–8).
Penn married, about 1639, Margaret, daughter of John or Hans Jasper of Rotterdam—an ‘old Dutchwoman,’ Pepys calls her—and by her had two sons, the elder of whom, William [q. v.], the founder of Pennsylvania, is separately noticed; and a daughter Margaret, who is frequently mentioned by Pepys. It was reported that on her marriage to Anthony Lowther, her father gave her a portion of 15,000l. Pepys says that he gave her only 4,000l. The marriage was very quiet—‘no friends but two or three relations of his and hers; borrowed many things of my kitchen for dressing their dinner … no music in the morning to call up our new-married people, which is very mean, methinks’ (Pepys, 15, 16 Feb. 1667). Penn's meanness is the subject of frequent remark in the ‘Diary.’ But compared with the opportunities he had had both under the Commonwealth and under the corrupt administration of Charles II, Penn was a poor man, and may be supposed to have exercised a rigid, perhaps narrow, economy, anxious to increase his estate in view of a promised peerage, the hope of which was frustrated by his son's becoming a quaker. Notwithstanding his economy, Penn is described by Pepys as a jovial companion, fond of his glass and telling a good story or singing a song, quite unrestrained by any puritanical scruples. According to one of his old shipmates, he was a mild-spoken man, fair-haired, of a comely round visage (Penn, ii. 616). His portrait by Lely is in the Painted Hall at Greenwich.
[The principal authority for the Life of Penn is Granville Penn's Memorials of the professional Life and Times of Sir William Penn—a valuable but crude compilation of materials rather than a Life. Besides this, Hepworth
