John of Wales!’ A further appeal to the English government to reform the church on the lines Penry had suggested followed in ‘A humble motion with submission unto the Right Honourable L. L. of his majesties Privie Counsell. Wherein is laid open to be considered how necessarie it were for the good of this Lande, and the Queenes Majesties safety, that Ecclesiasticall discipline were reformed after the worde of God, and how easily there might be provision for a learned ministery’ (Edinburgh?), 4to, 1590.
In September 1592, when the controversy was subsiding, Penry left Edinburgh, with the intention, according to his own account, of renewing his evangelising efforts in Wales, his own ‘poor country.’ But he went no nearer Wales than London. There he joined a congregation of separatists meeting near Stepney. He declined all offers of office among them in conformity with his theory that Christian churches should have no definitely appointed ministers. At first he was not molested. But next year Anthony Anderson, vicar of Stepney, recognised him, and on 22 March 1592–3 he was arrested at Ratcliff at the vicar's bidding. On the 24th he was committed to the Poultrey Compter. He was examined more than once, and clergymen were admitted to the prison with a view to arguing him into conformity. He restated his objections to episcopacy, and to the discipline of the established church, asserted that his views were sanctioned by Wyclif, Latimer, and Luther, and asked permission to take part in a disputation with his examiners in the presence of the queen and council. A full report of the examination to which Mr. Fanshaw and Mr. Justice Young subjected him on 10 April was published in the Low Countries, and circulated by his friends in England, together with reports of similar examinations of earlier date of Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, who were now Penry's fellow-prisoners. On 16 May Penry drew up a paper declaring that he was ‘not in danger of the law for the books published in his name, viz. upon the Statute 23 Eliz., made against seditious words’ ({{sc|Strype}, Whitgift, p. 412; Waddington, Penry, p. 181).
Although the evidence in the possession of the authorities naturally suggested that he would be charged with complicity in the authorship of the Mar-Prelate tracts, no accusation was drawn up against him on that score. On 21 May 1593 he was put on his trial before the court of queen's bench, on a charge of having, while at Edinburgh, feloniously devised and written certain words with intent to excite rebellion and insurrection in England. There were two separate indictments (Coke, Booke of Entries, 1614, pp. 353–4). In the first were quoted sentences alleged to be by Penry, in which the queen was described as having turned against Christ, and as preventing her subjects from serving God according to his word. The second indictment collected a number of expressions attributed to Penry, in which the ministers of state and of religion were denounced as conspirators against God—a troop of bloody soul-murderers, and sacrilegious church-robbers, while the council was credited with delighting in persecuting God's true saints and ministers. The quotations were not taken from Penry's published works, but apparently from some manuscript notes found in his house at the time of his arrest. Despite the insufficiency of the evidence as set forth in these indictments, Penry was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. From the queen's bench prison he sent next day letters to his wife and children, bidding them be steadfast in the faith, and a protest to Burghley against the verdict. In the latter he apparently admitted the papers set out in the indictments to be notes of his composition, but they were ‘confused, unfinished, and unpublished.’ They contained remarks in opposition to his own views; he had intended to revise them, but had laid them aside for fourteen or fifteen months. He should die the queen's faithful servant; he was no enemy to public order in church or state, he neither sought vainglory nor contention, and had not striven to found any school of religious opinion. If his death could procure quietness for the church of God, and for his prince and kingdom, he was satisfied to die; but he desired the queen to be informed at once of his loyalty (Strype, Whitgift, p. 413, App. p. 304; Brook, Puritans, ii. 59–63; Waddington, Penry, pp. 186–200). Just a week later, on 29 May, he was suddenly ordered, while at dinner, to prepare for execution, and at five o'clock in the afternoon he was hanged at St. Thomas-a-Watering, Surrey. A rhyme expressing the satisfaction of the orthodox at his death was current at the time in the north of England. It ran:
The Welchman is hanged
Who at our Kirke flanged,
And at her state banged;
And brened are his buks:
And tho' he be hanged,
Yet he is not wranged:
The deu'l has him fanged
In his kruked kluks.
(Weever, Funeral Monument, 1631, p. 56). According to Arthur Hildersam [q. v.], whose
