molestation of the royal army. Sir John Wrottesley commanding the first company of the first battalion of guards was grazed on the neck with a buck shot, and the Hon. Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon, command the second company had his bayonet shot off from his fusee; and afterwards by a rifleman in the wood, was shot through his coat under his left breast, without hurt to his side or arm. 'Tis supposed that several hundreds that lay in the wood, beside three hundred under the command of Colonel Parker, of Virginia (that formed the ambuscade) scarce twenty escaped alive. Colonel Parker was wounded in three places, and died in the wood: Lieutenant-Colonel Ramsey, wounded in two places and taken prisoner. Five officers, by appearance foreigners, were bayonetted in the wood. Seventeen prisoners only were taken, eight of whom were run through with bayonets, and mostly died ere the rear moved off the ground to proceed on their march, which after the cannon moved off, was covered by the thirty-third regiment of infantry: the steady behaviour of which corps on this occasion, will always add to their former reputation. The commanderin-chief exposed himself much, giving in front of the attack most of the orders in person, continually riding in the line of fire from right to left, during the whole time the affair lasted.

"We have accounts from Freehold, that the four wounded officers of the royal army left with the soldiery, the flag and surgeons, are as well as can be expected and are treated in a manner that does much honor to the American gentleman, whose protection and care they are under."

"Character of the late Hon. Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton.

"The Hon. Hen. Monckton, late lieutenant-colonel to the forty-fifth regiment, of the noble family of the Viscounts Galway, of the kingdom of Ireland, and brother to the present Lieutenant-General Monckton, was a man by nature formed for military greatness; his memory retentive, his judgment deep, his comprehension amazingly

quick and clear, his constitutional courage not only uniform and daring perhaps to an extreme, but he possessed that higher species of it, strength, steadiness, and activity of mind, which no difficulties could obstruct, nor danger deter; free from pride, with the greatest independence of spirit, generous to a degree, a constant friend to the deserving soldier, whose concerns he always attended to in preference to his own: inferior officers experienced his friendly generosity; he was by temper rather reserved, yet kind and gentle in his manners, and to crown all, sincerity and candor, with a true sense of honor and justice, seemed the inherent principles of his nature, and the uniform tenor of his conduct. He betook himself early in life to the profession of arms, obtaining an ensigncy in the first regiment of guards, in the year 1760 and afterwards a lieutenancy in the same corps. In the year 1769, he purchased the majority of the forty-fifth regiment of foot from Mr. Gates, since so famous for the part he has taken against his country; and in the year 1771, he purchased the lieutenant-colonelcy, remaining with the regiment (then in Ireland) until the breaking out of this unnatural rebellion, in 1775, when he embarked with it for North America. Upon the army's leaving Halifax, the late commander-in-chief, conscious of his courage and abilities, appointed him to the command of the second battalion of grenadiers. In the action on Long Island, the 27th of Aug. 1776, he received a dangerous wound, being shot through the body as he was leading on his battalion to charge a much superior number of the rebels. On this occasion he gave a remarkable proof of that intrepidity that always distinguished him; upon his falling an officer of his battalion came to his assistance, which he nobly refused in these terms: "Sir, leave me, I am of no consequence at present, go on with the grenadiers." At Brandywine he received a slight wound in his knee; he continued in the command of his battalion of grenadiers till the 28th of June, 1778, when upon the rear guard of the army's being engaged with the greatest part of the rebel force, in the march through Jersey he gloriously fell in the

front of that battalion, nobly exerting himself in the cause of his country, and is now universally regretted by every officer and soldier that knew him, or ever had the honor of serving under his command."

1In the year 1888 Mr. Samuel Freyer, of Hightstown, New Jersey, at his own expense, placed on Monckton's grave a marble stone on which is inscribed:

Hic Jacet

Lt. Col. Henry Monckton
who on the plain

of Monmouth June 28, 1778
Sealed with his life his

duty to his King & Country.
Courage is on all hands
considered as an essential
of high character.

This monument was erected
by Samuel Freyer whose

father a subject of
Great Britain sleeps
in an unknown grave.

VOL. XIV.-4

GENEALOGICAL GLEANINGS, CONTRIBUTORY TO A HISTORY OF THE FAMILY OF PENN.

BY J. HENRY LEA, Fairhaven, Mass.

[The following fragments, comprising items gleaned at odd moments during a very busy year passed in special investigations among the English Records, are submitted with some diffidence, as they are, at best, but disjecta membra and can do little more than point out the path which the (let us hope not distant) future historian of the family should tread in his researches. A stray handful only, gathered from a field full of promise to that patient investigator whose time and means may permit an exhaustive examination of the ground.

The name of Penn is a very ancient one in England, dating in fact not only behind the Norman, but even the Saxon Conquest, as the word, a distinctly native British appellation, which signifies a Top, Hill, Crest, or Summit, occurs in this sense in many different and widelyseparated parts of the Kingdom, and no doubt, as the use of surnames became general, gave local rise to several altogether distinct families whose only connection is in the coincidence of their common cognomen. It is not very uncommon to find it used with its translation as an alias (i.e., Hill alias Penn), for an example of which see the Register of South Littleton, Worc. (page 58), as also the Will of William Penn, of Charlestown, Mass., 1688, cited by Savage.1 The name is most frequent, as we might expect would be the case, in Cornwall, Devon, and Wales, where the indigenous population made their last stand against the invaders.

Of these families one of the most ancient was that of Penn Manor,' co. Bucks, which claims to antedate the Conquest and from which, it has been claimed, our Founder's family was derived-a claim which, like so many other traditional ones, will not bear the light of investigation, and which the proofs, hereafter given, utterly refute, as will be shown later. In the Northern part of Bucks, at Stony Stratford, was another family of Penn which may have been, and probably were, 1 Savage's Genealogical Dict., vol. III., fo. 389.

2" By Tre, Ros, Pol, Lan, Caer & Pen,

You may know the most of the Cornish men."

Heraldic Journal, vol. IV., fol. 11.

3 "Penn, as its name signifies, stands on very high ground" (see Lyson's Magna Britanica, vol. I., pt. 3, fo. 618). See for Pedigree of Penn of Penn, Notes and Queries, 5th Series, vol. I., fo. 265, and Lipscomb's Bucks, vol. III., fo. 287.

cadets of the former, but no proof has yet been discovered to connect them.

At Codicote, in Hertfordshire,' a family were long seated which probably descended from John Penn, Citizen and Mercer of London, whose will was proved in 1450; certain it is that his son Ralph was of that co. and died there childless in 1483, but whether the John Penn of Codicote who died in 1557 was descended from one of Ralph's brothers, John or Thomas, is as yet a matter of conjecture only; a search of the Wills in the Commissary Court of London, Essex, and Herts would probably set this point at rest.

In Worcestershire there have been Penns from a very early period (the name occurs there in the reign of Edward III) in the district about Bromsgrove, where we find them in considerable numbers. A most interesting MS. has been preserved written by one John Penn (tmps. Commonwealth), a member of this family, which throws much light on the history of the Penns of Worcestershire. The arms which he there claims are the same as those borne by the Founder differenced by "in cheife a lyon passant gules" and in his time "wass standing thus in the beginning of our late warrs in the said church (i.e., Churchill, near Starbridge) window and there remaineth if it be not ruinated by the late usurpers." One of the daughters of this family, in 1713, married the poet Thomas Shenstone. Another colony, perhaps quite distinct from the former, flourished at Pershore, Littleton, Chipping-Campden, &c., on the borders of Worcester, Warwick, and Gloucester; Francis Penn of Bobbington, Staffordshire, 1613, may have been of this latter family. Salop also furnishes its quota and a pedigree is given of a Penn family of Stockton, in that county, which extends 15 generations previous to the seventeenth century; the Arms being again identical with those of our Founder.

Northampton, Kent, and Sussex also furnish names which are not yet identified with any of the other pedigrees, while the Hampshire family and their London branches are very probably an offshoot of the Wiltshire stock, as may be also the Penns of Fifehead, Somerset.

The Wiltshire family will of course be of the greatest interest to us, as it is certainly that of our illustrious Founder, and it gives the writer much satisfaction to be able to cast a ray of light on what has hitherto been a somewhat obscure page of genealogical history.

It has been generally assumed that the William Penn of Minety, with whom the existing pedigrees commence, was a cadet of the Penns of

1

1 Α

very full pedigree of this family, with copious extracts from the Parish Registers, is given in Clutterbuck's Herts, vol. II., fo. 306, which has been reprinted in Coleman's pamphlet on the Penn Family.

2 Herald & Genealogist, vol. VII., fo. 131.

Harl. MS. N° 1241, fo. 128 op. cit.; Herald & Genealogist, vol. VII., fo. 144.