1761 to Peter Gaskell of Gloucester, through whom the Irish estate passed in 1824 to Thomas Penn Gaskell of Philadelphia; and by his second wife a son, Springett, who died in 1762.
Penn's second wife, married on 5 March 1695–6, was Hannah, daughter of Thomas Callowhill, merchant, of Bristol, who survived him, died on 20 Dec. 1726, and was buried at Jordans. By her he had issue, with two daughters, Hannah (died in infancy) and Margaret (who married Thomas Freame of Philadelphia, was the mother of Philadelphia Hannah, viscountess Cremorne, and was buried at Jordans on 12 Feb. 1750–1), four sons, to whom he devised Pennsylvania and the territories in co-proprietorship, viz. (1) John (d. without issue on 25 Oct. 1746, and was buried at Jordans 5 Nov.); (2) Thomas (1702–1775) [q. v.]; (3) Richard (d. 1771), who married Hannah, daughter of Richard Lardner, M.D., and had, with other issue, John Penn (1729–1795) [q. v.], governor of Pennsylvania at the outbreak of the war of independence, and Richard Penn (1736–1811) [q. v.]; and (4) Dennis, who died in 1723, and was buried at Jordans 8 Jan. On the eve of the conversion of the province into the state of Pennsylvania, the proprietary rights of Penn's descendants were commuted for an annuity.
Penn was somewhat above the middle height, well built and agile, with a fine forehead, a short protuberant nose, a heavy chin, large lustrous eyes, and luxuriant hair. In ‘Notes and Queries’ (4th ser. ii. 382) mention is made of a miniature likeness of him done at Paris. A half-length portrait in armour by an unknown hand painted in Ireland in 1666, and finely engraved by Schoff, is at Pennsylvania Castle, Isle of Portland, the seat of J. Merrick Head, esq.; a copy is in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; another belongs to William Dugald Stuart, esq., of Tempsford Hall, Bedfordshire. A half-length at Blackwell Grange, Durham, recently copied for the National Museum, Philadelphia, is really the portrait of the admiral. An alto-relievo of his profile, cut in ivory from memory some years after Penn's death by Sylvanus Bevan, a quaker apothecary, and pronounced by Penn's friend Lord Cobham an excellent likeness, was the property of Alfred Waterhouse, esq., R.A., of Yattendon Court, Berkshire. A marble medallion recently acquired by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, appears to have been copied from the Bevan relief in the 18th century. A print of the same relief done by John Hall in 1773 from a sketch by Du Simitière is in the British Museum. A statue in lead, cast for Lord Cobham (the features copied from the Bevan relief), stands in front of the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia. A colossal bronze statue has also been placed on the summit of the tower of the new city hall, Philadelphia, at a height of 547 feet. Penn figures among the quaker worthies in Egbert Van Heemskerck's engraving of the Bull and Mouth meeting. The portrait in West's composition of the scene with the Indians under the Shakamaxon elm has no pretensions to accuracy. That in Inman's picture of Penn's landing at Chester appears to be copied from it. An engraving of doubtful authenticity is mentioned in Maria Webb's ‘Penns and Peningtons’ (see the well informed article on the ‘Portraiture of William Penn,’ Scribner's Monthly, xii. 1).
Penn's manners were courtly, and so good a judge as Swift (Works, ed. 1824, xii. 219) testifies that he ‘spoke very agreeably and with much spirit.’ Though studiously plain, his dress appears to have been well cut and neat. He was an excellent judge of horse-flesh, and introduced three brood mares and the celebrated stallion Tamerlane into America. He kept a good table, and furnished his house in a style of substantial and not inelegant comfort. As a stout champion of the right of independent thought and speech, as the apostle of true religion, of justice, gentleness, sobriety, simplicity, and ‘sweet reasonableness’ in an age of corrupt splendour, morose pietism, and general intolerance, Penn would be secure of a place among the immortals, even though no flourishing state of the American Union revered him as its founder. With curious infelicity Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois, 1. iv. c. iv.) calls him ‘un véritable Lycurgue.’ The ‘Great Law’ has for its most conspicuous merit its very unspartan leniency, while the fate of Penn's constitution only points the moral of the futility of such theoretic devices; nor did the settlement owe much to his administrative guidance. Indeed, he displayed hardly more competence to deal with Pennsylvanian than with English politics. His piety was profound; and though he had little or no interest in humane learning for its own sake, his knowledge of the Christian and prechristian mystics was considerable, and enabled him to give to the doctrine of the ‘light within’ a certain philosophical breadth (see his Christian Quaker, London, 1674, fol., in reply to Thomas Hickes). His style is clear and nervous, and his theological polemics, though for the most part occupied with questions of ephemeral importance, evince no small controversial power. He was a fellow of the
