lieutenant-colonel, 7 Oct. 1848. He was removed from the 69th to the 70th Bengal N.I., 12 Jan. 1849, and was present at the action at Chillianwalla in command of the reserve, and also at the action at Goojerat. He was again mentioned in despatches, and received the thanks of the governor-general, lord Dalhousie. Penny was removed to the 2nd European regiment 31 March 1849, and was appointed aide-de-camp to the queen, and granted the brevet rank of colonel for his services in the Punjab (ib. 5 June 1849). He also received the ‘Punjab’ medal with the ‘Chillianwallah’ and ‘Goojerat’ clasps. In 1850 he was removed from the 2nd European regiment to the 40th Bengal N. I., was appointed second-class brigadier, and posted to the district of Rohilcund 14 July 1851. He was transferred to the command of the Jullunder field force 2 Feb. 1852, and on 28 Aug. 1852 he was appointed to command the Sirhind division, and subsequently he was again transferred to the command of the Lind-Sangor district 22 Nov. 1853, and to the Sialkot command 19 Jan. 1854. In May 1855 he was appointed to the temporary divisional staff, and posted to the Cawnpore division, and 30 June 1857 he was appointed to the divisional staff of the army as major-general, and posted to the Meerut division. When the mutiny was at its height he was appointed to command the Delhi field force, in conjunction with that of the Meerut division, from 30 Sept. 1857. This was after the capture of Delhi, as Sir Archdale Wilson kept command until the city was taken. Penny was among the recipients of the ‘Indian mutiny’ medal. He was killed while in command of the Meerut division on 4 May 1858. He had advanced too far from his supports, in order to reconnoitre a village near Budaon. Of the twenty carabineers of his escort, one half fell at the first discharge from a masked battery. The general's bridle-arm being shattered by the grapeshot, his charger ran away with him close to the walls of Budaon, where he was cut down by a party of armed rebels. He was buried at Meerut.
[India Office Records and Medal Roll; Holmes's Indian Mutiny; Allen's Indian Mail; East India Register.]
PENNY, THOMAS, M.D. (d. 1589), prebendary of St. Paul's, botanist and entomologist, the son of John Penny or Penne of Gressingham, near Lancaster, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated as a sizar in 1550, and graduated as B.A. in 1551–2, proceeding M.A. in 1559. He took holy orders, and in 1560 was appointed to the prebend of Newington in St. Paul's Cathedral, being elected fellow of his college in the same year. Having been appointed in 1565 to preach one of the spital sermons, he was objected to by Archbishop Parker, who believed him to be ill affected to the established church. Soon afterwards he went abroad, visiting Majorca and the south of France, and residing for some time in Switzerland. He assisted Conrad Gesner, and was probably present at his death in December 1565, and assisted Wolf in arranging the plants and other collections left by Gesner. Letters from Penny to Camerarius, dated 1585, show his knowledge of insects to have been extensive, and it is probable that Gesner's drawings of butterflies passed into his hands, and at his death into those of Thomas Moffett [q. v.], whose acquaintance he had made at Cambridge. Moffett's ‘Insectorum Theatrum,’ published in 1634, is stated in its title to have been begun by Edward Wotton, Conrad Gesner, and Thomas Penny. While abroad Penny probably graduated M.D., and in January 1571 he was practising physic in London. At that time he failed to satisfy the College of Physicians of his qualifications; but by 1582 he was a fellow of the college. Meanwhile, in 1577, he had been deprived of his prebend for nonconformity. Penny died in 1589; by his will, dated 4 June 1588, he left a legacy to ‘the poor of Gressingham and Eskrigge, where I was born.’ He married Margaret, daughter of John Lucas of St. John's, near Colchester, master of requests to Edward VI. She died in 1587, and was buried in St. Peter-le-Poer, London.
Cornus suecica, discovered by Penny in the Cheviots, and other rare plants from both the north and the south of England, credited to him in L'Obel's ‘Adversaria’ (1570–1) and in Gerard's ‘Herball,’ show him to have been a diligent botanist. Gerard styles him ‘a second Dioscorides,’ and his friend Clusius, besides other plants, named the plant now known as Hypericum balearicum, Myrtocistus Pennæi in honour of its discoverer. In 1560 he wrote some Latin verses on the restitution of Bucer and Fagius.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 82; Pulteney's Biogr. Sketches of Botany, i. 84–6; Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, December 1890; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 78, and references there given; Will in Somerset House, P.C.C. Leicester 18; L'Obel's Adversaria, pp. 358, 394, 397; Zurich Letters (Parker Soc.), i. 47, 203–4; Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 188; Strype's Life of Parker; Brooks's Puritans, ii. 246, iii. 504; see art. Moffett, Thomas.]
