Paul Pennington (1627 - 1719)

Born 21 Sep 1627 in Sunbrick, Aldingham, Lancashire, England

Husband of Anne Simpson — married 27 Oct 1655 in Aldingham, Lancashire, England

Descendants

Died 28 Mar 1719 at age 91 in Sunbrick, Aldingham, Lancashire, England

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Biography

Paul Pennington was born 21 September, 1627 in the village of Sunbrick near Swarthmoor Hall in what is now Aldingham Parish of Lancashire, England. He and his wife Ann were early converts to the then-new religion of Quakerism; along with Margaret Fell, the wife of JudgeThomas Fell and the Lady of nearby Swarthmoor Hall, Paul and Ann may have been converted by the charismatic founder of Quakerism, George Fox himself. Fell famously described her own conversion experience in these words:

And so he went on, and said, "That Christ was the Light of the world, and lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and that by this light they might be gathered to God," &c. I stood up in my pew, and wondered at his doctrine, for I had never heard such before. And then he went on, and opened the scriptures, and said, "The scriptures were the prophets' words, and Christ's and the apostles' words, and what, as they spoke, they enjoyed and possessed, and had it from the Lord": and said, "Then what had any to do with the scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth? You will say, 'Christ saith this, and the apostles say this;' but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of the Light, and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?" &c. This opened me so, that it cut me to the heart; and then I saw clearly we were all wrong. So I sat down in my pew again, and cried bitterly: and I cried in my spirit to the Lord, "We are all thieves; we are all thieves; we have taken the scriptures in words, and know nothing of them in ourselves.^[1]

Fell later achieved such prominence in the Quaker movement that she came to be known as the co-founder and "mother of Quakerism." Following the death of her first husband, Judge Fell, she later married George Fox, and thus Paul and Ann would have worshipped alongside the founders of the faith in their local meeting.

In the early years of the movement, the Quakers were harshly persecuted; Fell herself was jailed for several years without trial, and Margaret's daughter, Sarah, lists Paul Pennington as among 43 Quakers who were seized in 1660 from their homes, the market or their places of employment by a party of horsemen "without warrant, mittimus, or examination before a magistrate and committed to Lancaster Castle" ^[2]. Elsewhere it is reported that in 1683 they confiscated from Paul Pennington, a shoemaker, for a 6s fine, 5 pairs of shoes and a piece of leather^[3]. In addition to their marriage, Quaker records for Swarthmore Monthly Meeting record the births of their children Elizabeth in 1656 and William in 1657, and the subsequent marriage in 1688 of their son William to Margret Hall, daughter of Daniel and Elizabeth (Addison) Hall ^[4] Paul Pennington passed into the light, as Quakers might say, on the 28th of March, 1719 at 91 years of age, and was buried the next day in an unmarked grave not far from Margaret Fell's resting place in the historic Sunbrick Quaker Burying ground.

Name

Name: PAUL /PENNINGTON/

Name: Paul /Pennington/^[5]

Found multiple versions of NAME. Using PAUL /PENNINGTON/.

Birth

Birth:

Date: 1633

Place: Aldingham, Lancashire, England^[6]

Death

Death:

Date: 1718

Place: Lancashire, England^[7]

Sources

1. ↑ "The testimony of Margaret Fox concerning her late husband," from The Journal of George Fox, 1694
2. ↑ The Household Account Book of Sarah Fell of Swarthmoor Hall, 1660-1668
3. ↑ Besse, Joseph. A Collection of the Sufferings of the People Called Quakers: For the Testimony of a Good Conscience from the Time of Their Being First Distinguished by that Name in the Year 1650 to the Time of the Act Commonly Called the Act of Toleration Granted to Protestant Dissenters in the First Year of the Reign of King William the Third and Queen Mary in the Year 1689, Volume 2: L. Hinde, 1753
4. ↑ England & Wales, Quaker Birth, Marriage, and Death Registers, Swarthmoor Monthly Meeting, 1646
5. ↑ Source: #S128 Page: Database online. Data: Text: Record for Elizabeth Pennington
6. ↑ Source: #S128 Page: Database online. Data: Text: Record for Elizabeth Pennington
7. ↑ Source: #S128 Page: Database online. Data: Text: Record for Elizabeth Pennington

• Source: S128 Title: Ancestry Family Trees Publication: Name: Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Original data: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members.; Repository: #R3
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• Quaker meeting. Death[1]