Margaret Van der Schure (Jasper) Penn: Mother of William Penn
The information on Margaret Penn is taken from the following two sources McNeil (14) and McNeil (15) .
Not much is known about the background of Willam Penn’s mother, Margaret van der Schure. She apparently came from a wealthy family based on the estates in Ireland that Oliver Cromwell restored to her after the “Irish Rebellion” in 1654. But when married it is reported they were only able to afford 2 rooms. Per the description below, she did not quite come across as a lady or someone with means. Captain Penn’s father was also a merchant so we’re not sure if this report of their poverty is accurate.
Fantel reports she was a widow of a sea captain and daughter of a Rotterdan merchant (Fantel p6 ) She may have been the daughter of John Baptist Jasper, a merchant in London who was a prolific purchaser of confiscated goods
. There may have been business relations between the two merchant families,
She married the then Captain Penn on June 6, 1643 at St Martin-within-Ludgate. They were married by “Dr Dyke, Lecturer”.
The use of Mr Dyke, a Lecturer (a holder of a stipend for preaching) to officiate the marriage shows the couple’s Puritan dissatisfaction with beneficed clergy.
A Mrs Turner described the couple (as related by Samuel Pepys who was a long time acquaintance of the family):
She [Mrs Turner] says that he was a pityfull [fellow] when she first knew them; his lady was one of the sourest, dirty women, that ever she saw; that they took two chambers, one over the othr, for themselves and child in Tower Hill; that for many years together they eat more meals at her house than at their own that she brought my lady who was then a dirty slattern with her stockings hanging about her heels so that afterwards the people of the whole Hill did say that Mrs Turner made Mrs Pen a gentlewoman.
Pepys described her after a visit in 1664 (she would have been in her early 40s probably):
“At noon dined at home and after dinner my wife and I to Sir W Pen’s to see his lady, the first time, wo was well looked, fat short old Dutch woman, but one that hath been heretofore pretty handsome, and is now very discreet and I beleive hath more wit than her husband. Here we stayed talking a good while and very well please I was with the old woman at first visit.” At a later date Pepys says that Margaret is “mighty homely and looks old.”
Pepys apparently had tried to seduce both mother Margaret and daughter Peggy and may have been somewhat bitter when he wrote this. (Fantel, Hans – 1974 p16 )
Margaret spend a lot of time in Ireland after the restoration of her estates there. After the Admiral retired in 1669 they had a home in Wanstead where he died in 1670. Margaret lived another 12 years and died in 1682.