PENINGTON, Isaac (1583-1661), of Wood Street, London and Chalfont St Peter, Bucks.

The son of a London merchant, Penington began his career by entering the Fishmongers’ Company by patrimony in December 1613, at the age of ‘26’.46GL, MS 5570/2, p. 96; Oxford DNB. From the 1620s until the mid-1630s he held a modest stake in the East India Company and during that period he also became a trader in cloth and other goods through the Levant Company.47Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1622-4, pp. 93, 488, 490-3; 1625-9, p. 299; 1635-9, p. 121; Beaven, Aldermen of London ii. 64; Pearl, London, 170, 176. He was also employed as a financial agent by his second cousin, Sir John Penington, who was later admiral of the fleet and gentleman of the privy chamber, but his effectiveness was reduced by an unwillingness ‘to dance attendance on great men’s secretaries’ to further his cousin’s interests.48CSP Dom. 1621-6, pp. 250, 281, 305. During these years Penington showed an interest in public affairs and in April 1626 told the admiral there was ‘little hope of good unless the King and parliament agree’.49CSP Dom. 1621-6, p. 305; Pearl, London, 148. In 1627 he succeeded to his father’s business and his land holdings in Norfolk and Suffolk, and a year later he was assigned a manor in Buckinghamshire by his cousin.50PROB11/151/518; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 156. Penington’s second marriage extended his commercial interests, involving him in the London brewing industry, and by the mid-1630s he was able to purchase a larger estate at Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire.51SP16/326/18; Coventry Docquets, 697.

Puritan politics, 1636-40

During the 1630s, Penington actively refused to conform to the religious policies of Charles I. His London residence was in the staunchly puritan parish of St Stephen’s Coleman Street, where he was a prominent member of the vestry and supported the appointment of the Independent John Goodwin as vicar. Goodwin later dedicated his first printed sermon to him.52GL, MS 4458/1, p. 147; Guildhall Misc. iii. 109-110, 112. Penington and his wife ‘kept an ordinary in Whitefriars’ which provided lodgings and a meeting place for puritan clergy visiting London.53R. Chestlin, Persecutio Undecima (1648), 55 (E.470.7). He was also involved in attempts to establish a public fund to relieve Protestants in the palatinate of the Rhine initiated by such London ministers as Robert Sibbes and John Davenport.54Pearl, London, 170. In 1636 Penington and other ‘newcomers’ were reported to Archbishop William Laud because they had ‘most violently importuned’ the orthodox vicar at Chalfont St Peter to give Sunday lectures in the parish church. When the vicar refused, it was said that Penington made several ‘most insolent, saucy, scandalous and unreverent speeches’ against Laud, claiming that ‘since this same pragmatical bishop kept his visitation there is a great gap opened for the increasing of popery and spreading of Arminianism’.55SP16/326/18. The following year Penington’s brewery was closed down because of the smoke nuisance it created by burning sea coal. Judging from his later petitions, Penington felt this was merely an excuse seized on by his enemies to damage his interests.56HMC 6th Rep., 173. In July 1637 Penington disapproved on the ‘great Star Chamber business’ against William Prynne* and other critics of the regime, saying that ‘these proceedings cause much dejection amongst many good and loyal subjects, makes many fly, and many more think of providing for their safety in other places’.57CSP Dom. 1637, p. 311. In 1638 Penington was awarded £100 for accepting the office of sheriff of London after several of the lord mayor’s previous nominees had refused.58CLRO, Rep. 52, f. 159. Although there were reports that he lived ‘like a prince’ during his term of office, he later complained that ‘the shrievalty did pinch me’, and his financial difficulties may have dated from his time in office.59CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 59; SP16/485/104. As sheriff, he was soon involved in a dispute with the court of aldermen over the appointment of the keeper of Newgate prison, and the matter was taken before the privy council, which decided against him.60CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 525. In January 1639 Penington was elected as alderman of Bridge Without Ward, and he was one of the 23 aldermen who refused to raise a £30,000 loan for the government.61Beaven, Aldermen of London i. 65; CLRO, Rep. 53, f. 79v; BDBR iii. 21. In the spring of 1640 Penington also refused to submit a list of the wealthiest citizens in his ward, as required by the cash-strapped privy council.62Pearl, London, 97, 99, 100, 193.

Penington was elected as one of the MPs for London in the Short Parliament elections of March 1640.63HMC De L’Isle and Dudley vi. 236; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 522. It was said that his selection as candidate was the result of ‘his known zeal by keeping a fasting sabbath throughout his shrievalty’ and for the assistance he gave to silenced puritan ministers.64Chestlin, Persecutio Undecima, 57. In this Parliament he was appointed to only two committees: that for considering the three subsidies and three fifteenths granted in 1615 (on 21 Apr.) and another on a bill concerning needlemakers and steel wire drawers (on 1 May).65CJ ii. 8a, 17b. Despite this, Penington’s presence in the Commons brought him into closer contact with men who shared his political and religious outlook and he established important links with future leaders of the parliamentary opposition, including John Pym*, and also his Buckinghamshire neighbours John Hampden* and Arthur Goodwin*. In London, Penington supported his colleague (Sir) Thomas Soame* in his defiance of the king over the City loan in May 1640. The two men stood firm over their refusal to supply lists of wealthy citizens, and although Soame was imprisoned, Penington seems to have escaped punishment.66Pearl, London, 184, 193. With feeling running high in the City, Penington, who had amply demonstrated his opposition to the government of both church and state, was re-elected MP for London on 20 October.67C219/43, unfol.

The early years of the Long Parliament, 1640-2

In the early months of the Long Parliament, Penington was particularly prominent on committees concerned with ecclesiastical reform. On 9 November he presented a petition from common hall outlining their grievances about religious innovations.68D’Ewes (N), 16. On the same day he was appointed to committees to hear the petition of one of Archbishop Laud’s most prominent victims, Dr Alexander Leighton, and to consider the best way of enforcing the king’s proclamation for disarming papists.69CJ ii. 24a-b. Two days later, he moved that the problem of popish schoolmasters, physicians and books should be referred to a committee.70CJ ii. 26a. Penington’s religious zeal brought him into conflict with the lord mayor, Sir Edmund Wright, whom Penington threatened ‘to stave ... off from doing justice’ in the case of Robert Chestlin, an Anglican clergyman whose parishioners had refused to pay him tithes as a protest against the imprisonment of his predecessor by Laud.71D. Lloyd, Memoires of the Lives, Actions, Sufferings and Deaths of those… personages that suffered… for the Protestant Religion (1668), 630; Pearl, London, 307. Although Penington received support and encouragement from radicals inside and outside the City, his religious zeal was often considered inappropriate by his fellow MPs. This was apparent on 11 December when, backed by a crowd of Londoners, he presented the City’s root and branch petition for wholescale reform of the church.72Northcote Notebk., 50, 52; Clarendon, Hist. i. 270; Add. 11045, f. 135. Many in the House were anxious to avoid a divisive debate on religion, especially one prompted by ordinary people, and ordered Penington and Soame to seal up the list of names until a more opportune moment.73D’Ewes (N), 138, 140; Pearl, London, 214-5. Penington was added to the committee to prepare charges against the Catholic Sir Francis Windebanke* on 17 December and he was named to the committee for establishing and maintaining a preaching ministry on 19 December.74CJ ii. 53a, 54b. On 4 January 1641 he presented the Commons with an allegation that the archdeacon of Bath had traduced MPs as ‘factious, puritanical fellows’ and urged the king to execute the ringleaders.75D’Ewes (N), 217.

Penington was also gaining a reputation for political radicalism in the early weeks of the Long Parliament. On 11 November 1640 he reported to the Commons ‘that there was cause of suspicion of ill inventions against the City by renewing the fortification of the Tower’; and despite claims by Sir Thomas Rowe that the preparations were only routine, Penington remained unconvinced.76D’Ewes (N), 24n. On 12 November he asserted his influence over the London citizens by offering to raise, on his own account, a citizen army to protect Parliament.77D’Ewes (N), 31. He was soon given another opportunity to prove his influence in the City. By 13 November the Commons were anxious to secure a loan to keep the Scottish army in the north and Penington immediately canvassed the court of aldermen. He met with reluctance at first, but optimistically reported to the Commons that he had no doubts ‘the City will do their utmost to comply with the desire of this House’.78D’Ewes (N), 536. A few days later he explained the City’s grievances to the Commons, but on 16 November announced that with ‘a great readiness and cheerfulness’ they were prepared to lend £25,000 immediately, with a further £25,000 to follow, which he suggested should be guaranteed by individual MPs, with two guarantors to each bond.79D’Ewes (N), 36n. On the same day he was sent to inform the City of the measures taken for the security of loans, and he was appointed to the committee to consider the supply bill on 19 November.80CJ ii. 30a, 31b. Penington was also appointed to the committee on monopolies and on 20 November he delivered a petition against the salt monopoly, claiming that ‘other monopolies began to hang their heads, this only continued bold and impudent’.81CJ ii. 31a; D’Ewes (N), 46. By now he had established himself as one of the principal intermediaries between the Commons and London, and he proclaimed that the City had already underwritten £20,000 of the sum promised and stressed that more money would be available ‘but the rub is what security shall be given which sticks with the City’.82D’Ewes (N), 51, 539, Bodl. Rawl. C.956, f. 65v. After the attempted murder of Sir Thomas Heywood, a Westminster justice of the peace who was preparing a list of recusants, on 23 November Penington again expressed his concern about the safety of MPs and repeated his offer to provide 300 men who were ‘ready to hazard their lives for the safety of this House’.83D’Ewes (N), 55-6. In case the House thought it necessary he had already provided ‘100 citizens about the door with swords to secure us and to distinguish themselves had blue ribbons in their hats’.84D’Ewes (N), 541; Bodl. Rawl. C.956, f. 74v. By 25 November Penington was able to report that the City had raised £28,000, and a few days later he informed the Commons that no security would be required.85Northcote Notebk., 6, 14; D’Ewes (N), 66, 81, 542; Rawl. C.956, f. 93v. Both Penington and his colleague, Soame, received the thanks of the House for their part in the negotiations.86D’Ewes (N), 81.

On 12 December, during the debate on providing money for the army in the north, Penington warned the Commons that they had promised the City a bill to secure their loan within 14 days and ‘to speak of 20 days more they will hardly pay their money without security’.87Northcote Notebk., 55; D’Ewes (N), 142. He continued to stress the necessity of passing this bill and on 14 December claimed if it ‘was once read, the money would be ready’.88Northcote Notebk., 74. The next day, however, he reported that the City was now willing to provide the money without security.89Northcote Notebk., 81. His hopes for the amount of money raised in the City proved somewhat optimistic, however, and on 23 December he reported that only £13,000 had been collected of the £20,000 he had promised.90D’Ewes (N), 183. He nevertheless announced that he was hopeful that a court of aldermen, scheduled to meet the following day, would settle the full amount and would deliver a list of all those who failed to pay their subscriptions.91Northcote Notebk., 103, 111. The day after, Penington, Soame and their colleague Samuel Vassall were appointed treasurers for the City Loan.92D’Ewes (N), 189. This put them in control of the flow of money from the City to Parliament and gave them the opportunity of withholding or hastening it according to political expediency. Like John Pym, Penington believed that the presence of the Scottish army in the north was an important lever against the king. He therefore used his influence in the City to ensure that money was available to pay the army, and at the end of December visited the Scottish commissioners to assure them of the gratitude of himself and his adherents for the redemption of their ‘liberties, estates, religion and lives’.93Baillie, Letters and Journals i. 288.

As the Scottish negotiations continued, Penington suggested that the question of how to raise the money should be referred to the common hall, where he had a considerable following.94Pearl, London, 199. On 20 January 1641 he was able to report that the £60,000 required had been raised.95D’Ewes (N), 266. On 23 January, however, Penington announced that the £60,000 would not be handed over until the City was satisfied about some recent suspicious events which ‘gave a jealousy to the citizens that they were but deluded’, especially the king’s recent reprieve for the Jesuit priest John Goodman, and the continuing employment of Windebanke and the lord keeper (John Finch†) in Europe.96D’Ewes (N), 277; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley vi. 577. Penington’s speech caused some disturbance in the House and there were murmurings that he should be called to the bar. On 3 February the Commons voted to pay £300,000 to the Scots, and, as most of the money would have to be raised in the City, this increased Penington’s political influence considerably.97Pearl, London, 200. He tried to make use of his advantage on 5 February by introducing a bill for the abolition of altar rails, images and other foci of idolatry and superstition, and the establishment of ‘true religion’ instead.98Two Diaries of the Long Parl. ed. Jansson, 82; D’Ewes (N), 327. He also expressed the dissatisfaction of the London radicals with the king’s recent speech and their insistence that Goodman should be executed, not merely banished, lest his reprieve should be used as a precedent to save the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†).99D’Ewes (N), 328, 333. But the Commons refused to be intimidated by Penington and his City friends; and even some of the radicals backed off, with William Strode I* comparing Penington and his supporters to the sons of Zeruiah, notorious for their imprudent zeal.100D’Ewes (N), 334; Verney, Notes, 49-50.

When the Commons turned at last to debate the root and branch petition on 9 February, Penington stoutly defended it, claiming that all those who had signed were ‘men of worth and known integrity’, but even if some of the meaner sort had signed, ‘if they were honest men, there was no reason but their hands should be received.’ He reminded the Commons that the petition had been presented without tumult, and denied suggestions that anyone had been forced to sign, suggesting ‘boldly ... if that course had been taken instead of 15,000 they might have had fifteen times 15,000’. He went on to promise to support attempts to raise a further £15,000 in the City.101D’Ewes (N), 339, 345. Although, when he reported their willingness to oblige, he did not refrain from pointing out that the citizens felt ‘much injured in that it was said that names which had subscribed to avow their petition were a great part of them tapsters and ostlers’.102D’Ewes (N), 351. Penington was appointed to the committee to abolish superstitious and idolatrous practices on 13 February.103CJ ii. 84b.

Despite the heat of the debate on religion, Penington’s attentions at this time were still principally concentrated on negotiations with the City authorities for further loans. As a bargaining counter to procure Strafford’s execution, Penington and his radical supporters in the House planned to hold up the bill of subsidies required by the City before advancing any more money. On 13 February, however, he reported that ‘though the citizens were much discouraged by the not proceeding of the subsidy bill and by some malevolent speeches’ yet they were willing to pay into the chamber of London the £75,000 needed for the army in the north. Despite Penington’s tactics, MPs were so anxious to prevent disorders in the army because of lack of pay that they quickly passed the bill.104D’Ewes (N), 356. Although he informed the Commons on 17 February that most of the money had been collected, in the City he took steps to ensure that it would only be handed over slowly.105D’Ewes (N), 367. The next day the treasurer at war, Sir William Uvedale*, complained that despite Penington’s assurances, payment had stopped after the first £21,000 because of ill feeling in the City at the delays in bringing Strafford to trial.106D’Ewes (N), 371. At the end of the month, Penington’s position as intermediary between Parliament and the City was threatened by Edward Hyde*, who claimed the City was concerned about the cost of maintaining the Scottish army in the north, but was willing to pay a substantial sum to disband them; he also claimed that there was much discontent at a paper printed by the Scottish commissioners confirming the commissioners’ support for the abolition of episcopacy. Penington retorted ‘that those that except at the Scottish paper are not a considerable number’ and he assured the Commons that the City ‘brought in their money apace’. According to Hyde, Penington was ‘a man in the highest confidence with the party and one who insinuated all things to the common council which he was directed should be started there’.107Clarendon, Hist. i. 284. Penington used all his influence in the City in a determined effort to meet Hyde’s challenge, and on 1 March he announced that the City would lend £100,000 on the security of the two new subsidies, and denounced moves by the king’s friend to raise money by other means, which, in a rhetorical flourish, he called ‘colloquintida’ – a polluted source.108CJ ii. 94b; D’Ewes (N), 420-1; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 203; Pearl, London, 203. He suggested that a delegation, consisting of six Members trusted by the City (Pym, Hampden, Denzil Holles, Nathaniel Fiennes I, Sir Walter Erle and Sir Henry Vane II), should be sent to secure the loan and he named those he thought would be well received. This was opposed in the House by Hyde and others, who ‘made merry with the alderman’s colloquintida’.109Clarendon, Hist. i. 285; Pearl, London, 203-4. But it soon became apparent that Penington had no basis for his extravagant claims and on 3 March he was forced to admit that he should not have spoken ‘as if he had been certain that the money would be lent, for he only advised that the said means might be assayed: but he confessed that they had now found a repulse’. Penington lamely assured the House that he, with five or six other MPs, had agreed to lend £2,000 each for the service of Parliament.110D’Ewes (N), 433. This led to a heated debate on his behaviour. George Lord Digby* said ‘it was a presumption in the alderman’ to nominate his own committee of MPs. Edmund Waller* questioned Penington’s influence, remarking that he ‘made the City believe he was a great man here, but he was sure he shows himself no great man in the City’. Some MPs did speak in Penington’s defence, noting that the Commons had not discouraged the other money he had been able to raise in the City. Nevertheless, Sir Thomas Jermyn* proposed that Soame, who also had close City connections, should negotiate any future loans instead.111D’Ewes (N), 433. Penington made another attempt to silence his critics on 5 March, when he reported that the £60,000 previously promised by the City was ready ‘and that for the £12,000 he offered yesterday he assured himself it would now be made £20,000’.112Pearl, London, 204. Of the latter, he had only been able to raise £8,000 by the end of the month.113D’Ewes (N), 513n.

During the spring of 1641, Penington continued his campaign for the reform of religion. He spoke in the debate on the bill against pluralities on 16 March. On 12 April he reported to the House that the lord mayor and aldermen had taken measures ‘for the better sanctification of the sabbath’ and he was sent to the City to give the sheriffs information about the discovery of a house of Catholic priests in London and to encourage measures for their apprehension.114CJ ii. 119a; Procs. LP iii. 509, 511, 516. The clamour in the Commons during April was matched by growing excitement in the City where Penington and John Venn* led the campaign to ensure that no money would be advanced until Strafford had been executed. The campaign culminated in a petition, signed by 20,000 citizens, which Venn presented to the Commons on 24 April.115Pearl, London, 205. Penington, not surprisingly, went on to vote in favour of Strafford’s attainder.116CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 560. On 3 May he took the Protestation.117CJ ii. 133a. On 10 May Penington was among the London MPs sent to the mayor to inform him that the bill of attainder has been passed, and asking that a loan of £120,000 would be paid speedily.118Procs. LP iv. 209. Fears that the king was planning a coup d’état to save Strafford and to overawe the parliamentary opposition were heightened by reports made by Penington and Matthew Cradock* that the Tower had been fortified and that the king was bringing armed men into the City.119Pearl, London, 218. Penington also did his best to stoke up tensions with reports to the House of Catholic conspiracy.120Procs. LP iv. 325, 458. Once the army plot had been uncovered the City was uneasy about lending money to the king until Parliament was secure against dissolution, and the City MPs were quick to turn this to their advantage. Penington stressed the need for a hasty expedient to satisfy Parliament’s supporters in London and, at his instigation, a bill was drafted to prevent the king dissolving Parliament without its consent. Having passed this measure with unprecedented speed, the Commons were soon relieved by Penington’s reports that money was being collected in the City ‘as fast as it can be’.121CJ ii. 148a. Despite Parliament’s efforts to bring in the arrears of the poll money as well as hastening the new subsidy payments, their financial resources still proved to be insufficient. On 31 May Penington took a message to the mayor asking for the payment of the final £40,000 of the previous loan.122CJ ii. 162a. New loans appeared to be the only answer, and on 3 June Penington and the 2nd earl of Warwick succeeded in persuading the City livery companies to advance a further £100,000. But with the exception of the Fishmongers, Penington’s own company, and the Grocers, the City companies remained unenthusiastic, and the money was slow to materialise.123Fletcher, Outbreak, 251, 343. Penington suggested the introduction of a poll tax on 7 June but such a proposal was not popular in the Commons, although a modified version was later accepted.124Procs. LP v. 16. He continued to be involved in financial affairs in the next few weeks. On 17 June Penington was added to a committee for advancing money.125CJ ii. 178a. On 22 June he was appointed one of the commissioners to pay the Scots, and was appointed to the committee to consider allowances to be given to the collector of the poll money on 3 July.126CJ ii. 182b, 219a. It may have been to encourage the City to comply with such measures that on the same day, Penington moved the House for the grand committee to sit ‘to hear the business touching the plantation of Londonderry’, in which various livery companies had a stake.127Procs. LP v. 478.

During the summer of 1641, Penington relinquished his role as intermediary between Parliament and the City. This may have been the result of his sense of disillusion with the lack of progress in political and religious reform since the execution of Strafford. On 4 August he commented sourly that ‘this House was grown into such contempt that even the fiddlers made songs upon us, and others preached against us’.128Procs. LP vi. 195. He was noticeably absent from the drafting of the root and branch bill, perhaps because Pym and his associates thought it wiser to keep the radicals at a distance, in case they proved too much of a liability. But Penington was soon involved in another ecclesiastical controversy. The Commons, alarmed by the king’s intended journey to the Scottish army, sat on Sunday, 8 August, and Penington took the opportunity to propose that ‘this being the Lord’s day, he conceived it fit to make some declaration that might tend to the glory of God’. He then made a report from the committee considering the bill against idolatry and superstition and, in a direct attack on Laudian policy, recommended an order for pulling down the rails and removing communion tables in churches. After a long debate, Penington’s resolution was passed, although with a proviso.129Pearl, London, 220. Thereafter, Penington seems to have restricted himself to London business. As epidemic disease spread in the capital, on 26 August Penington presented a petition from the City requesting a public fast in view of the progress of the plague and fears that the weather threatened a dearth.130Procs. LP vi. 571. On 6 September Penington delivered another petition, this time ‘from some persons in London that were sued for endeavouring to suppress some disorders on the Lord’s Day’, occasioned by attempts to remove altar rails and close alehouses.131Procs. LP vi. 653, 659. Penington’s efforts to establish radical religion continued to attract adverse comment. The Protestants’ Protestation described Penington as a member of a group of leading politicians, including the 1st Viscount Saye, Pym, Hampden, Holles and Hesilrige, who

have subjected our religion to be merely arbitrary, prostituted the honour of England, have beggared the nation to enrich the Scots, have protected the ignorant and licentious sectaries and schismatic to stir up sedition, to bring in atheism and discountenanced all reverent ministers, and have endeavoured to take away the Common Prayer Book.132HMC Hatfield xxiv. 277.

On 9 September 1641 Penington was appointed to the Recess Committee.133CJ ii. 288b. Taking advantage of the committee’s temporary executive authority, he and his associates again attempted to establish a puritan ministry throughout the country based on orders passed by the Commons but rejected by the Lords. But victory was short-lived: the enforcement of the orders led to violence in many parishes and when Parliament reassembled they were quickly shelved. For Penington the establishment of a puritan ministry was more important than parliamentary tactics and on 4 November he tried to re-open the debate proposing that the Commons should consider the validity of its previous orders ‘for the suppressing of innovations and setting up of lectures’. He won no support for his motion and the matter was dropped.134D’Ewes (C), 79. In the days that followed, Penington pressed for the prosecution of a Highgate minister who opposed the Protestation.135D’Ewes (C), 98, 104. He was also named to the committee, appointed on his motion, to investigate the Tuscan ambassador’s complaints about the arrest of priests and Jesuits from his household.136D’Ewes (C), 131. During November, Penington was approached by his cousin, Sir John, for help in some matters under consideration by the Commons. Although willing to assist, he advised caution because ‘the business of the House is so great by reason of the commotion in Ireland and daily discoveries of desperate plots by the enemies of truth’.137CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 168. Relations between the two men appeared to be strained and soon after Sir John, a supporter of the king, asked Penington to return £1,000 he had borrowed. In response, Penington claimed he was still feeling the after-effects of an expensive term as sheriff, quite apart from the costs of bestowing a dowry on his eldest daughter and setting up his sons ‘in the way to teach them to live another day’. All this, he claimed, ‘to be wrought out of a bare revenue will be a hard task; but notwithstanding all I hope I shall do that which shall become an honest man to do’.138CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 173.

Penington was actively involved in establishing good relations with the Scottish commissioners in the winter of 1641-2, probably because he felt that they were more eager to abolish episcopacy than the leaders of the parliamentary opposition. He helped in the preparation for their arrival and was one of those sent to persuade the lord mayor to provide a house for them.139CJ ii. 322b, 328b; D’Ewes (C), 220. On 3 December he proposed that the Lords’ amendments to the bill securing a £100,000 City loan should be accepted.140D’Ewes (C), 229. A few days later the Commons received a report on the kingdom’s finances which claimed that Penington had received nearly £10,000.141CJ ii. 336a. He was absent from the City delegation which went to request the king’s return to London, and his cousin was told that his relative’s actions were ‘rather to please himself than to strive to do any acceptable service for the king if it stand not with the preciser sort of the House of Commons’.142Pearl, London, 129. Eager to demonstrate that the City was behind Parliament, on 11 December Penington informed the Commons that ‘divers able and grave citizens of London’ were waiting to present a petition in support of Pym’s policy in which they asked for the removal of the bishops and Catholic lords from Parliament. He claimed that initially 10,000 people intended to deliver the petition to show their support but that it was felt more fitting that ‘a small number come with it, and that in a peaceable and humble manner’.143D’Ewes (C), 270. Later in the month Penington was also involved in the presentation of the petition of the London apprentices demanding the abolition of episcopacy and protesting against the king’s appointment of Colonel Thomas Lunsford as lieutenant of the Tower.144D’Ewes (C), 337. This led to a series of riots in the streets of London and Westminster, and Lunsford and his men were assaulted.145Pearl, London, 223-4. Penington followed this by bringing several witnesses into the House to give evidence against Lunsford who was accused of attacking the crowds unnecessarily, and on 29 December he was named to the committee to examine officers who had arrested apprentices without authority.146D’Ewes (C), 353, 368; CJ ii. 361a.

Lord Mayor, 1642

After the king’s attempt to seize the Five Members on 4 January 1642, Penington and Venn were sent to the City with Parliament’s resolution that the lord mayor should provide a military guard for the protection of both Houses.147CJ ii. 367a; D’Ewes (C), 379; PJ i. 8. In the City it was said that the two men ‘did much enlarge themselves in discourse thereupon intimating great fears, but kept themselves in such general terms as the orders that their meanings were not easily known’.148CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 237. It was their prompt action which foiled the king’s plan of issuing a counter warrant ordering the lord mayor to refuse the parliamentary guard and to enrol one for the royal service. It was said that the Five Members had taken refuge in a house in Coleman Street – possibly that of Penington himself.149PJ i. 26n; Pearl, London, 224. On 5 January the newly elected common council took their seats and the constitutional changes they enacted were given parliamentary sanction through the unceasing efforts of Penington and Venn.150Pearl, London, 146, 224; CJ ii. 376a. They also presented a series of London petitions to the Commons demanding the passing of bills blocked by the Lords.151Pearl, London, 225. Penington was involved in the reorganization of the London trained bands and one of the regiments was placed under his command.152Pearl, London, 144. As the king prepared to leave London, on 10 January Penington warned the Commons that there were ‘dangerous men’ and ‘cavaliers’ among the garrison of the Tower and that he ‘feared some dangerous fireworks to be in preparing’.153D’Ewes (C), 398; PJ i. 28. Two day later, in an attempt to bring the City further under parliamentary control, the Commons, ‘upon alderman Penington’s motion’ resolved to require the lord mayor to call a common council as often as the City’s new committee of safety should require it, thus trampling on the mayor’s ancient rights.154PJ i. 44.

During the winter of 1641-2, Penington had become increasingly concerned at the situation in Ireland, which had been in state of rebellion since the previous autumn. On 24 December 1641 he was named to a committee to negotiate a loan of £50,000 for Ireland from the Merchant Adventurers.155CJ ii. 357a. On 15 January 1642 Penington and John Goodwyn* were sent to meet with the executors of Sir James Cambell to persuade them to give £1,000 which had been left for the rebuilding of St. Paul’s to the fund for suppressing the Irish rebels.156CJ ii. 381b, 384a; PJ i. 84, 96. On 22 January he informed the House that the lord mayor, having heard ‘the ill tidings that came yesterday out of Ireland’ concerning the renewed threat to Dublin and other Protestant enclaves, had called a common council which had been waiting several hours to meet with a Commons committee about a loan.157PJ i. 135, 139. Three days later he reported that Alderman Thomas Atkin* and several other citizens wished to present a petition outlining the City’s grievances, which was intended as an answer to the Commons’ request for a £100,000 loan for Ireland, that ‘for the present they promised not to lend anything unless those grievances were removed’.158PJ i. 161. On 27 January Penington expressed concern at information he had received that some of the troops at Chester, preparing to go into Ireland, were Catholics and he proposed that the oaths of supremacy and allegiance should be tendered to all Irishmen suspected of being ‘popishly affected’.159PJ i. 187, 191. On 4 February he was one of those appointed to thank the gentlewomen and tradesmen’s wives of London for their petition demanding that justice be done in the case of Archbishop Laud and that action should be taken to relieve ‘the great afflictions that their sex suffer in Ireland’.160PJ i. 277-8.

In February 1642 Penington was concerned about ill feeling in London over the Commons’ decision to give the City’s committee of safety power over the capital’s militia. On 24 February he brought the House a copy of a petition presented to the Lords and subscribed by more than 200 citizens in which the petitioners desired that control of the militia should be put into the hands of the lord mayor and declared that any other action ‘was against the freedom of the City which every freeman thereof was bound by his oath to maintain’.161Pearl, London, 149-50. Penington also reported that ‘divers citizens were without who were ready to come in and justify the said petition’.162PJ i. 451, 457. On 10 March Penington and the other London MPs were ordered to attend the common council to convey Parliament’s acceptance of the City nominees for the militia commanders.163PJ ii. 23. Five days later he was named to a committee to investigate the grievances of the common council.164CJ ii. 479a. During this period he was also active in raising money for Ireland in the City. Accompanied by Venn, he carried the Commons’ propositions for the relief of Ireland to a meeting of common hall on 1 March.165PJ i. 490. He was appointed to a committee to authorize the London commissioners to receive subscriptions for Ireland on 5 March.166CJ ii. 467a. On 26 April he was sent to the Merchant Adventurers with details of successes against the Irish rebels and asking for a loan for Munster, and on 13 May he and Venn were ordered to consider the best way to bring together the City companies to request a £50,000 loan.167PJ ii. 222; CJ ii. 542a, 570b. Penington was appointed to the committee to consider the propositions of the merchants for the supply of Ireland on 14 May and he was one of those sent to negotiate a loan for Ireland from the committee of adventurers two days later.168CJ ii. 571b, 572b. By this time he had, on his own account, subscribed the substantial sum of £1,000 to the Irish adventure.169Bottigheimer, English Money and Irish Land, 188.

By the early summer it had become clear that the exigencies of war demanded new methods of raising money and on 7 June Penington and a group of his supporters brought into the Commons a petition suggesting a weekly voluntary contribution in London. Some MPs were alarmed by the unconstitutional nature of the proposal, but Penington spoke ‘very rashly and against the order of the House stood up and wished that the gentleman who last spoke [William Pleydell*] had gone out of the House before he had spoken’. Penington was immediately accused of infringing the House’s privilege by attempting to deny a Member’s freedom of speech, but his friends stepped in to defend him and his misdemeanour was overlooked, ‘as that rash speech of the said alderman had proceeded from a good intention’.170PJ iii. 58. He was appointed to the committee to modify the proposals and a few days later the bill calling for voluntary contributions of plate, money and horse was introduced.171CJ ii. 610b. Penington offered to contribute £200 cash himself but his zealous attempts to ensure that subscriptions were forthcoming caused some royalists to complain that he had forcibly seized their horses and goods.172PJ iii. 469; Complaint to the House of Commons (1642), 16 (E.244.31). Perhaps in response to this heavy-handedness, Penington was one of those excluded from the king’s offer of a ‘full and absolute pardon’.173CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 342. He retaliated by weeding out the king’s supporters in the City government, and, accompanied by Vassall, on 11 July he was sent to require the lord mayor, Sir Richard Gurney, who had been impeached for publishing the king’s commission of array, to appoint a locum tenens.174CJ ii. 665a; PJ iii. 200. On his return, he reported that Gurney and the senior aldermen had refused to oblige the Commons by calling the common council to settle the issue of control of the militia.175CJ ii. 665a. Penington was one of the reporters of a joint conference with the Lords concerning steps to be taken against Gurney. As part of the plan to defend the City and Parliament, on 14 July Penington was appointed to a committee to place the magazine from Hull in a place of safety.176CJ ii. 672a. On 25 July he was named to the committee to examine the proceedings of the king’s commissioners of array in the regions, and in early August he delivered a letter from Sir William Brereton* concerning his efforts to build a parliamentarian party in Cheshire.177CJ ii. 689b; PJ iii. 289.

After Gurney’s impeachment, Penington, although not the senior alderman, was elected lord mayor on 16 August ‘by the voice and clamour of the common people, against the customs and rules of election’.178CJ ii. 723a; LJ v. 297b; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 246. He took as his deputy his kinsman, the radical colonial trader Randall Mainwaring.179Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 324, 373. Royalists found the whole episode ‘exceedingly distasteful’, with one describing it as a case of ‘rejecting the olive and advancing the bramble’.180Somers Tracts iv. 594. But even Penington’s critics were forced to admit that he had not accepted the office for personal gain, but to advance the political and religious objectives which he held so dear.181CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 137. With the chief executive position in the City now secure, and prominent royalists in prison, London was now firmly behind Parliament. The king never recognized Penington as mayor and indeed on the day of the election he declared at Oxford that his quarrel was not against Parliament, but against certain individuals, including Penington ‘who first made the wounds, and will not suffer them to be healed but make them deeper and wider by contriving, fostering, and fomenting mistakes and jealousies betwixt body and head, us and two Houses of Parliament’.182Stuart Royal Proclams. ed. Larkin, ii. 844. The speech of the deputy recorder of London at Penington’s swearing in made it clear that the City had no such qualms, as he described the new mayor as ‘a person every way answerable to discharge that trust which shall be reposed in him ... a man of courage, fearing God and hating covetousness, ... a man of wisdom, discretion, trust and fidelity’.183Mr Deputy Recorders Speech (18 Aug. 1642, 669.f.5.72).

Although Penington was now busy with his mayoral duties, his presence in the Commons was noted on a few occasions. On 19 September it was reported by Walter Yonge I* that ‘the lord mayor of London came into our House and sat there as a member of our House’.184Add. 18777, f. 3. On this occasion Penington informed the Commons that the City had received a letter from the lord general, the 3rd earl of Essex, for a £100,000 loan for the war effort.185CJ ii. 772b. It was, however, in the City that Penington proved most active, as he seized the opportunity to further his religious and political aims. It was said that he entered his office with a speech against the Book of Common Prayer, and he appointed Thomas Case, a strong opponent of episcopal government, as his chaplain.186G. Williams, The Discovery of Mysteries (1643), 45 (E.60.1); Hexter, Reign of King Pym, 105. He enforced observance of the sabbath in the capital and on one occasion fined a man for singing ‘an ungodly psalm’.187W. Emberton, Skippon’s Brave Boys (1984), 52. Penington once again crossed swords with the episcopalian clergyman Robert Chestlin, whom he reported to the Commons for preaching against Parliament ‘with dangerous points tending towards the disheartening of the well affected’.188Lui, Puritan London, 127. In order to ensure that the City’s officers shared his political views, Penington broke with the tradition of granting offices by reversion and ‘by turning men out of their places for pretended malignants, and putting others in their room, creatures of his own’, he brought in radical such as John Bradshawe*.189Mystery of the Good Old Cause (1660), 44 (E.1923.2). He also strove to limit the power of the court of aldermen, preferring to work with the common council and the militia committee who were in favour of vigorously prosecuting the war, and working closely with Pym implemented a series of practical measures to organize and finance the war. He took over the scheme of selling passes to those who wished to leave London and diverted the money to the parliamentary cause, although this led to complaints that ‘if these courses hold, Isaac Penington shall have a monopoly of highway passes at 2s. per pell established by ordinance for the good of the people, which he now exacts without control’.190Complaint to the House of Commons, 19. He also organized collections in London’s parishes for the ‘present good relief’ of Parliament.191Bodl. Tanner 64, f. 40. He could be relied upon to deal with any signs of opposition to Parliament in the City and when one group started wearing rose-coloured bands in their hats to show their allegiance to the king, he endeavoured ‘by vigorous demonstrations to prevent the spread of the custom’.192CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 181.

Penington’s re-election as mayor in October 1642 and the appointment of John Langham* and Thomas Andrews as sheriffs tightened the parliamentary grip on the City.193LJ v. 404a. When the Commons requested that the trained bands join forces with the main army under Essex to halt the royalist advance on London, Penington and the militia committee readily complied.194Pearl, London, 251-2. On 8 November Penington was added to the committee at Goldsmiths’ Hall for raising money for the Scots’ forces in Ulster and those soon to enter England – a body that would evolve in 1644 into the Committee for Compounding.195Supra, ‘Committee for Compounding’; CJ iii. 305a; CCC 2. He also organized the efficient collection of the London weekly assessment and suggested that a £30,000 loan could be raised on its security.196CCAM 1-12. After the collapse of the Oxford negotiations in the spring of 1643, the king’s declaration against all those who had given approval to the parliamentary ordinance for raising money in the City attacked Penington in particular describing him as ‘a person accused and known to be guilty of high treason, by a new legislative power of his own suppresses and reviles the Book of Common Prayer, robs and imprisons whom he thinks fit and, with the rabble of his faction, gives laws to both Houses of Parliament’.197Clarendon, Hist. ii. 428. Soon afterwards Penington got wind of a peace petition circulating in the City which he claimed ‘would give rise to hurtful divisions and so he had it taken by force from those concerned’.198CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 218. This petition had gained much support in the City because of bitter feelings aroused by the assessment tax and a large crowd gathered at Penington’s house threatening violence if the petition was not returned. On 19 December the petition, which requested redress of grievances and the return of the king to Parliament, was read in the Commons and Penington made one of his infrequent appearances in the House, ‘and sat there during the reading of it’.199Harl. 164, f. 265. He took the opportunity to inform the Commons of an attack which had been planned the previous night to release all prisoners from the Tower of London. He also asked the House not to release the instigators of this ‘tumultuous petition’ but to order their removal to Lambeth. This was eventually agreed, despite calls for the miscreants to be heard before they were committed, with Penington being seconded by Oliver St John* ‘and some other hot spirits’. Penington then ‘stood up again and desired that the odium of this business might not lie upon him, that Captain [Randall] Mainwaring might be appointed to take the said several persons and to carry them to Lambeth House’: a motion which Sir Simonds D’Ewes* regarded as ‘a notable piece of hypocrisy’. Shortly afterwards, St John moved that Penington ‘had pressing occasions which called upon him to be gone, the Speaker gave him thanks (after one or two of his friends had moved it) in the name of the House, and so he went out of the House about 12 of the clock’.200Harl. 164, f. 265v, 266.

A war of words followed. Dismissing the earlier peace petition as the demands of ‘a malignant and seditious people’, Penington organised a counter petition in the City calling for peace but ‘only if a safe one can be had’, and thanking Parliament for ‘their unwearied pain and care to settle the present distraction of the kingdom’.201CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 222; Declaration and Propositions of the Lord Mayor (22 Dec. 1642, E.83.18). In his reply, the king charged Penington with being ‘the principal author of those calamities which so nearly threaten the ruin of that famous city’ and declared that only when Penington and those who shared his views were arrested for high treason would he return to London without the protection of his army.202His Majesty’s Letter and Declaration to the Sheriffs (1643), 4; CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 230. The Commons ordered Penington to ensure that the king’s answer was not read in common council. Having been denied access to the citizenry, the king tried to state his case in a letter to the sheriffs of London, which gave instances of what was ironically termed Penington’s ‘great loyalty’, as, for example, when he refused to proceed against ‘a desperate person’ who said that he ‘hoped to wash his hands in the king’s blood’.203His Majesty’s Letter, 3; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 438. Penington, although ‘trembling and scarce able to speak’, defended himself before common hall on 7 January 1643, and he was supported by Pym who declared that the lord mayor had done no more than his duty ‘in adhering to the Parliament for the defence of the Kingdom’.204Harl. Misc. v. 181-2, 184. Penington, assisted by Venn, John Fowke and others, also published several pamphlets defending himself against the king’s accusations. They claimed to be the king’s ‘loyal and faithful subjects and that really from the centre of their hearts, not in smothered hypocrisies as it is to be feared too many now near your Majesty do’.205Humble Remonstrance to the king’s most excellent Majesty in Vindication of… Isaac Penington (1643), 7-8 (E.85.2). Their actions, they said, had been misrepresented to the king by ‘malignants’ and they had never ‘done or imagined ought but what we had just authority from the high court of Parliament which we are bound in conscience and equity to obey’.206Declaration and Vindication of Isaac Penington (11 Feb. 1643), 3 (E.89.11).

Supporting the War Party, 1643-4

In the City, Penington continued his efforts on behalf of Parliament during the early months of 1643. As lord mayor, he issued a circular letter to ministers in every parish recommending contributions to the £10,000 loan to pay the arrears of Essex’s army. This was to be followed up by a visit to every inhabitant by the common council men or the churchwardens to collect the money.207Circular Letter from Isaac Penington, Lord Mayor of London (18 Feb. 1643, 669.f.5.125). Penington’s chaplain, Thomas Case, set an example by inviting to communion only those ‘that have freely and liberally contributed to the Parliament for the defence of God’s cause’.208Pearl, London, 232. In February 1643 the Venetian resident reported that Penington, who was working in the City against the new peace proposals, appeared in the Commons to offer a £400,000 loan to assist the war effort.209CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 242. Penington was also an enthusiastic advocate of the plan to fortify London by a line of earthworks and forts, and was among the aldermen ‘sent to the women to thank them and desire them to continue their prayers for the good success of this House on 4 February.210Add. 14827, f. 29v. His enthusiasm rallied the citizens and, according to one royalist song, even ‘the mayoress took the tool in hand’ to help with the work.211Exact Collection of the Choicest Poems and Songs (1662), pt i. 245. Penington assumed command of the forces garrisoning these fortifications and was soon christened as ‘the Atlas of the City, bearing the weight and management of all civil affairs’.212True Declaration of Isaac Penington… in Advancing and Promoting the Bulwarks (1643), 4 (E.99.27). When on 28 February Vassall moved that the sheriffs of London should be given due precedence in the City, some MPs used the debate as an excuse to ask ‘whether they were truly sheriffs of London or not, as they questioned Alderman Penington’s right to be lord mayor of the same City’.213Harl. 164, f. 309. In March Penington requested to be excused from a £150 assessment because ‘he has lately well fulfilled his duties, has lately lost £2,500, has no trade to live by his rents being only during his wife’s life, and his debts desperate, and he has lent several sums, is well affected and willing for the service’.214CCAM 131. In the City, however, he was as active as ever in raising funds and attended the Commons to offer £10,000 a week from the City until the end of the war.215CJ ii. 984a. As before, such an offer proved wildly over-optimistic. On 11 March, when Pym and a Commons’ committee asked for a further supply of men and money from the City, Penington was forced to admit that the money was unlikely to be raised ‘owing to evasions and the flight of the inhabitants’.216CLRO, Jor. 40, f. 55v. As if to demonstrate that the City’s support for the parliamentary cause was not dwindling, at the end of March Penington supported a radical remonstrance which claimed to prove parliamentary supremacy and asked that no peace be made with the king which would ‘involve us and our posterities in perpetual thraldom’.217Remonstrans Redivivus (1643, E.61.21).

In religious matters Penington continued to work tirelessly to bring both London and the nation closer to his ideal. In March 1643 he reported three royalist clergymen of London to Speaker William Lenthall* complaining that he knew ‘not what may happen if an example be not made of some of them’.218HMC 5th Rep., 78; Pearl, London, 181. On 2 May he ordered that the cross at Cheapside, one of those erected by Edward I in memory of Queen Eleanor, should be destroyed because of its idolatrous and superstitious figures. This action caused a great deal of comment and one contemporary royalist poem lamented

That thou shouldst be demolished and plucked down
By the warrant of Lord Isaac Penington;
London’s chief (ut vis) who thinks store of good
He doth in prisoning, hanging, shedding blood
In robbing, plundering each that’s good to his king
Because no plate nor money they will bring
Into Guildhall: nay then ʼtis no wonder
If by his order thou art plucked asunder.219Exact Collection pt i. 138.

In June when the king offered a pardon to all those who now joined him at Oxford, Penington was among the five lords and 13 commoners who were excluded.220LJ vi. 110b. Penington was also one of the targets of Edmund Waller’s* plot and was instrumental in arresting the perpetrators. On 6 June, as the affairs was being considered in the Commons, D’Ewes recorded that Penington ‘came in amongst us’, leaving only once the Speaker ‘had given him thanks for his great care and pains taken upon the discovery of this new conspiracy’.221Harl. 164, ff. 397, 398v. On 9 July Penington, as lord mayor, and the sheriffs were put in command of the Tower of London temporarily while the Commons considered the request of Sir John Coniers (the lieutenant) to go abroad. By this time there was much dissatisfaction in the City, ‘tired of the taxes and suspicious of General Essex’, and Penington, the aldermen and common council petitioned the Commons requesting that all troops which were raised in future in London should be under the command of its own militia committee.222CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 301; HMC 5th Rep., 96. The City’s petition carried an implied threat: unless Essex was removed from all control of the London forces, Parliament could not hope to retain the City’s support. Anxious to conciliate the City, on 23 July the Commons appointed Penington lieutenant of the Tower in place of Coniers – a decision ratified by the Lords on 29 July.223CJ iii. 177b; LJ vi. 154b; 159a. Thus Penington became the guardian of the City’s defences. According to Clarendon, Penington’s appointment had a double advantage ‘for thereby as they made the City believe they had put themselves under their protection, so they were sure they had put the City under the apprehension of the power of him who would never forsake them out of an appetite to a peace’.224Clarendon, Hist. iii. 168-9. On 20 July Penington had been named to a committee to consider the petition from London and Westminster calling for the enlistment those who were sympathetic to the parliamentary cause in the City and organizing them into regiments under a new commander-in-chief with authority derived from Essex as lord general.225CJ iii. 176a. On 29 July he was added to the London militia committee. Penington’s own financial situation was sufficiently weak that he found it necessary to appeal to the Committee for Advance of Money to be released from payment of his assessment; with the committee agreeing to discharge the debt because Penington had already paid £50 and since ‘most of his estate is in small rents which he cannot receive because of his attendance on Parliament’.226CCAM 131.

Penington was now at the height of his influence in the City as its MP, a member of the militia committee, lieutenant of the Tower and lord mayor, and he used his unrivalled power to thwart any attempts at peace with the king. When he heard that the Commons were considering a new set of peace proposals on 5 August, he immediately called a common council, ‘though on a Sunday, on which they before complained the king used to sit in council’. At this meeting he planned a coup to arrest two lords and six members of the Commons who were sympathetic to the proposed peace.227HMC 5th Rep., 2. He drafted both a petition against the proposals as ‘destructive to religion, laws and liberties’, and a bill for prosecuting the war. At the first opportunity Penington, accompanied by a mob of 5,000, delivered the City’s resolutions to the Commons and warned MPs that ‘if they had not good answer, they would be there the next day with double the number’.228CSP Ven. 1643-7, p. 8; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 139. Penington promised to keep order in the City if the peace proposals were rejected and the Commons acquiesced on 7 August, although D’Ewes was among the ‘truly religious, honest, moderate men’ who felt blackmailed, as Penington ‘was justly suspected to be a raiser and contriver of all this plot and tumult, that we should suppress the same, and he like an arch-hypocrite sent about in show and pretence to forewarn all men from coming to Westminster’.229Harl. 165, ff. 145v, 147v. As a vigorous war supporter, Penington soon became an active member of the militia committee and he enthusiastically organized the seizure of 1,000 horses for Sir William Waller’s* regiment.230Add. 40630, f. 128; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 476.

Penington’s mayoralty came to an end in October 1643 when he was succeeded by the moderate Sir John Wollaston, but by order of both Houses, he retained the office of lieutenant of the Tower.231CJ iii. 291a-2a; LJ vi. 278a, 279b. On 1 November he took the Solemn League and Covenant.232CJ iii. 297b. The following day he was one of those sent to call on the City’s militia committee to take action against deserters from Waller’s army who were flooding to London. At the same meeting he requested funds for the beleaguered garrison at Plymouth.233CJ iii. 299b. Two days later, Penington returned to the militia committee to ask them to supply Waller with all the necessities for the planned attack on Basing House in Hampshire, now garrisoned for the king.234CJ iii. 300b. On 18 November he made several suggestions for maintaining the garrison at Reading, and later he was appointed to committees concerning money for the garrisons at Weybridge, Aylesbury and Windsor.235CJ iii. 314a, 341b, 437a, 452b, 457a. At the end of the month, when representatives from the City appeared in the Commons requesting that the three London regiments serving under Essex might be called home, Penington was one of those sent to persuade the City to allow their forces to remain in the field and to request that more money should be raised for their use.236CJ iii. 323a. He was sent to the City again in January 1644 to inform them of the discovery of Brooks’s plot which planned to win the City over to the king’s cause.237CJ iii. 360b. He was elected as governor of the Levant Company in place of the royalist, Sir Henry Garway, in February 1644, and the Fishmongers’ Company granted Penington the use of one of their houses so that he could deal with the Levant business in suitable surroundings.238SP105/150, f. 53. On 10 February he was added to the Committee of Navy and Customs (although technically, he was already a member of this body) when it considered bills for upholding the trade of the Levant and East India companies.239CJ iii. 395b. He also appeared as a witness in the trial of Archbishop Laud in March.240CJ iii. 422a. On 3 May Penington was one of the joint committee sent to inform the City that Parliament was preparing propositions for peace and to invite suggestions.241CJ iii. 478a. Six days later he was sent to the militia committee to express the Commons’ concern about the return to the City of several regiments serving under Waller and to encourage them to find ways to satisfy the soldiers’ grievances preparatory to a new campaign against Oxford.242CJ iii. 487a. As governor of the Levant Company, on 11 May Penington was ordered to put in execution the order that members of the company who did not contribute to the raising of £8,000 according to the rates assessed by the governor, would be disfranchised of their privileges.243CJ iii. 489b. With Vassall and Soame, he was sent to the lord mayor and aldermen to encourage collection of the monthly assessment on 17 May.244CJ iii. 497a. On 8 June Penington was named one of the committee to negotiate with the London militia committee about sending more soldiers into Oxfordshire to provide Waller with reinforcements in case the king should attempt to return to his headquarters.245CJ iii. 523a. A few days later he was one of those appointed to consider the bill giving additional powers to the militia committee to raise and equip more soldiers.246CJ iii. 527b.

At the end of August 1644, Penington became embroiled in scandal when Conor Lord Maguire and Hugh McMahon, ‘two notorious and principal Irish rebels’ implicated in the 1641 rising, escaped from the Tower of London. When the matter was debated on 26 August, Penington was accused of ‘much negligence’ and was forced to withdraw from the Commons; although he ‘found so many friends that in the issue the House declined the passing of any censure’, when the fugitives were recaptured in September the Commons ordered that he pay the reward from his own pocket.247Harl. 166, f. 110r-v; CJ iii. 607b, 633b. Attempts to remove Penington from his office, led by the recorder, John Glynne*, ‘and his party’, were thwarted by Sir Arthur Hesilrige* who ‘put them in mind of their obligation to him for his good service’.248Juxon Jnl., 57-8. Thereafter, Penington continued to act as a link between Parliament and the City. During September he was sent to the City to inform them that £550 per week was to be levied on London as part of the general assessment for relief of Ireland.249CJ iii. 619a. On 25 October he was named to a committee to consider a bill for raising nearly £7,000 a month in London and Westminster for maintaining the City’s fortifications.250CJ iii. 676a. A few days later the City authorised Penington to act as their spokesman in the Commons and to deliver in the City’s proposals for peace.251CJ iii. 677a, 679b. As lieutenant of the Tower, he was responsible for conducting Archbishop Laud to the Commons to hear the evidence against him on 1 November; and when Laud was condemned to death, Penington took the news to him and subsequently accompanied him to the scaffold.252CJ iii. 683b; Harl. 166, f. 152.

Factional politics, 1645-8

The escape of the Irish rebels from the Tower seems to have damaged Penington’s reputation in the Commons. His name does not appear in the Journals again until 18 February 1645, when he was appointed to the committee to bring in £80,000 to cover the initial expense at the New Model army.253CJ iv. 52a. From April he was appointed to committees to treat with the City for raising money for Brereton’s forces in the north west and for the army in Ireland.254CJ iv. 109a, 173b. On 26 May, in accordance with the Self-Denying Ordinance, he gave up his post as lieutenant of the Tower. During this month Penington helped to oust John Goodwin from his place as minister in St. Stephen’s Coleman Street for his refusal to administer the sacrament and baptism to certain wealthy parishioners. Revealingly, Penington supported the replacement of Goodwin by the Presbyterian William Taylor and he also helped to establish the parish board for determining admission to the sacrament.255E. Freshfield, Recs. and Hist. of St Stephen Coleman Street (1887), 9-10. In another indication of his Presbyterian convictions, in the summer he was involved in the committee to draw up directions for the election of elders in the London churches.256CJ iv. 218a. At Westminster, Penington was emerging as a political Independent. He was appointed to several committees to encourage the City to provide men and money for the New Model. After its recent victory at Naseby, the new army had been plagued by desertions, and on 28 June Sir Thomas Fairfax* complained to the Commons, which sent Penington and Venn to encourage the City authorities to enforce the ordinance for punishing runaway soldiers.257CJ iv. 188a. On the same day Penington was sent with John Glynne to hasten payment of a £30,000 loan from the City which was required for payment of the Scots who had laid siege to Hereford.258CJ iv. 188a. On 6 September he was named to a committee for a bill to raise troops in the City to assist the New Model in its western campaign.259CJ iv. 264b.

Penington was soon embroiled in further controversy. During August the Committee for Advance of Money received information that he had retained at least £3,000 in plate and money from the estate of his cousin, Sir John Penington, who had recently died. There followed a long drawn out investigation into Sir John’s estate, and Penington received frequent orders to appear before the committee to answer questions about the estate.260CCAM 571-2; CJ iv. 344a, 580b. At the end of September he was sent to give the City notice of the forthcoming thanksgiving for the parliamentary victory at Rowton Heath.261CJ iv. 290b; LJ vii. 606a. In October Penington and Venn were sent to the City on three occasions to inform them of parliamentary successes at Winchester, Basing House and in south Wales.262CJ iv. 309a, 323b. On 21 November, when the Commons received information that the king’s forces intended a plundering raid near London, Penington was one of those sent to the lord mayor and the militia committee to require them to send the London horse and dragoons to Uxbridge to repulse any attack.263CJ iv. 350a. The following month he was joined in the Commons by his son-in-law John Corbett*, who had been recruited into the Long Parliament for Bishop’s Castle partly on the strength of his connection with Penington.264HMC 10th Rep., 404.

During 1646 Penington continued his efforts in the City to raise money and supplies for the parliamentary forces and garrisons. On 17 February he was named to a committee to consider the powers and procedures of the Committee for Advance of Money, and on 26 February he was appointed to a committee to investigate the fund for war widows.265CJ iv. 445b, 455a. On 2 March he was named to a committee to consult with the common council on the safety of the kingdom and the next day he was included in a committee to maintain the forces under Richard Browne II* and the garrisons in the counties west of London.266CJ iv. 458b, 461a. On 7 March he was ordered to collect notices of recent parliamentary victories and to deliver them to the lord mayor who was to have them all listed at forthcoming thanksgiving services.267CJ iv. 467a. At the end of the month he was sent to require the lord mayor to call a common council to a reading of Fairfax’s letter about the New Model’s victories and the disbanding of royalist forces in the west.268CJ iv. 485b. He was added to the Committee of Plundered Ministers on 15 May, and on 3 June he was made a commissioner to prevent scandalous offenders from receiving the sacrament.269CJ iv. 545b, 562b.

From the summer of 1646, Penington was involved in City feuds. When the City refused to accept his advice to send the king’s letter to them unopened to the Commons ‘in regard it came from an enemy’, Penington reported the lord mayor, Thomas Adams*, to the House. He was seconded by George Thomson*, who told the Commons that in former days the mayor would have been sent to the Tower or even Tyburn for such behaviour.270Juxon Jnl., 124 Penington was one of those sent on 11 July to express the Commons’ disapproval of the City’s petition to the king and to acquaint the lord mayor and common council that London was included in the peace propositions which Parliament had already sent to the king. He was appointed to a committee to discover the ‘contrivers and framers’ of the City remonstrance on the same day.271CJ iv. 615b. Thereafter, Penington became involved in the unsuccessful attempt to revive the Irish war, being named to committees to ensure the payment of money already pledged for that purpose (30 July) and to treat with those who might provide further loans (11 August).272CJ iv. 629a, 641b. Penington also joined efforts to pay off and disband the Scottish army. On 21 August he was added to the committee at Goldsmiths’ Hall to consider how £100,000 could be raised for the Scots from the trading companies.273CJ iv. 650b. Penington used his position to further the interests of the Levant Company. On 17 September he was named to a committee to confer with the company about their petition complaining that Sir Sackville Crowe† seized estates and imprisoned members in Constantinople and Smyrna.274CJ iv. 671a-b. On 18 September Penington brought in the report from that committee recommending that Crowe should be recalled.275CJ iv. 672b; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 470. During October he complained to the Commons that he was still owed substantial sums of money for diet and fees during his time as lieutenant of the Tower, and he was ordered to bring in a bill for the satisfaction of all the debts on 27 October.276CJ iv. 706a.

By December 1646 political division in the City had worsened, and some were beginning openly to express their dislike of the New Model and call for its dissolution. Penington and his radical friends did their best to counter this. On 4 December he was one of those appointed to encourage the City to bring in the assessment arrears so that Fairfax’s army could be paid off.277CJ iv. 738a. He was appointed to a committee to investigate scandalous libels during the spring, and he was also appointed as a commissioner for compounding on 8 February.278CJ v. 78a, 109a, 167b; A. and O. As the political Presbyterians gained the upper hand in London, the Commons resolved to revoke all previous orders for settling the militia and to return control of the militia to the lord mayor, aldermen, common council and sheriffs. On 30 March this resolution caused a ‘great dispute’ in the Commons between Penington, who led the fight for the old militia committee, and the recorder, John Glynne, who was the Presbyterian party’s chief spokesman on this issue.279Add. 31116, f. 306v. The matter was only laid to rest because of a pre-arranged conference with the Lords. Penington was appointed to the committee to consider the new militia ordinance for London on 2 April.280CJ v. 132b. He was sent, with Venn and Vassall, to require the lord mayor to call a common council to meet a joint parliamentary committee to discuss raising a loan for disbanding the army and mounting a new Irish expedition.281CJ v. 133a. As if to fulfil its share of the bargain, Parliament then granted the City the right to nominate its own militia committee and by on 27 April the Presbyterians in the City ousted Penington and other radicals ‘not absolute for the faction’.282Perfect Diurnal (26 Apr.-3 May 1647), 1570 (E.515.10); Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 472. The House of Commons were said to be ‘much disgusted’ at Penington’s removal.283Harington Diary, 50. One contemporary complained that

Alderman Penington who stood in the breach when they were afraid, whose fidelity and ability was thoroughly experimented, at such time when as the winds blew highest, and the storms grew strongest; a man adjudged by the City worthy to be their parliament man, and by the parliament worthy to be lieutenant of the Tower of London, is now no longer worthy to be entrusted with the militia, but turned out as a man suspected.284A. Wilbee, Plain Truth (1647), 10 (E.516.7).

A few days later, on 4 May, Penington received some comfort when he received £3,000 ‘for satisfaction of his losses and damages’, and he was absolved from all debts, amounting to a further £3,000, which he had owed his cousin.285CJ v. 161a-b, 163a, 165a; LJ ix. 177b, 178a-b; HMC 6th Rep., 173; CCC 64, 805. On 7 May the Commons formally thanked Penington and the other MPs who had been ousted from the militia committee ‘for their faithful discharge of their trust in this service’.286CJ v. 166a. This did not mark the end of Penington’s influence, however. He was still employed as one of the Commons’ messengers to the City and on 14 May he was sent to the common council to inform them that the act for securing the loan for disbanding the army had been passed.287CJ v. 172b. The City were slow to collect the loan and news was soon received that Fairfax and his army were marching towards London to demand their arrears. Alarmed, on 14 June the Commons sent Penington and Glynne to demand that the militia committee to provide ‘a good and strong guard’ to protect Parliament.288CJ v. 209b. On 8 July, Penington and Venn returned to the militia committee to require that the parliamentary guard attended the House by seven every morning.289CJ v. 237a. On the same day the City petitioned the Commons to extend the ordinance for raising horse for the defence of London for another month and Penington was one of the committee appointed to alter the ordinance to ensure the City could raise only one regiment consisting of no more than 600 horse.290CJ v. 236b. On 21 July Penington and Venn were ordered to report on what action the militia committee had taken with regard to the act requiring the removal of reduced soldiers from the lines of communication.291CJ v. 252a. On the same day, Penington was named to a committee to consider abuses in the payment of money to officers and soldiers, and on 22 July he was one of a committee chosen to consider the petition of the citizens and commanders of London and to inquire into what engagement had been made in London ‘to the disturbance of Parliament and the kingdom’.292CJ v. 253a, 254a. Penington’s name does not appear in the Journals during the Speaker’s absence at the army headquarters at the end of July and beginning of August, but it seems that he did not flee from the capital or sign the engagement with the army.

On 6 August 1647, the day the army entered London, Penington was appointed to the committee to consider the ‘forcing of the Houses’.293CJ v. 269a. It was soon discovered that this committee contained too many Presbyterians, and ‘to shut these Canaanites forth’ on 13 August a ‘subcommittee of secrecy’ was appointed, made up of ‘persons engaged to live and die with the army’, including Penington.294CJ v. 273a; LJ ix. 386a; C. Walker, Hist. of Independency (1648), 53 (E.463.19). On 2 September Penington regained his place on the London militia committee.295CJ v. 290a. The following day he joined Soame, Venn and Vassall on a delegation sent to the lord mayor and common council to demand their ‘positive answer’ to a loan for paying the army’s arrears, and to convey the Commons’ view that the City was responsible for the army’s presence in London.296CJ v. 290b. On 14 September Penington was ordered to draft a bill to give the common council extra powers to bring in the assessment arrears to pay the army.297CJ v. 301a. He was called before the Committee for Advance of Money on 18 September, but declared that he could not pay any of the money due on Sir John Penington’s estate until he had received compensation from Parliament for his own losses.298CCAM 572. At the end of the month he was ordered to call a court of aldermen and to direct them to hold a meeting of common hall to elect a new lord mayor in place of Sir John Gayer, who had been impeached for raising forces in the City against the army in the summer.299CJ v.318b; LJ ix. 452a. Penington was appointed to the committee to examine the cases of absent MPs and to consider their excuses on 9 October.300CJ v. 329a. On 1 November he was added to a committee to raise money for the Protestant forces in Ireland.301CJ v. 347a.

On 16 November Penington was appointed to the committee ‘to examine the Londoners that fomented and abetted divisions in the army’ by organising meetings in the City in support of the Leveller Agreement of the People.302CJ v. 360a. The Levellers’ plan to have all the regiments adopt their agreement at the army rendezvous at Ware was defeated, and Penington claimed that this had ‘subdued the outward and more visible strength of the Levellers’. He was, however, concerned that Parliament should proceed against the group in a rational manner, and urged them to ‘consider again how easy it is to miscarry concerning these persons whom you are engaged against and look upon as enemies. And yet consider with all how well these persons deserve of you having suffered with you, having been instrumental to deliver you from sufferings’. Penington stressed that he did not speak from ‘any high conceit of them’ but out of concern that by acting against the Levellers the commonwealth which they all believed in would suffer.303Bodl. Tanner 89, ff. 25-6. The army grandees believed that the City authorities were largely responsible for unrest in the army and they resolved to take action. On 20 November Penington and Venn were sent to the lord mayor to direct him to call a common council to consider the lord general’s letter informing the Commons that a regiment of foot would be quartered in the City until the assessment arrears were collected.304CJ v. 364b, 365a. During December Penington was sent into the City with copies of acts concerning the election of City officers and the removal of Papists and delinquents from London; he was also one of the committee ordered to draft a bill extending the powers of the Westminster militia committee which had remained loyal to the army.305CJ v. 390b, 413a. Penington was appointed to the committee of grievances on 4 January, but otherwise his activity in the early weeks of 1648 was confined to religious affairs: he was named to committees on the repair of churches damaged in the war (10 Jan.), the payment of tithes in the City (9 Feb.), and the ordinance for a stricter observance of the Lord’s day (23 Feb.).306CJ v. 417a, 425a, 460b, 471a.

By April 1648 considerable ill feeling had grown up between the City and the army. On 19 April Penington and Atkin were involved in an investigation into a riot in London when apprentices attacked the lord mayor, the sheriffs and the militia committee, hoping to raise an insurrection against the army and in support of the king.307CJ v. 537a. On 27 April the City authorities appeared at the Commons with the information that some army officers intended to disarm the City and to force it to advance £1 million, and they demanded that the City’s defences be restored and that the army should be ordered to leave London. Penington was a member of the committee set up to investigate the allegations and he was ordered to give the matter his particular attention.308CJ v. 546a. With the outbreak of the second civil war, the Whitehall guard was withdrawn for service in Wales and Scotland. The Commons, alarmed for their safety, appointed Penington and the other London MPs to negotiate with the City for a guard for Parliament, with Penington reporting the City’s answer on 3 May.309CJ v. 550a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1099. In an effort to ensure that the City militia would be a satisfactory substitute for the New Model, the next day the Commons appointed a committee including Penington, to organise the London trained bands.310CJ v. 551a. He was also appointed to the committee to consider the bill uniting the militia of Westminster, Tower Hamlets and Southwark on 10 July.311CJ v. 630a. The following day he was appointed to a committee to examine who was involved in the recent royalist rising in Surrey.312CJ v. 631b. In the weeks preceding the battle of Preston in August, the mood of London was increasingly rebellious. Motivated by ‘fears and jealousies’ the common council passed an act to resume control of the militia which they claimed the commander, Philip Skippon*, intended to use to overawe the City rather than to defend it. The City’s action was reported to the Commons by Penington, Venn and Edmund Harvey I* ‘and other ill birds of that corporation who usually defile their nests after many aggravations’.313Walker, Hist. of Independency, 123. After the petition of about 8,000 soldiers who demanded ‘a speedy, free and personal treaty according to the desires of the City’ and the payment of all the army’s arrears, Penington and Venn, leading the radicals, countered by accusing the petitioners of disloyalty to Parliament and denouncing the Scots as enemies and traitors. In the Commons on 7 August Penington, or ‘that pretty babe of grace or the shitten alderman’ as royalists now called him, spoke against the petition although ‘Mr Alderman called thrice before Lazarus would come forth, that is before Mr Speaker could hear or himself stumble upon his speech; which proceeding from his musty lungs was very short and sour, saying he was sorry to see his Brethren of the City and the Reformadoes to be all one in malignancy’.314Merc. Pragmaticus no. 55 (8-15 Aug. 1648), Sig. Y4 (E.458.25). The next day Penington was involved in further confrontation over the City’s petition when the Commons’ committee of which he was a member, met the common council in the City chambers. His last appearance in the Journals before Pride’s Purge was on 23 September, when he was appointed to the committee to ensure that the money for defraying the charges of the treaty of Newport with the king was collected and paid to the treasurer.315CJ vi. 29b.

The ‘Constant Rumper’, 1648-53

After the purge of the Commons on 6 December 1648, Penington soon became known as ‘a constant Rumper’, on account of his attendance at numerous committees on a wide range of issues.316Oxford DNB. London remained his priority. On 12 December he was part of a delegation sent from the court of aldermen to request the army leaders to release Richard Browne II, although it appears their arguments were not very effective, as Browne was sent off to Windsor Castle shortly afterwards. On 13 December Penington and Venn were put in charge of the Commons’ attempts to prevent the election of royalist ‘malignants’, particularly in the City’s forthcoming common council elections.317CJ vi. 96a. On 16 December, ‘Little Alderman Isaac, the shitten alderman’ joined Venn and Harvey in reporting later ‘that the temper of the City of London is very malignant, and would be worse if some course were not taken to exclude all of the royal and Presbyterian party from having a voice in choosing or being chosen common councilmen, or into any other places of authority’ and they proposed the passing of an act to that effect.318Merc. Pragmaticus no. 75 (12-19 Dec. 1648), Sig. Ddd4v (E.476.35). In a sign of official approval, at the end of December an ordinance was passed which finally discharged Penington from a bond on a debt incurred by Sir John Penington in 1643.319CJ vi. 101b, 105b; LJ x. 639a, 640b; HMC 7th Rep., 68.

Such favours may have stiffened Penington’s support for the trial of the king. On 23 December he was appointed to the committee to consider how to proceed in justice against the king.320CJ vi. 103a. On 25 December he subscribed to the dissent against the votes for a treaty with the king passed a month before.321PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, p. 490; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 21 (E.1013.22); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 382. He was actively involved in proceedings against the king, being named to committees on the ordinance to establish the court (29 Dec.) and as a commissioner for the trial (6 Jan.).322CJ vi. 106a; A. and O. He attended eight of the court’s 22 sittings and although present when the sentence was passed he did not sign the death warrant.323J. Nalson, True Copy of the Jnl. of the High Ct. of Justice (1684), 5-121. During the trial, Penington was also actively involved in other business in the Commons, and was named to committees on the raising of money from the sale of dean and chapter lands (12 Jan.) and to consider a petition against the common council proceedings (15 Jan.).324CJ vi. 116a, 118a.

In the aftermath of the regicide, Penington was a zealous supporter of the commonwealth. During February 1649 he was named to a spate of committees concerning the Weavers’ Company, officers of the navy, delinquents, the price of corn and the business of the mint.325CJ vi. 127b, 137a, 138b. His influence over London affairs continued. On 2 February he was chosen to draft ordinances to settle the militias of Westminster, Southwark and Tower Hamlets, and a week later he reported the names of suitable candidates to be added to the London militia committee.326CJ vi. 129b, 136a. On 10 February he was appointed to a committee to consider imposing an oath of fidelity to the commonwealth to be taken by those made freemen of London.327CJ vi. 137a. Penington’s status was further enhanced on 14 February, when he was appointed to the first council of state, taking the Engagement five days later.328CJ vi. 141a, 156b. Penington attended only about a quarter of the council’s meetings, but was appointed to a number of important committees, including those on merchant companies (23 Feb., 12 Mar, 16 Oct. and 24 Dec.), the minting of money (14 Apr., 16 June, 5 Oct.), the City assessment arrears (25 June) and the sale of the late king’s goods (19 July and 8 Nov.).329CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. xlviii-lxxv, 14, 34, 86, 189, 205, 239, 343, 383, 451. During this period he remained an important figure in the Commons, and was involved in a wide range of business. He was appointed to the committee to consider the bill to abolish kingship and the House of Lords on 7 March.330CJ vi. 158a. On 19 March he was ordered to take charge of the problem of providing coal and corn for the poor with the assistance of the London common council.331CJ vi. 167a. On 7 April Penington was sent to assist the lord mayor, Thomas Andrews, in proclaiming the abolition of the monarchy in the City.332CJ vi. 181b. On 9 April he was a member of the committee sent to negotiate a £120,000 loan with the common council which was required for Oliver Cromwell’s* Irish campaign.333CJ vi. 183a. Later in the month he was appointed to the committee to examine all impositions and charges placed on coal and, with Augustine Garland*, was ordered to take especial care over the business.334CJ vi. 187b. Penington also increased his grip on the City. In March he was appointed to scrutinise a bill to force senior office-holders in the City to become aldermen; and at the end of May he reported that his colleague, Thomas Soame, and another alderman had not attended the proclamation of the act abolishing monarchy.335CJ vi. 171a, 221a; Walker, Hist. of Independency, 185. He was also happy to benefit from the discomfiture of his political rivals, and he replaced the moderate Thomas Adams as governor of the Emmanuel Hospital in May.336CLRO, Rep. 59, f. 407v.

In June 1649, as part of the City’s celebrations in honour of the concord between the purged Parliament and purged City, a bill was presented to the Commons authorizing the Speaker to knight Penington among others; but although Penington is often styled ‘Sir Isaac’ it would appear that the bill did not pass and the knighthood was never conferred.337Beaven, Aldermen of London i. 229, 257; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 221. A royalist satire on the feast held in the City in honour of Cromwell and Fairfax on 7 June portrayed Penington blowing his own trumpet:

I will speak, though I cannot speak; and though I cannot speak, I will not keep silence. Some have been so bold as to brand me for a cracked vessel, yet I have been meet for my master’s use; and they shall find me as sound as sounding brass, or as a tinkling cymbal. Moses was a man slow of speech, yet he was a great leader and so have I been.338Somers Tracts vii. 55-6.

The next day Penington was among those chosen to take the thanks of the House to the City authorities for the entertainment.339CJ vi. 227b. For the next six months he continued to be involved in range of policy matters. On 23 June Penington was appointed to draft a bill for transporting felons, and on 29 June he was named to a committee to repeal the Elizabethan recusancy laws which forced people to attend their parish church.340CJ vi. 243b, 245b. He was a member of the committee to negotiate a £150,000 loan with the lord mayor on the security of the excise on 4 July, and the next day he was appointed to the committee on a bill for pardon and oblivion.341CJ vi. 249b, 250b. During a debate on securing soldiers’ arrears on the proceeds from the sale of crown lands on 12 July, Penington acted as a teller for the successful motion that provisos in the bill should not make void a 30-year lease on a crown manor held by the late Sir Edward Munford.342CJ vi. 258b. At the end of July he was sent to thank Samuel Avery* and his fellow customs commissioners for their good service to the commonwealth.343CJ vi. 271b. A few days later, on 2 August, he was appointed to the committee to consider the bill regulating the election of officers for the service of the commonwealth.344CJ vi. 273b. From the end of August until the beginning of November, Penington was appointed to no committees but made numerous reports from the council of state.345CJ vi. 287a, 302b, 314a, 317a, 323a. On 2 November, however, he was appointed to a committee to consider punishment for swearing and cursing, and on the same day he was added to the Committee for Compounding.346CJ vi. 317b, 318a. On 7 November he was chosen to consult with the barons of the exchequer about making the passing of sheriffs’ accounts easier, and two days later he was named to the committee to consider how to impose the Engagement on the whole nation.347CJ vi. 321b. On 28 January 1650 Penington was added to the committee for corporations when it considered a petition from the City, and a day later he was named to the committee on a bill for preaching the gospel in Wales.348CJ vi. 351a, 352a.

On 12 February 1650 Penington was re-elected to the council of state.349CJ vi. 361b; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 512. His attendance over the following year was again patchy, but he was appointed to committees concerning the trading companies (3 Apr., 3 May), the London militia committee (28 May, 25 Oct.), and Englishmen taken prisoner by the Portuguese (27 Dec.).350CSP Dom. 1650, pp. xv-xli, 81, 137, 176, 398, 485. In Parliament during the same period, Penington’s enthusiasm seems to have declined. On 14 February he accompanied Venn to remind the lord mayor that Richmond Park had been given to the City on the condition that it remained a park and became an ornament to the City.351CJ vi. 365a. On 13 April he was appointed to a committee to receive a petition from the City authorities.352CJ vi. 397b. During the spring and early summer Penington was chiefly concerned with religious matters. He was added on 29 March to one of the Rump’s leading agencies for promoting a godly ministry, the committee for regulating the universities, of which he was an active member.353CJ vi. 388b; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, passim. And he was appointed to committees to consider bills for establishing a preaching ministry in Colchester (24 May) and for suppressing atheistical and blasphemous opinions and unlawful meetings (24 June).354CJ vi. 416a, 430b. He was also named to the committee to consider the petition of the imprisoned Leveller leader, John Lilburne, on 27 June.355CJ vi. 433a. Financial matters occupied Penington in the final months of 1650. On 17 July Penington was named to a committee to consider a bill to reduce the price of grain and prevent abuses.356CJ vi. 441b. On 25 July he was twice teller for the noes: the first on whether the lands of the earl of Cleveland, a delinquent, should be sold, and the other that the execution of Thomas Dirdo, condemned by the Wiltshire assizes, should be respited.357CJ vi. 446a, 447a. In September he was involved in the charges against Lord Howard of Escrick (Edward Howard*), and was added to the investigating committee when it considered a case involving the former lord mayor, Thomas Adams.358CJ vi. 469a. On 9 October he was teller against extending the bill for the sale of ecclesiastical manors and rectories to include clergy houses, gardens and churchyards.359CJ vi. 481b. By this stage Penington’s activity in council chamber and Parliament appears to have been tailing off, and he was not re-appointed to the new council of state elected in February 1651.

Penington continued to attend Parliament during 1651, but he was mostly nominated only for minor committees. On 22 January he reported amendments to the bill pardoning Richard Kinsey and Francis Matthews for treason in encouraging armed risings in London.360CJ vi. 515a, 527a. In the same month he was named to committees on passing the accounts of serving soldiers and to address grievances concerning the management of the militia.361CJ vi. 524a, 528b. There was other unfinished business to be attended to. In February he was chosen to sit on a committee to remove soldiers quartered at Whitehall and arrange for lodgings to be provided for MPs instead.362CJ vi. 534b. He was appointed to a committee to consider an additional bill for selling the late king’s goods on 3 April, and ten days later he was involved in moves to annul titles granted by the late king during the civil wars.363CJ vi. 556a, 562b. On 17 April he was also named to a committee for impressing soldiers for the Irish service, and on 2 May he was appointed to the committee on a bill for the relief of war widows whose husbands had died in the Irish and Scottish campaigns.364CJ vi. 563a, 569a. On 5 June he presented a petition to the Commons requesting that a proviso should be added to the bill for the sale of delinquents’ lands to allow the first money raised to be used to satisfy those who had lent money to Parliament upon the public faith.365CJ vi. 584a.

Penington’s political career revived after the failure of Charles Stuart’s invasion in the late summer and autumn of 1651. On 4 September, the day after the battle of Worcester, he was named to a committee to consider the prohibition of treacherous and seditious papers; on 10 September he was one of those chosen to consider Cromwell’s request that the ‘well-affected’ of Worcester should be compensated for their losses during the campaign; and on 26 December he was appointed to a committee to consider a bill for establishing a new Army Committee and treasurers at war.366CJ vii. 11b, 15a, 58a. On 1 January 1652 he was appointed to another committee, to consider the erection of a new high court of justice to try those involved in the latest uprising.367CJ vii. 62a. In the meantime, on 25 November 1651, Penington had been elected to the fourth council of state, coming 11th in the poll with 47 votes.368CJ vii. 42b. During attempts to reach an agreement with the Dutch ambassadors in January 1652, Penington was given a letter written to the lord mayor of London by the states general outlining Dutch grievances and their alarm at the navigation acts, and he was ordered to deliver it to the council of state.369CJ vii. 64a. In the same month he reported from the council of state on the plight of Eastland merchants.370CJ vii. 65a. Penington’s busyness in these months was reflected in his commitment to the council of state. He attended nearly half the council’s meetings in the year from November 1651, and was appointed to a wide range of committees, dealing with such issues as diplomatic and foreign affairs (10 and 29 Dec., 21-2 May, 12 Nov.), the trading companies (5 and 16 Jan., 5 May) and business affecting the City (26 June, 24 Sept.).371CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. xxxv-xlvii, 54, 81, 92, 105, 233, 251, 253, 303, 416, 489. He was also named to two standing committees: for foreign affairs on 30 December and the admiralty on 7 September.372CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 82, 393. Despite Penington’s commitment to the council of state, his involvement in the Commons seems once again to have declined dramatically during the course of 1652. He was appointed to committees on markets on 20 May, a disturbance at Whitehall Chapel on 22 July; the disabling of royalists from corporations on 30 September, and a declaration for the uniting of England and Scotland on 7 October.373CJ vii. 134a, 157b, 187b, 189a. His attendance at the admiralty committee, which was fairly intermittent in September and early October, stopped altogether after 11 October.374Bodl. Rawl. A.226, ff. 191-250v. In the new year of 1653, Penington recovered little of his enthusiasm. On 6 January he was named to a committee on a bill on liberty of conscience; on 10 February he was one of those appointed to examine the information against the Reading MP, Daniel Blagrave*; and on 18 February he was named to a committee on the repayment of loans secured on recusants’ estates.375CJ vii. 244a, 257b, 250b.

The Protectorate and the restored Rump, 1653-60

After the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653, Penington retired from politics, and his lodgings at Whitehall were re-assigned to John Thurloe* on 9 June.376CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 394. During the summer of 1653 he drew lands in Co. Tipperary in the Irish adventure, but he immediately assigned them to others, perhaps his creditors.377CSP Ire. Adv., pp. 160-1, 200. The following year he assigned his home at Chalfont St. Giles to his eldest son on his marriage.378VCH Bucks. iii. 193. Penington was nominated for one of the six London seats in the first protectorate Parliament in July 1654, but he did not attend the election meeting and was not chosen.379Harl. 6810, ff. 164, 164v. By this time Penington, like his colleague Vassall, had fallen on hard times. The immunity from prosecution for debt he had enjoyed as an MP was now at an end and his creditors seized the opportunity to sue him. In May and July 1655 he petitioned the protector and his council to prevent his imprisonment and the confiscation of what remained of his lands.380CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 172, 179, 235, 244. It was said that his estates could ‘not yield 10s. in the pound to his creditors’.381Mystery of the Good Old Cause, 28. He did not attend the court of aldermen after 1654 and by October 1657 his financial difficulties were so severe that he was forced to resign from it.382Beaven, Aldermen of London i. 65. Removed from the political sphere in City and Parliament, Penington seems to have concentrated his energies on religious affairs. He violently disapproved of his eldest son’s decision to become a Quaker.383M. Webb, The Penns and Peningtons of the Seventeenth Century (1867), 83. His son ‘filled with grief and sorrow’ for his father’s soul, rebuked him for his ‘formal religion’ and his attempts to silence religious opponents by fines and imprisonment; he also claimed to be ‘a most affectionate son to my father, but irreconcilable to his religion’.384Soc. of Friends, Penington MSS, vol. i, pp. 120-7. This problem was shared by some of Penington’s other children: two more became Quakers and another was a Catholic priest.385Beaven, Aldermen of London ii. 180.

When the Long Parliament reassembled on 7 May 1659, Penington was one of those present in the painted chamber. Thereafter he was appointed to committees on London affairs, including those to recommend oyer and terminer commissioners (18 May) and to arrange property transactions with the corporation (18 June).386CJ vii. 656b, 689a. He was also one of those appointed on 18 June to consider how money could be raised for paying army arrears on the credit of the act of assessment.387CJ vii. 689a. On 22 June he was named to the committee on a bill for impressing seamen, and on 1 July to a committee to consider the current laws to prevent disturbances of religious worship.388CJ vii. 691b, 700b. On 7 July he was appointed a London militia commissioner with power to assemble all well affected and able bodied citizens and to form them into regiments.389A. and O. This move did not please the army which felt that Parliament was trying to create a rival armed force. On 21 July Penington and Atkin were sent to the JPs and sheriffs at Middlesex to require them to keep the peace, particularly around Enfield Chase.390CJ vii. 726b. He was also added to the committee to consider the petitions of Major-General Richard Overton and Alexander, earl of Leven, on 29 July.391CJ vii. 739a. Penington was present in the House for most of August and September, but he was named to only minor committees.392CJ vii. 751a, 755a, 757a, 782a. He recognized the dangers in the quarrel between the Rump and the army, however, and on 12 October, in the division after John Disbrowe* had presented the army officers’ petition, Penington acted as a teller against the motion that the commissions of all those who had signed the petition should be revoked, but the motion was carried.393CJ vii. 796a. The next day Penington’s fears were confirmed when soldiers occupied Westminster Hall and suspended the sitting. He played no further role in public life until the Rump reassembled in the new year of 1660. On 9 January he was named to a committee to propose commissioners of the great seal and judges to the central courts; two day later he was appointed to the committee to consider what qualifications should be imposed on new Members replacing those who had died; and on 16 January he was named to a committee to decide what lands should be settled on General George Monck*.394CJ vii. 806a, 807a, 813a. On 15 February he was named to a committee to consider a scandalous paper discovered by the City authorities.395CJ vii. 843b. He also presented a petition to Parliament on behalf of John Thomas, a gardener, who claimed that every inhabitant of England could increase his rent by one-and-a-half times by keeping pigs.396CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 448. He was not appointed to any committees after the return of the secluded Members on 21 February.

Restoration and retribution

On 1 May 1660 Charles II issued his declaration at Breda promising indemnity to all who surrendered within 40 days and Penington, believing that he was not in danger because he had not signed the death warrant, gave himself up on 15 June.397Whitelocke, Diary, 606. He had, however, made a fatal miscalculation. On yielding to the authorities he was immediately imprisoned in the Tower; his remaining estates in Norfolk and Buckinghamshire were seized; he was removed from the court of assistants in the Fishmongers’ Company; and he was excepted from pardon in the act of Oblivion.398GL, MS 5570/4, p. 889. On 10 October Penington was brought to trial at the Old Bailey for the murder of Charles I and pleaded not guilty. Examined in court six days later, he tried to justify his actions, claiming

I never had a hand in plotting, contriving malicious practices against his majesty, demonstrated by my utterly refusing to sign the warrant for his execution, though often solicited thereto; I cannot deny but I sat amongst them that day of the sentence, but I cannot remember I was there when sentence passed ... It was ignorance not malice that led me; if I had known what I had done I would not have done it.

He begged that ‘a favourable construction’ should be put on his actions.399State Trials v. 1000, 1195-8, 1198. Penington was found guilty but, because he had surrendered voluntarily, the penalty was commuted from death to life imprisonment. Royalists were in no doubt that Penington’s ‘crimes were of a crimson dye’ which demanded vengeance.400W. Winstanley, The Loyall Martyrology (1665), 113. One pamphleteer described Penington as ‘a cross grained peevish fellow’ and outlined the charges against him as

that you were one that circumcised the apprentices hair in London first; that you were the greatest enemy to orthodox ministers; and which is a more notorious commitment of folly and knavery in you, that notwithstanding you had been lord mayor, although by a false and sinister way, and continued so long in the gainful place and power of the ‘good old cause’, yet deceived your creditors of many thousand pounds.

The pamphleteer concluded that these ‘crimes’ might have been pardoned had he not been implicated in the king’s murder.401The Rebels Almanack (1660), 4. Penington remained in the Tower and on the night of 16 December 1661, between 10 and 11 p.m., he died a prisoner in the fortress he had once commanded. There were rumours that Sir John Robinson†, the lieutenant of the Tower and Archbishop Laud’s nephew, had mistreated Penington, but the inquest claimed he had died ‘a natural death, merely with age, he being about 80 years of age … having lain sick about a month before’.402Eg. 3349, f. 88. A warrant was issued to deliver Penington’s body to his relatives, but no record exists of his burial place.403Eg. 3349, f. 89; HMC 11th Rep., 3. As an attainted traitor, Penington left no assets and made no will, although his eldest son, also Isaac, continued to reside at Chalfont St Peter.404Oxford DNB.

Penington’s influence in the City during the 1640s is hard to over-estimate. Working with fellow radicals on the corporation, especially John Venn and Thomas Soame, he was able to secure the City’s support for John Pym in 1641-3 and for the war party and the Independents thereafter. His influence was briefly eclipsed by the rise of the political Presbyterians in 1646-7, but he re-established himself afterwards, and became an influential figure during the commonwealth. He could not reconcile himself to the protectorate, however, and apart from a brief reappearance in the summer and autumn of 1659, his political career ended with the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. Penington’s political prominence was not matched by financial security: he was continually dodging his creditors and avoiding awkward questions about his liabilities. The fact that he did not enrich himself during his years of influence confirms the impression given by contemporaries that Penington was an honest, godly man, albeit one driven by a dour, inflexible Calvinism that made him an easy target for royalist pamphleteers and alienated him from his children.