There is a very fine marble memorial in the Lady Chapel of Penn Church to Roger Mather, who was Vicar of Penn for 11 years. The inscription reads, ‘Near this place lies the body of the late Reverend Roger Mather, Clerk eleven years Vicar of this parish, to whom Asheton Curzon Esqr. was Pupil, Patron and Friend. He died the first day of September MDCCLXVIII‘

Assheton Curzon (1730-1820), was Sir Nathaniel Curzon’s second son, a grandson of Sarah Penn. He was given the manor of Penn on marriage in 1756, and he was to hold the proprietorship of Penn church for over sixty years, later becoming Viscount Curzon.

The portrait below, by Arthur Devis (1712-87) was painted in c.1754. Assheton Curzon was then 24 and Roger Mather was 35. Mather was a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, a Doctor of Divinity and Oxford’s Public Orator for many years. Assheton Curzon also went to Brasenose where Roger Mather was Tutor to both him and his elder brother. In 1754 he was returned as MP for Clitheroe and he employed Mather to teach him the art of public speaking.

Just as his father’s generation had appointed their Berkhamsted School teacher, John Bennet, as Vicar of Penn, so Assheton Curzon, as soon as he became the Proprietor of Penn church, exercised the same patronage for Roger Mather, who already held the Rectorship of St Mary’s in Whitechapel. The Penn vacancy was held open for him for three years until he could take it up.

Arthur Devis, a Lancashire painter of the Tory squirearchy, was at the height of his popularity. He specialised in informal small-scale portraits in domestic surroundings, known as conversation pieces. The figures have a somewhat doll-like appearance which was very fashionable at the time. This portrait is very unusual in that it uses the idea of a spotlight focusing on the two actors on a stage thus emphasising the aspect of public speaking in which they were engaged.

The sculptor of the monument is regrettably not recorded. The photograph illustrates that it was originally placed on the wall near the centre of the Lady Chapel, a mark of great respect since many of the Penn and Curzon family were buried nearby. It was moved in 2000 to permit the new Millennium arrangements which we see today. I watched two expert Polish craftsmen dismantle it into six separate components and reassemble it further along the same wall. They thought that the grey marble, which weighed 400 lbs, was probably English ‘dove grey’, no longer quarried, and the white marble was Italian ‘Carrara’, from a great quarry near Rome used by Michelangelo.

Assheton Curzon with his Tutor, Revd Dr Roger Mather c. 1754, by Arthur Devis. The portrait was still owned by a descendant of Assheton Curzon when it was sold by Christie’s in 1981. This is a copy of a small colour print from Christie’s catalogue which is framed in Penn House.

© Miles Green,Penn Parish Newsletter No.37, December 2014
Photographs courtesy Eddie Morton ARPS

In 1716, Mary Assheton was 21, the second daughter of Sir Ralph Assheton of  Middleton, Lancashire, and was married that same year to 40 year-old Nathaniel Curzon, Sarah Penn’s second son. This portrait by Charles Jervaise was painted in1727 , and hangs in Penn House.  This was the year when her husband inherited
the baronetcy with the Kedleston and Penn estates after his elder brother was killed in a hunting accident.

Charles Jervaise (or Jervas) studied under Kneller and succeeded him as Court painter in 1723, although Kneller had a poor opinion of his talents. ‘Ah! Mein Gott, if his horse draws no better than he does, then he will never get to his journey’s end.’

The second portrait is of their two surviving children, Nathaniel and Assheton, in c.1738, by Andrea Soldi, which hangs in Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. Nathaniel (standing) would have been about 12 years old and his brother Assheton, 9. Nathaniel, later 1st Baron Scarsdale, inherited the Kedleston estate and Assheton, later 1st Viscount Curzon, the Penn estate and with it the proprietorship of Penn Church. There is an identical portrait, save that the boys are not wearing ‘Vandyck’ dress, at Parham House in Sussex, the house of one of Assheton Curzon’s sons.

Andrea Soldi (1703-51) from Florence, had begun his career by painting British Turkey merchants in the Levant and it was on their recommendation that he came to England in 1736. He was an immediate success introducing a dash of skill, wit, colour and flair, but he wasted all his money on an extravagant lifestyle and in 1744, at the height of his career, he was imprisoned for debt and his career never really recovered.

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.42, March 2016
Photograph © courtesy of Eddie Morton

There is a fine wall monument, near the vestry door, to General William Haviland, an Irishman who lived in Penn for the last few years of his life. He was a close friend and relation by marriage of Edmund Burke, the most famous parliamentarian of his day, who had an estate at Gregories in Beaconsfield and also owned some land in Penn. General Haviland’s son Thomas, also an army officer, married Edmund Burke’s niece.

It was Burke who wrote the memorable epitaph on Haviland’s monument:
‘Here rest the remains of General William Haviland, late Colonel of the 45th Regt. of Infantry; an experienced and successful Commander without ostentation: a firm friend without profession: a good man without pretence. He died Sept.16th 1784, aged 67 years’.  The memorial was placed by General Haviland’s wife Salusbury  (N.B. not Salisbury as on the monument)

The monument was sculpted and signed by James Hickey (1751-95), who like Burke and Haviland was also an Irishman and a particular protégé of Burke’s. His name is inscribed on the monument as I+Hickey, which is also noteworthy for very visible corrections to no less than three of the inscribed dates. Hickey’s early death at the age of only 44 cut short a promising artist who had been appointed sculptor to the Prince of Wales in 1786 and who shortly before he died had been given the important commission, which he never executed, for a monument in Westminster Abbey to David Garrick the famous actor / manager.

Twenty years ago, I was in touch with the Regimental Office of the Royal Irish Rangers in the castle at Enniskillen. They were the successors to the Royal Iniskilling Fusiliers, who in turn were once the 27th Iniskilling Foot. William Haviland was appointed ensign at the age of 21 just as England declared war with Spain in 1739 and fought with the Regiment in all the many battles of his day against the rival Spanish and French Empires. He was later an aide-de-camp in the defence of Stirling Castle against Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745. He commanded the regiment from 1752-60 and went on to Canada to take a leading Dart in the capture of Montreal by General Wolfe in 1759, commanding a brigade of 3,400 men. This settled Canada’s future as part or the British Empire. In 1767, he was appointed Colonel of the 45th Foot. During the American War of Independence he held a command as a Lt General for a short time.

He was an inventive man with considerable mechanical genius and designed special pontoons to cross rapids and a sort of circular slide rule called the Haviland instrument which was used to work out the manpower required for various military tasks.

General Haviland lived in a large medieval mansion over-looking the Front Common at the lower end of Widmer Pond about 100 yards below the Red Lion. Edmund Burke later used the same house as the school for the sons of French émigré nobility (see Mansions & mud houses, pp. 34, 35). A contemporary recalled two huge fir trees close to the house, ‘the largest and most lofty firs in the kingdom … which may be distinctly seen from the terrace at Windsor, from Harrow-on-the-Hill, from St. Paul’s Church, and from the rising ground near Reading’.  General Haviland apparently called them his ‘two Grenadiers’.

Haviland Hatchment 1784

He had a reputation for courage, ability and open-handed generosity and was apparently known and highly esteemed by George III. There is much about him in the PRO Kew, including his journal and correspondence, which would make a good subject for a future thesis.

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter, No.1, December 2007

John Middleton became Vicar in 1787, but he had already been Curate for 21 years, first to Roger Mather, a distinguished academic, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford and tutor to Nathaniel and Assheton Curzon. A Curate would take part ofthe income and the Vicar, even if not resident, would take the rest. John Middleton lived in the vicarage (a predecessor to the present Old Vicarage next to the church), and was obviously a man of considerable energy keeping meticulous and scrupulously neat notes on the many small improvements he made to the vicarage and church. He taught ‘several young gentlemen entrusted to his care’, enlarging his ‘Little Parlour and the Room over it’ to make room for them. He also made a precise list of the name and size of the glebeland fields, amounting to 40 acres.

He wrote a particularly informative letter, in 1802, to the Lysons brothers, authors of Magna Britannia, describing the parish at that time. His most significant report was that he had seen the date of 1177 on a foundation stone under the chancel when they were digging a new vault for Penn Assheton Curzon in 1797. I was told that it would be very unusual to find such an old foundation date, but his careful record-keeping encourages acceptance of his claim. He noted many other points of interest, such as: taking down two thirds of Penn House; the location of the Segrave Manor House; ‘a large Vault under the Body of the Church towards the Belfry’ where William Penn the Quaker’s grandchildren are buried; and he had a fair bit to say about the French School and Edmund Burke. He also named the 10 counties which could be clearly seen from the tower with perhaps another two, Northampton and Sussex.

John Middleton’s letter to the Lysons brothers authors of Magna Britannia  Opens as a PDF (2 Mb).

He died on July 11th 1808, having worked and lived in the parish for 42 years. The entry in the register reads ‘The Rev’d John Middleton, Vicar of this Parish and Chaplain to Lord Viscount Curzon was buried (universally regretted) in the Vault, in which his daughter Mrs Etty, had been deposited, on the West side of the South Porch of the Church, aged 67 years’. His daughter, Mary, the wife of the Rev’d James Etty, had lost an infant daughter in 1799 and herself died in March 1804 ‘of a Consumption, aged 32 years’. His wife, Mary, died aged 79, on December 30th 1812.

The register notes, “Underneath Mr Bennet’s Tombstone, on the West side of the south Porch of the Church, Mr Middleton caus’d a Vault to be made, in which Mrs Etty was deposited. There are places for three more to lie abreast. The Tomb has been new made, the Iron railing extended, and the space within neatly paved. The entrance of the Vault is under the Wall which supports the Iron Work on the West side opposite the head of the Tomb.” These two highly regarded Vicars share the same space with the inscription for John Middleton – ‘who lived universally beloved and died universally regretted’ – still mostly legible in the slanting light of an early morning winter sun on the side of John Bennet’s tomb. There is a black marble stone on top of the tombstone which carries John Bennet’s inscription

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.47,  January 2017
Photographs © courtesy of Eddie Morton ARPS

We have noted that the Revd John Middleton died, ‘universally regretted’, in 1808. He was succeeded by Benjamin Anderson, already 75 years old and presumably a particular friend of John Middleton’s since the parish register records that it was Anderson who had inducted him as vicar ofPenn in 1787. He was born in 1733 in Clerkenwell, then just outside the City of London, and went to Magdalen Hall, Oxford (since renamed as Hertford College), when he was 35, but did not graduate. He was curate of Ellesborough, Hampden and Kimble when he inducted John Middleton in Penn. Anderson was instituted by the Bishop of Lincoln in whose diocese Penn still remained.

However, he was already a long-standing resident of Penn. He was leasing a house from Edmund Burke in 1797, and the Penn Poor Rate book for 1804 shows that he lived near the church. Edmund Burke described him in 1795 as ‘a respectable inhabitant in the Village, who is a Clergyman of learning and merit‘. He was apparently an astronomer or scientist of some achievement since Burke, writing to his friend William Windham, the Secretary at War, refers to ‘Mr Anderson, a Clergyman at Penn whose Observatory and Experimental apparatus I wished much to show you’.

The Knoll, a lovely 17th-century Listed house at the rear of the churchyard was built for the newly-wed Nathaniel Curzon and his wife Sarah Penn. On the south side of the house is a tiled turret or belvedere where, so local legend has it, Queen Anne sat watching her children play on the lawn at Windsor. This is a wildly improbable explanation and a far more likely one is that the belvedere was built as an observatory by Benjamin Anderson when he lived in the house before becoming Vicar of Penn.

He also had relations in Penn, in fact he still had until very recently. Charles Garland, who was Steward of the Penn Estate, was a nephew, and Walter Carden, who died in 2008, was a descendant of Charles Garland.

Benjamin Anderson died in 1812, aged 78, after only four years in office and his wife followed two years later. There is a mural tablet on the south wall of the nave to his memory and that of his wife, Rebecca. He built a vault for them both ‘beneath the cross aisle of the Church, nearly under the Front of the Gallery over the South entrance of the Church‘. The vault is marked by inscribed stones in the floor, now concealed under the carpet. The gallery over the south porch door had been put up in 1703, ‘at the charges of the young men that had learned to sing Psalms‘.

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.48, March 2017
Photographs courtesy Eddie Morton ARPS