PENRITH, a municipality of Cumberland county, New South Wales, Australia, on the Nepean River, 34 m. by rail W. by N. of Sydney. Penrith and the adjoining township of St Mary’s are chiefly remarkable for their connexion with the railway. The iron tubular bridge which carries the line over the Nepean is the best of its kind in the colony, while the viaduct over Knapsack Gulley is the most remarkable erection of its kind in Australia. There are large engineering works and railway fitting shops at Penrith, which is also the junction for all the western goods traffic. The inhabitants of both towns are mainly railway employes. Pop. (1901), of Penrith 3539, of St Mary’s 1840.
PENRITH, a market town in the Penrith parliamentary
division of Cumberland, England, in a valley near the river Eamont, on the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith, London
& North Western and North Eastern railways. Pop. of urban
district (1901), 9182. It contains some interesting brasses.
A 14th-century grammar school was refounded by Queen
Elizabeth; and there are two mansions dating from the same
reign, which have been converted into inns. Though there are
breweries, tanneries and saw-mills, the town depends mainly
on agriculture. There are some ruins of a castle erected as a
protection against the Scots. Near Penrith on the south, above
the precipitous bank of the Eamont, stands a small but beautiful
old castellated house, Yanwath Hall. To the north-east
of the town is Eden Hall, rebuilt in 1824. Among many fine
paintings, it contains portraits by Hoppner, Kneller, Lely, Opie
and Reynolds. The “Luck of Eden Hall,” which has been
celebrated in a ballad by the duke of Wharton, and in a second
ballad written by Uhland, the German poet, and translated
by Longfellow, is an enamelled goblet, kept in a leathern case
dating from the times of Henry IV. or Henry V. It was long
supposed to be Venetian, but has been identified as of rare
Oriental workmanship. The legend tells how a seneschal of
Eden Hall one day came upon a company of fairies dancing at
St Cuthbert’s Well in the park. These flew away, leaving their
cup at the water’s edge, and singing “If that glass either break
or fall, Farewell to the luck of Eden Hall.” Its true history
is unknown.
Penrith, otherwise Penreth, Perith, Perath, was founded by the Cambro-Celts, but on a site farther north than the present town. In 1222 Henry III. granted a yearly fair extending from the eve of Whitsun to the Monday after Trinity and a weekly market on Wednesday, but some time before 1787 the market day was changed to Tuesday. The manor in 1242 was handed over to the Scottish king who held it till 1295, when Edward I. seized it In 1397 Richard II. granted it to Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland, it then passed to Warwick the kingmaker and on his death to the crown. In 1694 William III. granted the honour of Penrith to the earl of Portland, by whose descendant it was sold in 1787 to the duke of Devonshire. A court leet and view of frankpledge have been held here from time immemorial. In the 18th and early part of the 19th century Penrith manufactured checks, linen cloth and ginghams, but the introduction of machinery put an end to this industry, only the making of rag carpets surviving. Clock and watch-making seems to have been an important trade here in the 18th century. The town suffered much from the incursions of the Scots, and Ralph, earl of Westmorland, who died 1426, built the castle, but a tower called the Bishop’s Tower had been previously erected on the same site. In 1597–1598 a terrible visitation of plague attacked the town, in which, according to an old inscription on the church, 2260 persons perished in Penrith, by which perhaps is meant the rural deanery. During the Civil War the castle was dismantled by the Royalist commandant. In 1745 Prince Charles Edward twice marched through Penrith, and a skirmish took place at Clifton. The church of St Andrew is of unknown foundation, but the list of vicars is complete from 1223.
PENRY, JOHN (1559–1593), Welsh Puritan, was born in Brecknockshire in 1559; tradition points to Cefn Brith, a farm near Llangammarch, as his birthplace He matriculated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, in December 1580, being then almost certainly a Roman Catholic, but soon became a convinced Protestant, with strong Puritan leanings. Having graduated B.A., he migrated to St Alban’s Hall, Oxford, and proceeded M.A. in July 1586. He did not seek episcopal ordination, but was licensed as University Preacher. The tradition of his preaching tours in Wales is slenderly supported; they could
only have been made during a few months of 1586 or the autumn of 1587. At this time ignorance and immorality abounded in Wales. In 1562 an act of parliament had made provision for translating the Bible into Welsh, and the New Testament was issued in 1567; but the number printed would barely supply a copy for each parish church. Indignant at this negligence, Penry published, early in 1587, The Æquity of an Humble Supplication—in the behalf of the country of Wales, that some order may be taken for the preaching of the Gospel among those people. Archbishop Whitgift, angry at the implied rebuke, caused him to be brought before the High Commission and imprisoned for about a month. On his release Penry married a lady of Northampton, which town was his home for some years. With the assistance of Sir Richard Knightley and others, he set up a printing press, which for nearly a year from Michaelmas 1588
was in active operation. It was successively located at East Moulsey (Surrey), Fawsley (Northampton), Coventry and other places in Warwickshire, and finally at Manchester, where it was seized in August 1589. On it were printed Penry’s Exhortation to the governours and people of Wales, and View of . . . such publike wants and disorders as are in the service of God . . . in Wales; as well as the celebrated Martin Marprelate tracts.
In January 1590 his house at Northampton was searched and his papers seized, but he succeeded in escaping to Scotland. There he published several tracts, as well as a translation of a learned theological work known as Theses Genevenses. Returning to England in September 1592, he joined the Separatist Church in London, in which he declined to take office, though after the
arrest of the ministers, Francis Johnson and John Greenwood, he seems to have been the regular preacher. He was arrested in March 1593, and efforts were made to find some pretext for a capital charge. Failing this a charge of sedition was based on the rough draft of a petition to the queen that had been found among his private papers; the language of which was indeed
harsh and offensive, but had been neither presented nor published. He was convicted by the Queen’s Bench on the 21st of May 1593, and hanged on the 29th at the unusual hour of 4 p.m., the signature of his old enemy Whitgift being the first of those affixed to the warrant.
See the Life, by John Waddington (1854).
PENRYN, a market town and port, and municipal and
contributary parliamentary borough of Cornwall, England, 2 m. N.W. of Falmouth, on a branch of the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901), 3190. It lies at the head of the estuary of the Penryn River, which opens from the main estuary of the Fal at Falmouth. Granite, which is extensively quarried in the neighbourhood, is dressed and polished at Penryn, and there are also chemical and bone manure works, engineering, iron and gunpowder works, timber-yards, brewing, tanning and paper-making. The harbour dries at low tide, but at high tide has from 9 to 1212 ft. of water. Area, 291 acres.
Penryn owed its development to the fostering care of the bishops of Exeter within whose demesne lands it stood. These lands appear in Domesday Book under the name of Trelivel. In 1230 Bishop Briwere granted to his burgesses of Penryn that they should hold their burgages freely at a yearly rent of 12d. by the acre for all service. Bishop Walter de Stapeldon secured a market on Thursdays and a fair at the Feast of St Thomas. The return to the bishop in 1307 was £7, 13s. 212d. from the borough and £26, 7s. 5d. from the forum. In 1311 Bishop Stapeldon procured a three days’ fair at the Feast of St Vitalis Philip and Mary gave the parliamentary franchise to the burgesses in 1553. James I. granted and renewed the charter of incorporation, providing a mayor, eleven
