aldermen and twelve councillors, markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and fairs on the 1st of May, the 7th of July and the 21st of December. The charter having been surrendered, James II. by a new charter inter alia confined the parliamentary franchise to members of the corporation. This proviso however was soon disregarded, the franchise being freely exercised by all the inhabitants paying scot and lot. An attempt to deprive the borough of its members, owing to corrupt practices, was defeated by the House of Lords in 1827. The act of 1832 extended the franchise to Falmouth in spite of the rivalry existing between the two boroughs, which one of the sitting members asserted was so great that no Penryn man was ever known to marry a Falmouth woman. In 1885 the united borough was deprived of one of its members. The corporation of Penryn was remodelled in 1835, the aldermen being reduced to four. Its foreign trade, which dates from the 14th century, is considerable. The extra-parochial collegiate church of Glasney, founded by Bishop Bronescombe in 1265, had a revenue at the time of its suppression under the act of 1545 of £221, 18s. 4d.
See Victoria County History, Cornwall; T. C. Peter, Glasney Collegiate Church.
PENSACOLA, a city, port of entry, and the county-seat of
Escambia county, Florida, U.S.A., in the N.W. part of the
state, on Pensacola Bay, about 6 m. (11 m. by channel) N. of the
Gulf of Mexico. Pop. (1900) 17,747; (1910) 22,982. It ranks
second in size among the cities of Florida. The city is served
by the Louisville & Nashville and the Pensacola, Alabama &
Tennessee railways, and by steamers to West Indian, European
and United States ports. The harbour[1] is the most important
deep-water harbour south of Hampton Roads. The narrow
entrance is easily navigable and is defended by Fort Pickens on
the west end of Santa Rosa Island, with a great sea-wall on the
Gulf side (completed in 1909), Fort McRee on a small peninsula
directly opposite, and Fort Barrancas on the mainland immediately
north-east of Fort McRee. On the mainland 1 m. east of
Fort Barrancas are a United States Naval Station, consisting of a
yard (84 acres enclosed) with shops, a steel floating dry dock and
marine barracks; and a reservation (1800 acres) on which are a
naval hospital, a naval magazine, two timber ponds, a national
cemetery, and the two villages of Warrington and Woolsey,
with a population of about 1500, mostly employés of the yard.
The city’s principal public buildings are the state armoury,
the Federal building, and the city hall. The mean annual
temperature is about 72° F., and breezes from the Gulf temper
the heat. Pensacola is a shipping point for lumber, naval
stores, tobacco, phosphate rock, fish, cotton and cotton-seed
oil, meal and cake, and is one of the principal markets in the
United States for naval stores. In 1895 the foreign exports
were valued at $3,196,609, in 1897 at $8,436,679, and in 1909
at $20,971,670; the imports in 1909 were valued at $1,479,017.
The important factor in this vast development has been the
Louisville & Nashville railway, which after 1895 built extensive
warehouses and docks at Pensacola. There are excellent coaling
docks—good coal is brought hither from Alabama—and a grain
elevator. Among the manufactures are sashes, doors and
blinds, whiting, fertilizers, rosin and turpentine, and drugs.
Pensacola Bay may have been visited by Ponce de Leon in 1513 and by Panfilo de Narvaez in 1528. In 1540 Maldonado, the commander of the fleet that brought De Soto to the Florida coast, entered the harbour, which he named Puerta d’Auchusi, and on his recommendation De Soto designated it as a basis of supplies for his expedition into the interior. In 1559 a permanent settlement was attempted by Tristan de Luna, who renamed the harbour Santa Maria, but two years later this settlement was abandoned. In 1696 another settlement was made by Don Andres d’Arriola, who built Fort San Carlos near the site of the present Fort Barrancas, and seems to have named the place Pensacola. In 1719, Spain and France, being at war, Pensacola was captured by Sieur de Bienville, the French governor of Louisiana. Later in the same year it was successively re-taken by a Spanish force from Havana and recaptured by Bienville, who burned the town and destroyed the fort. In 1723, three years after the close of hostilities, Bienville relinquished possession. The Spanish then transferred their settlement to the west end of Santa Rosa Island, but after a destructive hurricane in 1754 they returned to the mainland. In 1763, when the Floridas were ceded to Great Britain, Pensacola became the seat of administration for West Florida and most of the Spanish inhabitants removed to Mexico and Cuba. During the War of American Independence the town was a place of refuge for many Loyalists from the northern colonies. On the 9th of May 1781 it was captured by Don Bernardo de Galvez, the Spanish governor at New Orleans. Most of the English inhabitants left, but trade remained in the hands of English merchants. During the War of 1812 the British made Pensacola the centre of expeditions against the Americans, and in 1814 a British fleet entered the harbour to take formal possession. In retaliation General Andrew Jackson attacked the town, driving back the British. In 1818, on the ground that the Spanish encouraged the Seminole Indians in their attacks upon the American settlements in the vicinity, Jackson again captured Pensacola, and in 1821 Florida was finally transferred to the United States. On the 12th of January 1861 the Navy Yard was seized by order of the state government, but Fort Pickens, defended first by an insignificant force under Lieut. Adam J. Slemmer (1828–68) and afterwards by a larger force under Lieut.-Colonel Harvey Brown (1796–1874), remained in the hands of the Union forces, and on the 8th of May 1862 the Confederates abandoned Pensacola. Pensacola was chartered as a city in 1895.
PENSHURST, a village in the south-western parliamentary division of Kent, England, at the confluence of the Eden and
Medway, 412 m. S.W. of Tonbridge. Pop. (1901), 1678. The village is remarkable for some old houses, including a timbered house of the 15th century, and for a noted factory of cricket implements. The church, chiefly late Perpendicular, contains a large number of monuments of the Sidney family and an effigy of Sir Stephen de Penchester, Warden of the Cinque Ports in the time of Edward I. Penshurst Place is celebrated as the home of the Sidney family. Anciently the residence of Sir Stephen de Penchester, Penshurst was granted to Henry VIII.’s chamberlain, Sir William Sidney, whose grandson, Sir Philip Sidney, was born here in 1554. It passed to Sir Philip’s younger brother Robert, who in 1618 was created earl of Leicester. On the death of the seventh earl in 1743 the estates devolved upon his niece Elizabeth, whose only child married Sir Bysshe Shelley of Castle Goring. Their son was created a baronet in 1818 as Sir John Shelley-Sidney, and his son was created Baron de L’Isle and Dudley in 1835. The mansion is quadrangular, and has a fine court, chapel and hall (c. 1341) with open timber roof and a minstrels’ gallery. The various rooms contain an interesting collection of portraits, armour and other family relics. The praises of the park and the house have been sung in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, and by Ben Jonson, Edmund Waller and Robert Southey.
PENSION (Lat. pensio, a payment, from pendere, to weigh, to pay), a regular or periodical payment made by private employers, corporations or governments, in consideration either of past services or of the abolition of a post or office. Such a pension takes effect on retirement or when the period of service is over. The word is also used in the sense of the payment by members of a society in respect of dues.
United Kingdom.
In the United Kingdom the majority of persons in the employ of the government are entitled to pensions on reaching a certain age and after having served the state for a certain minimum number of years. That such is the case, and moreover that it is usual to define such pensions as being given in consideration of past services, has led to the putting forward very generally the argument that pensions, whether given by a government or
- ↑ In 1881 the United States government began to improve the harbour by dredging, and in June 1909 the depth of the channel, for a minimum width of about 300 ft., was 30 ft. at mean low water.
