Sold – Naval Document Signed by Admiral Sir William Penn

In May 1660, King Charles II was restored to his throne. Assisting him in the Restoration was his brother James, Duke of York, whose particular interest and responsibility was the Royal Navy.

Admiral William Penn was a highly successful commander and took possession of Jamaica in 1654. He was appointed a Commissioner of the Royal Navy in 1660, in which year he was knighted. In the Dutch war in 1665, he distinguished himself as second in command under the Duke of York, and became a national hero. He then took leave of the sea but continued to act as a Commissioner for the Navy till 1669, when he retired. He died in 1670, aged forty-nine. A decade later, as a gesture of gratitude to the Admiral, King Charles II granted a large tract of land in America to his son, William Penn the younger (who named it Pennsylvania after his father). Famed diarist Samuel Pepys knew both father and son, writing at one point that the junior  Penn had become “a Quaker or some very melancholy thing.”

Document Signed, London, April 4, 1668, to the clerk of the Navy Yard at Woolrich, ordering him to place a man as an officer on one of his Majesty’s ships. “Whereas by an order of his Royal Highness James, Duke of York…Morgan Phillipps is…appointed boatswain of his Majesty’s ship the Pearl, and in pursuance thereof hath received a copy of the instructions proper for his place…These are to pray and require you to enter the said Morgan Phillipps boatswain of the said ship the Pearl – accordingly togther with such an allowment of wages and victuals for himself and servant as is proper…And for so doing this shall be your warrant.” The document is signed by Penn; Arthur, Lord Anglesey, Treasurer of the Navy; Admiral Sir John Mennes, Comptroller of the Navy, and Lord Brouneker, first president of the Royal Society after its incorporation in 1662.