Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/301

Pendarves prompted him to challenge some clergymen of the established church to a public debate, and at last Jasper Mayne [q. v.] undertook to meet him. The debate took place in the church of Watlington, Oxfordshire, when there ‘were present innumerable people on each side.’ Pendarves, says Wood, was ‘back'd with a great party of anabaptists and the scum of the people, who behaved themselves very rude and insolent,’ and the discussion ended, as is usual in such cases, without any definite result. The eighth article brought against Edward Pocock, when he was cited in 1655 to appear before the commissioners for ejecting ignorant and scandalous ministers, was that he had refused to allow Pendarves to preach in his pulpit at Childrey (, Life, 1816 edit. p. 159). He was a fifth-monarchy man, and his love of disputation was inveterate. It is not necessary to accept the opinion of Wood that Pendarves worked for ‘no other end but to gain wealth and make himself famous to posterity.’

In 1656 Pendarves issued a volume called ‘Arrowes against Babylon,’ in which he endeavoured to lay bare the mystery of iniquity by attacking the churches of Rome and England, attempted to reform the apparel of the saints, and addressed certain queries to the quakers, accusing them of concealing their beliefs, and of contemning christian pastors, yet preaching themselves. The first part of this treatise was answered by the Rev. William Ley of Wantage, the Rev. John Tickell, and the Rev. Christopher Fowler of St. Mary's, Reading. The quakers were championed by James Naylor and Denys Hollister. In the same year Pendarves joined four other dissenting ministers in preparing an address to their congregations, entitled ‘Sighs for Sion,’ and with Christopher Feake he composed prefaces for an anonymous pamphlet on ‘The Prophets Malachy and Isaiah prophecying.’

At the beginning of September 1656 Pendarves died in London, changing ‘his many quarrels here for everlasting peace.’ After some hot debate the body, ‘embowell'd and wrap'd up in sear-cloth by the care of the brethren,’ was carried by water to Abingdon in a chest like those for sugar, fil'd up with sand and lodged at a grocer's.’ It arrived there on Saturday, 27 Sept., and three days later was conveyed to a piece of ground ‘at the Townes West-end and in the Axestreet’ which had been purchased as a burial-place for his congregation. Crowds came from neighbouring villages, and spent the preceding and succeeding days in religious exercises; but on 2 Oct. Major-general Bridges sent fifty horse soldiers from Wallingford to dissolve the meetings (Munster and Abingdon, by W. Hughes of Hinton, Berkshire; State Papers, 1656–7, p. 130).

A sermon which Pendarves had preached ‘in Petty France, London, the tenth day of the sixth month anno 1656,’ was published after his death by John Cox.

[Boase's Exeter College Commoners, p. 247; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (ed. Bliss), iii. 419–21; Wood's Fasti, pt. ii. pp. 3, 109; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. ii. 444–5; Brook's Puritans, iii. 256–7.] 

PENDEREL, RICHARD (d. 1672), one of five brothers who were primarily instrumental in the escape of Charles II after the battle of Worcester in 1651, was the son (reputedly the eldest) of William Penderel and Joan his wife. He was born on the Shropshire border of Staffordshire, with which county his family had been connected as early, at all events, as the time of Queen Elizabeth. His father was under-steward of the estate of the old knightly family of the Giffards of Chillington, and it was in that capacity that he occupied Boscobel House, which had been built by the Giffards about 1580, partly as a hunting lodge and partly as an asylum for recusant priests. For the latter purpose its situation in the thickest part of the forest of Brewood, and the numerous secret chambers with which it was honeycombed, eminently fitted it. It has often been stated that Richard Penderel and his brothers were ‘poor peasants’ and ‘ignorant wood-cutters.’ As a matter of fact they were substantial yeomen, as their wills at Somerset House and other documents executed by them sufficiently prove; and there were, moreover, relationships, in what precise degree is unascertained, between them and the Giffards, as well as with Father William Ireland [q. v.] At the time of the battle of Worcester (3 Sept. 1651) Richard Penderel was the tenant under a lease for lives (see his Will, Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1672) of Hobbal Grange in the parish of Tong in the county of Salop, while his brother William was the tenant of Boscobel itself; and another brother Humphrey occupied the picturesque half-timbered house, called Whiteladies, adjoining the ruins of the Cistercian priory of that name lying about half a mile on the Shropshire side of Boscobel. While spurring away from Worcester field on the night of 3 Sept. 1651, the king was advised by James Stanley, seventh earl of Derby [q. v.], to entrust himself to the care of the Penderels, by whom he had, not long before, himself been concealed at  Rh