News Article from the Watford Observer
The museum hopes to stage a concert performance of the opera in due course.
“It’s a very powerful opera,” says Bill. “It opens with Penn and his fellow dissenters walking through the streets of London. They were regarded as outcasts and members of the crowd shout out “traitors” and “blasphemous swine”.
For the time being, visitors will also be fascinated to see the trunk, purse and an intricately worked wooden box, owned by Penn’s travelling companion Robert Dimsdale, who carved the panels of the box while making the month-long journey to America. These items are on temporary loan from his descendant, also called Robert, who attended the opening ceremony at the museum last Saturday.
After this initial voyage, Penn returned to England in 1684 and found the country in the grip of absolutism.
Bill points out that Penn lived in Rickmansworth for longer than he spent in America. Turbulent political times led him to go into hiding and sadly after suffering from the stress of separation and ill health, Gulielma died in 1694. Penn married Hannah Callowhill two years later and set sail for Pennsylvania with his then pregnant wife in 1699. The visit was short-lived however as Penn’s affairs in England brought him home again and he died after a series of strokes in 1718, at his home in Berkshire. Penn was buried next to Gulielma in the cemetery of the Jordans Quaker meeting house, near Chalfont St Giles.
