Note 122 — Chapter VIII · CONCERNING THE LADY JANE AND THE QUEEN-DOWAGER

Mrs. Sybel or Sybilla Penn, dry nurse to Edward VI, was not, as erroneously stated by Gough Nichols in his Literary Remains of Edward VI, the daughter of Sir Hugh Pagenham or the wife of John Penne, barber-surgeon to Henry VIII, but the daughter of William Hampton of Dodyngton, Buckinghamshire, and owed her appointment as dry nurse and foster-mother to the future King to the good offices of Sir William Sydney. She married Mr. David Penn, and continued at Court after the death of Edward, being very kindly treated by both Mary and Elizabeth. She had an apartment in Hampton Court Palace, and died there in 1562 of the smallpox, at the same time that Elizabeth herself was attacked by that dreadful malady. She is buried in Hampton Church, and is said to haunt the palace because her bones were disturbed when the position of her monument was altered many years ago (1820). Mrs. Penn’s spirit was greatly displeased at this removal, and forthwith took to haunting the palace she had inhabited for so many years. Her ghost has been seen ascending the stairs as recently as 1896, when she nearly scared the attendant out of his wits. The well-known sketch by Holbein signed “Mother Jack” is supposed to be a portrait of this lady, but Sir Richard Holmes, the late learned Librarian at Windsor Castle, disputes this opinion, and attributes another portrait to her. (See Ernest Law’s History of Hampton Court Palace. George Bell & Sons. Tudor Period, p. 197 et seq.)