Richard Pennant

Richard Pennant, 1st Baron Penrhyn (1737 – 21 January 1808) was the owner of Penrhyn estate, on the outskirts of Bangor, North Wales, six sugar plantations in Jamaica and hundreds of enslaved African workers. He was a staunch anti-abolitionist and sat in the House of Commons between 1761 and 1790. He received an Irish peerage in 1783.

Pennant was the second son of John Pennant, merchant, of Liverpool, and his wife Bonella Hodges, daughter of Joseph Hodges, of Jamaica. was educated at Newcome's academy in Hackney and was admitted at Trinity College, Cambridge on 18 January 1754.

Pennant was returned as Member of Parliament for Petersfield at the 1761 general election, by William Jolliffe under an arrangement with William Beckford. He intended to become MP for Liverpool at the next election, but when a vacancy arose in 1767, he was returned unopposed at a by-election on 4 December 1767. He successfully contested Liverpool in 1768, and again in 1774. In the 1780 general election he was defeated at Liverpool. On the recommendation of Fox, he was created 1st Baron Penrhyn of Penrhyn in the county of Lough, Ireland in 1783, even though he was not Irish. Holding an Irish peerage did not disqualify him from standing for elections to the Westminster House of Commons as, both before and after the Union, Irish peerages were used to create peers who could not sit in the English House of Lords but who could do so in the House of Commons.

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