The Quaker in question was born the son of the then Lord of the Admiralty in 1644. He was disowned by his father for joining the Quaker movement, but this did not deter him. He travelled the country at least twice with the founder of the Quaker movement, George Fox, in 1667 and 1669, and they were known to have stayed in Sankey and Penketh on these tours. Their influence was marked by the Quakers, or Society Of Friends, buying the land here in 1671, and building one of the earliest Friends Meeting Houses here ten years later. The original meeting house was destroyed in the mid-20th century, and replaced with the current building.
Our Quaker friend was reconciled with his family at his fathers' death-bed, inheriting the family estate. Part of the inheritance was a debt owed by King Charles II, who settled the debt by handing over substantial landholdings in America, Our hero sailed to America almost immediately, creating a colony on his new lands and naming it "Sylvania". The King insisted that he name it after his late father, and so a compromise was reached, and the colony became known as Pennsylvania. Being a Quaker, and therefore having suffered religious persecution, the new Governor laid out laws enshrining freedom of speech, which later became the foundation of the American constitution.
Although of lesser consequence, our hero's influence on Penketh has been commemorated by a street being named after him, adjacent to the Friends Meeting House.