Lady Penn, LVO, who died 20 November, 2023, aged 97, was a former Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, a life long friend of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, and a godmother of Lady Sarah Chatto.
She was born in Australia as Prudence Hilary Wilson, but always known as Prue, 12 January, 1926, daughter of Aubyn Harold Raymond Wilson (who died in 1934), and his wife Muriel Athelstan Hood Stewart-Stevens, 10th Lady of Balnakeilly, Perthshire (1899-1982). Prue's mother Muriel succeeded to the Balnakeilly estate for her lifetime in 1936 with remainder to her elder son under the will of her uncle Major Alexander Blair Stewart, 9th of Balnakeilly, and as a provision of the will assumed together with her husband and issue the additional surname of Stewart by Deed Poll 1937.
Prue had two brothers, Colonel Ralph Stewart-Wilson, MC, 11th of Balnakeilly (1923-2015), and Lieutenant Colonel Sir Blair Stewart-Wilson (1929-2011), Deputy Master of the Household to the Queen. By her mother’s second marriage, she acquired a step-brother, the fashionable newspaper and magazine man, Sir Jocelyn Stevens (1932-2014). Prue had another relation - Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Wilson (1865-1914), who, when he was at Eton in 1882, leapt on a man who was threatening to shoot Queen Victoria as she got into her coach at Windsor Station en route for the Castle. Queen Victoria sent for him the next day to thank him and asked what she could do for him. He said he wanted to join the Household Cavalry after leaving school. She arranged it, and he ended up commanding the Blues.
Prue Stewart-Wilson was married in London, 27 January, 1947, and in the presence of the then Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, to Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Eric Charles William Mackenzie Penn, GCVO (1916-1993), posthumous son of Capt Eric Frank Penn (who was killed in action in 1915), and his wife the former Gladys Ebden. The Penns served the sovereign for 65 years. Sir Eric Penn’s uncle Sir Arthur Penn, GCVO (1886-1960), had been a groom-in-waiting to King George VI on his accession in 1936 and then private secretary and treasurer to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother; Eric Penn joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Office in 1960. Their son David (born 1949) was a page of honour to Queen Elizabeth II, as was Prue's grandson, Rory Penn (born 1980). Lady Penn became a lady-in-waiting (officially a Woman of the Bedchamber) to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 1994 and served until HM's death in 2002. Eric Penn had been adopted and raised by his bachelor uncle, Sir Arthur Penn, who was so close in the affections of the Queen Mother that in the late 1950s Clarence House had to issue a statement to the effect that rumours of a marriage between the two were false.
The Penns set up home at Sternfield House, Saxmundham, Suffolk, and when in London, home was an apartment at St James’s Palace. In 1964 Prue was one of the godmothers to Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, daughter of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon, when she was christened in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace.
In 1960, Eric Penn joined the Royal Household as Assistant Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office under Sir Norman Gwatkin. He was Comptroller from 1964 until he retired in 1981, and those were the days when the people in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office paid meticulous attention to small details and got them right. They could also be forbidding and austere to outsiders.
Sir Eric Penn died 12 May, 1993, aged 77, and his widow joined the Queen Mother's household in the following year. Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh sometimes stayed the weekend in Suffolk. The Queen, Prince Philip, the Princess Royal and Princess Alexandra attended her 90th birthday party at Bellamy’s in 2016. She remained close to the Queen, even talking to her on the telephone 10 days before the monarch died.
She was appointed LVO in the 2002 demise honours list. Lady Penn is survived by her two sons, David and Christopher, and a daughter, Fiona Wemyss (born 1956).
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