The history of the descent of Penshurst to the Sidneys may be summed up in few words—that of the Sidneys themselves will require greater space. It was “the ancient seat of the Pencestres, or Penchesters, who settled here in Norman times,[31] and one of whom was Sir Stephen, that famous Lord Warden of the Five Ports, and Constable of Dover Castle, who flourished in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., and who was a very learned man, and ordered all the muniments, grants, &c., relating to Dover Castle to be written in a fair book, which he called _Castelli Feodarium_, and out of which Darell composed the history of that fortress.” Dying without male issue, his estates were divided between his two daughters and co-heiresses, Joan, wife of Henry Cobham, and Alice, wife of John de Columbers, to the latter of whom fell Penshurst, &c., which was soon afterwards conveyed to Sir John de Poultney, who (15th Edward II.) had license to embattle his mansion houses at Penshurst and elsewhere. He was four times Lord Mayor of London, and, dying, his widow “married Lovaines, and conveyed these estates into that family with consent of her first husband’s immediate heirs;” and they afterwards passed, by an heiress, to Sir Philip St. Clere, whose son sold them to the Regent Duke of Bedford. On his decease in Paris in the reign of Henry VI., Penshurst and other manors passed to his next brother, Humphrey, the “good Duke of Gloucester,” after whose sad death, in 1447, they reverted to the crown, and were, in that same year, granted to the Staffords. On the attainder of Edward, Duke of Buckingham, Penshurst reverted to the Crown.