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  and Paulet were summoned before the council, and Peacham was re-examined; but, although Peacham continued to give mysterious hints that he was abetted by persons of influence, no evidence on the point was adduced, and Peacham fell back on a denial of the authorship of the incriminating papers (10 March 1614–15). They were by a namesake, 'a divine, a scholar, and a traveller,' who dwelt 'sometimes at Hounslow as a minister,' who had visited Hinton St. George, and had left some manuscripts in the rectory study. Peacham was apparently referring at random to the contemporary writer, [q. v.]

In July Peacham was sent to Taunton to stand his trial. On 7 Aug. 1615 he was arraigned at the assizes before Sir Christopher Tanfield and Serjeant Montagu. Sir Randal Crewe, the king's Serjeant, and Sir Henry Yelverton, solicitor-general, came from London to conduct the case (, Diary, Camd. Soc.) 'Seven knights were taken from the bench to be of the jury.' Peacham defended himself 'very simply, but obstinately and doggedly enough.' He was, however, found guilty and condemned to death. No efforts seem to have been made to carry out the sentence. On 31 Aug. he was examined anew, and, while admitting that he wrote the sermon, declared that he had no intention of publishing or preaching it. For seven months he lingered in the gaol at Taunton. On 27 March 1616 Chamberlain wrote to Carleton: 'Peacham, the condemned minister, is dead in the jail at Taunton, where, they say, he left behind him a most wicked and desperate writing, worse than that he was convicted for.'

Peacham's character demands no admiration, and his persecution would not have given him posthumous fame had not James I and Bacon by their zealous efforts to obtain his conviction raised legal controversies of high constitutional importance.



PEACHAM, HENRY (1576?–1643?), author, was born at North Mimms, Hertfordshire, about 1576. His father, Henry Peacham, after serving the cure of North Mimms, became in 1597 rector of the north mediety of the parish of Leverton, near Boston, Lincolnshire. That benefice he was still holding in 1605. The elder Peacham was a good classical scholar, and published in 1577, with a dedication to [q. v.], bishop of London, 'The Garden of Eloquence, conteyning the figures of Grammar and Rhetorick, from whence maye bee gathered all manner of Flowers, Colours, Ornaments, exornations, forms, and fashions of Speech,' London, 1577 (by H. Jackson), 4to. Another edition, 'corrected and augmented,' appeared with a dedication to Sir John Puckering in 1593. The elder Peacham was also author of 'A Sermon upon the three last verses of the first chapter of Job,' London, 1590, 16mo, dedicated to Margaret Clifford, countess of Cumberland, and Anne, countess of Warwick.

Henry the younger went to school, first near St. Albans and afterwards in London, and as a boy he saw Dick Tarleton on the stage (Truth of Our Times, p. 103). Subsequently he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was admitted a scholar on 11 May 1593, along with [q. v.] and Thomas Comber, afterwards master of the college. He graduated B.A. in January 1594-5, and M.A. in 1598.

'Rawhe torn' from the university, and thrown on his own resources at an early age (ib. p. 13), he became master of the free school at Wymondham in Norfolk. He disliked the scholastic profession, but took an interest in his pupils (cf. Thalia's Banquet, epigrams 70 and 87). His accomplishments were far more varied than are usually found in a school-master. He could make competent Latin and English verses, knew something of botany, and was, besides, a musical composer, a student of heraldry, and a mathematician, being, he says, 'ever naturally addicted to those arts and sciences which consist of proportion and number.' Moreover he could paint, draw, and engrave portraits and landscapes. While at Cambridge he made a map of the town (Compleat Gentleman, p. 126). Horace Walpole commends a print that he engraved of Sir Thomas Cromwell after Holbein. His first essay in literary work was a practical treatise on art. It was entitled 'Graphice, or the most auncient and excellent Art of Drawing with the Pen and Limning in Water Colours,' London, 1606, 4to, and was dedicated to Sir Robert Cotton; it passed through many editions under the new title of 'The Gentleman's Exercise,' 1607, 1612, 1634, when it was dedicated to Sir Edmund Ashfield, deputy lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. In 1610 he translated King James's 'Basilicon Doron' into Latin verse, 'and presented it, with emblemes limned in liuely colours, to Prince Henry' (cf. Gentleman's Exercise, 1612, p. 7). The work a curious example of Peacham's versatility is still extant in Harl. MS. 6855, art. 15 (38 pp.), and bears the title 'Βασιλικὸν