Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/202

P honour of her Majesty.' In 1578 a patent was granted to Gilbert, and in the enterprise, which finally took form in 1583, Peckham was the chief adventurer, Gilbert assigning to him large grants of land and liberty of trade. In November 1583 he published 'A true reporte of the late discoveries and possession taken. . . of the Newfound-landes. . . Wherein is also breefely sette downe her highnesse lawfull Tytle thereunto, and the great and manifolde commodities that is likely to grow thereby to the whole Realme in generall, and to the adventurers in particular. . . .' It is reprinted in Hakluyt's 'Principal Navigations,' iii. 165. Whether by unsuccessful ventures or otherwise, he afterwards became embarrassed in his circumstances, and in 1595 the estate and manor of Denham came to the queen 'by reason of his debt to the crown.' They were conferred on William Bowyer, in whose family they still remain. He died in 1608, the inquisition of his, property being taken on 21 June. He married, in 1554, Susan, daughter and heiress of Henry Webbe. She died in childbed, at the age of seventeen, on 11 Dec. 1555 (, ii. 544). By a second wife two sons are mentioned–Edmund the elder, who would seem to have predeceased him, and George, who was his heir.

[Calendars of State Papers, Dom. and Colonial (America and West Indies); Lipscomb's Hist, of Buckinghamshire, freq. (see Index); Brown's Genesis of the U.S.A.; Prowse's Hist, of Newfoundland.]  PECKHAM, JOHN (d. 1292), archbishop of Canterbury, is stated by Bartholomew Cotton (De Archiepiscopis Cantuariæ, p. 371) to have been a native of Kent. Peckham, however, seems to have been connected with Sussex, and he himself says that he had been brought up in the neighbourhood of Lewes from a boy (Registrum, p. 902); from this it has been assumed that he was born at Lewes. But the connection may be merely due to the fact that the rectory of Peckham in Sussex belonged to Lewes priory (, Monast. Angl. v. 16). Another suggestion connects the archbishop with the Sussex family of Peckham of Arches, and with Framfield in that county, where the family of Peckham survived till the eighteenth century (Sussex Archœological Collections, iv. 299). Peckham's parentage is unknown, but he had a brother Richard, whose son Walter received some patronage from the archbishop (Registrum, pp. 1010, 1048–50); several other persons of the name occur in the ‘Register,’ and one Simon de Peckham, who received orders by John's special command, may have been a relative (ib. pp. 1046, 1048). Hook, on the supposed authority of Archbishop Parker, gives the date of Peckham's birth as 1240, but the true date must clearly have been some years earlier. Peckham received his earliest instruction at Lewes priory (ib. p. 902). Afterwards he went to Oxford, but it is of course impossible that he was, as sometimes alleged, a member of Merton College; the statement to this effect appears to be due to a confusion with Gilbert Peckham (fl. 1324) (, Grey Friars at Oxford, p. 238; Registrum, Pref. i. p. lviii). The suggestion that Peckham was the ‘Johannes juvenis’ [see, fl. 1267] whom Roger Bacon befriended is equally untenable. Peckham was perhaps a pupil of Adam Marsh, who, writing about 1250, speaks of him in favourable terms, and states that Peckham, having entered the Franciscan order, had resigned his post as tutor to the nephew of H. de Andegavia (Monumenta Franciscana, i. 256). In this letter Peckham is described as ‘dominus’ and ‘scholaris;’ he had therefore probably not graduated as master. He seems to have spent some time in the Franciscan convent at Oxford (Registrum, p. 977), but soon after 1250, if not before, he proceeded to Paris, where he studied under St. Bonaventure, took his doctor's degree, and ruled in theology (Monumenta Franciscana, i. 537, 550;, Annals, pp. 299–300). Peckham speaks of himself as educated in France from tender years; he must therefore have been quite young when he went to Paris. He mentions that he enjoyed the favour of Margaret, the wife of Louis IX, and that among his pupils at Paris was Thomas de Cantelupe [q. v.], the future bishop of Hereford (Registrum, pp. 315, 827, 874). At Paris also he met St. Thomas Aquinas, and was present when that doctor submitted his doctrine on the ‘Unity of Form’ to the judgment of the masters in theology. Peckham records that he alone stood by Thomas, and defended him to the best of his power (ib. pp. 866, 899). He also defended the mendicant orders against William of St. Amour, whose teaching caused so much disturbance at Paris between 1252 and 1262 (cf. Registrum, Preface, iii. p. xcvii). Peckham returned to Oxford about 1270, and there became eleventh lector of his order (Monumenta Franciscana, i. 550). On 2 May 1275 he was appointed, in conjunction with Oliver de Encourt, prior of the Dominicans, to decide a suit in the chancellor's court at Oxford (Close Roll 3 Edw. I, ap. Little, p. 155). A little later he was elected ninth provincial minister of the Franciscans in England, and