Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/211

 he formed his friendship with Walter Lyhert [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Norwich. On 21 Dec. 1420 he was admitted both acolyte and subdeacon by Richard Fleming [q. v.], bishop of Lincoln; he was ordained deacon on 15 Feb. 1421, and priest on the title of his college fellowship on 8 March following. In 1425 he proceeded B.D. His talents and learning attracted the notice of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester [q. v.], then protector, and soon after 1425 Pecock probably left Oxford for the court. In 1431 he was elected to the mastership of Whittington College, near the Three Cranes in the Vintry, London (, Hist. de Episc. et Dec. Londin. et Assav. p. 349). To the college was attached the rectory of St. Michael's in Riola, and to this Pecock was presented by the chapter of Canterbury on 19 July 1431 (ib.)

His work in London, where the lollards were still numerous, forced on his attention the points at issue between them and the church. Pecock at once entered the lists in behalf of the orthodox position. His earliest extant work is ‘The Book or Rule of Christian Religion,’ in three parts, the manuscript of which was purchased by Sir Thomas Phillipps. To this period also is ascribed the ‘Donet’ (1440?), or an introduction to the chief truths of the Christian faith, in the form of a dialogue between father and son. It was intended ‘to be of little quantity, that wellnigh each poor person may by some means get cost to have it as his own.’ In it Pecock complains that other books by him had already been copied and spread abroad against his will, and he offered to retract, at the bidding of the church, any false conclusion at which he might have arrived. This remark implies that he had excited some suspicion in regard to his orthodoxy (Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy, Rolls Ser. vol. i. pp. xxi, lxi, lxx). Some years later, about 1454, appeared a supplement to the ‘Donet,’ entitled ‘The Follower to the Donet,’ also in the dialogue form. Both works are extant in manuscript, the ‘Donet’ in the Bodleian, the ‘Follower’ in the British Museum.

In 1444 Pecock was promoted by papal provision (dated 22 April) to the bishopric of St. Asaph, and was consecrated by John Stafford [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, at Croydon on 14 June, the temporalities having been restored to him on the 8th (, Fœdera, vol. v. pt. i. p. 132). At the same time he vacated the mastership of Whittington College (, Repertorium, i. 493), and proceeded D.D. at Oxford without offering any exercise or act (, Loci e Libro Veritatum, pp. 26, 30, &c., ed. Rogers). In 1447 Pecock preached at St. Paul's Cross a sermon which offended both the stricter churchmen and the advocates of church reform. He asserted seven conclusions in which he sought to justify the practice of bishops who did not preach, who absented themselves from their dioceses, received their bishoprics from the pope by provision, and paid firstfruits. He distributed his argument in English among his friends, and forwarded it to Archbishop Stafford in an extant document called ‘Abbreviatio Reginaldi Pecock’ (Repressor, ii. 615 seq.). Such an endeavour to stifle the growing agitation against ecclesiastical abuses only stimulated the activity of the agitators. Dr. William Millington [q. v.], provost of King's College, Cambridge, denounced Pecock's teaching, from St. Paul's Cross, as a national danger (, p. 44). His enemies in the universities, and especially among the four orders of friars, made a fruitless appeal to Archbishop Stafford, and afterwards to Archbishop John Kemp [q. v.], to proceed against him. Privately Pecock seems to have modified his statements. The bishops were exempt, he explained, not from the duty of expounding the scripture after the manner of the fathers, but from preaching after the modern fashion of the friars. In a letter to the Franciscan Dr. Goddard, he denounced the friars as ‘pulpit-bawlers’ (ib. pp. 42, 44, 100, 208).

In 1450 he was translated to the bishopric of Chichester in succession to his friend Adam Molyneux or Moleyns [q. v.] This appointment was one of the last acts of William de la Pole, first duke of Suffolk [q. v.], and attached Pecock publicly to the falling house of Lancaster. Shortly afterwards he was called to the privy council, on the records of which his name appears from 29 May 1454 until 27 Jan. 1457 (, Proceedings, vi. 185 &c.). In the parliament called on 9 July 1455 he was one of the triers of petitions for Gascony and the islands. On 10 Nov. and 11 Dec. following his name was attached to the documents which empowered Richard Plantagenet, duke of York [q. v.], to act as protector during the illness of King Henry VI (Rolls of Parliament, v. 279 a, &c., and App. pp. 453–4).

About 1455 Pecock's ‘Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy,’ which he had begun some six years before, was probably published (Repressor, pp. xxii n. 90, ii. 576). It is in English throughout. In the prologue Pecock proposes to consider eleven points of objection advanced by the lollards against the clergy. These are: 1, the use of images; 2, pilgrimages; 3, clerical property in land;