Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/213

 charged, among other offences, with having set natural law above the scriptures and the sacraments (ib. p. 212), with having disregarded the authority of Saints Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, and Pope Gregory, and with having written on great matters in English.

Next day (12 Nov.), apparently, he was carried before the king in council, and was formally expelled from the privy council (ib. pp. 210–11). George Neville [q. v.], the young Yorkist bishop-elect of Exeter, took a foremost part in denouncing his errors, and thus disclosed the political feeling at work against him. The hostility of the Yorkist lords seems to have cowed Pecock, who weakly declared himself ignorant of the matters in dispute—matters upon which he had, at least, read, thought, and taught for twenty years (ib. p. 213; cf., Acts and Monuments, ed. Townsend, iii. 733; cf. , Script. Illustr. Cat. p. 594). On the Sunday after his first examination Pecock's creed was read and condemned at St. Paul's Cross by the archbishop's order. Ultimately, at a final examination at Westminster, in the presence of the king and lords (, Monast. S. Albani, Rolls Ser. i. 281), the archbishop offered Pecock his choice between a public recantation and delivery to the secular arm to be burnt (ib. pp. 282–4). Pecock chose the former. His decision need not be ascribed to cowardice. He probably accepted the leading orthodox doctrines. A few of them he had exposed to negative criticism; the majority he had spent his life in defending, if by unorthodox arguments.

On 23 Nov. Pecock made a private recantation before an assembly of archbishops, bishops, and doctors (, p. 214), and again on the 28th, when some temporal lords were present (ib.) His public abjuration of all his alleged errors took place at Paul's Cross on 4 Dec., in the presence of the archbishop of Canterbury and thousands of spectators. Clothed in full episcopal robes, he delivered up fourteen of his books to be burnt (, i. 287;, p. 216). The populace threatened him with violence, and lampoons upon him circulated freely (, i. 288).

After his recantation Pecock was sent to Maidstone or Canterbury (, p. 216) to await his sentence. He seems to have at once sent to Calixtus III some account of his case, possibly in the lost document, ‘De sua palinodia,’ which is mentioned among his works. Later a hostile version of the events was sent to Rome by John Milverton [q. v.], provincial of the Carmelites, one of Pecock's old opponents (, Script. Illustr. Cat. Append. p. 593). The pope seems to have issued bulls for Pecock's reinstatement, whereupon Archbishop Bourchier appealed to the king. The latter appointed a commission of inquiry (Wharton MSS. 577, pp. 26 seq.), and on receiving its report (17 Sept. 1458) sent a deputation to Pecock offering him a pension if he would resign his bishopric, and threatening ‘the uttermost rigour of the law’ should he refuse. That Pecock was neither deprived nor degraded, but resigned, is clear (Regist. of Arch. Bourchier, institution under date 27 July 1458, Lambeth; information kindly supplied by the Very Rev. Canon Moyes; Vatican Transcripts in Brit. Mus. xxxiii. 485). His successor was appointed in March 1459 (ib. pp. 484 et seq.; Fœdera, v. ii. 83). Calixtus's successor, Pius II, doubting the genuineness of his repentance, issued a brief dated 7 April 1459, to the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of London and Winchester, ordering a new trial. In the event of conviction Pecock was to be either sent to Rome for punishment or publicly degraded from his episcopal office (‘Annals of Raynaldus,’ x. 191, in Ann. Eccles. vol. xxix.). It is probable that this brief was neither published nor acted upon (Dublin Review, new ser. xlvii. 34).

Pecock was sent to Thorney Abbey in Cambridgeshire. Forty pounds were assigned to the abbey for his maintenance. He was to be confined to one room, to have no books save a mass-book, psalter, legend, and bible, and no writing materials (Wharton MSS. No. 577, p. 80).

From this point Pecock disappears from history. He probably lived in seclusion at Thorney Abbey until his death, a year or two later (Chron. ed. Davies, p. 77), and was doubtless buried within the abbey precincts. Foxe, with the keen instinct of the martyrologist, hints that Pecock was ‘privily made away;’ but the suggestion (which was not unknown to Bale) has merely a psychological interest (Acts, &c. iii. 734).

Pecock is stated to have been a man of stately presence and pleasing appearance (, i. 279), though he suffered from an hereditary cutaneous disease (, p. 29). Conceit and self-confidence are apparent throughout his writings, but his disposition was naturally kindly (, Works, x. 217). That he had a considerable following, especially of young men, is clear (Three Fifteenth-Century Chron. p. 168;, pp. 212, 215, &c.; , pp. 214 seq.). About the time of his trial Archbishop Bourchier commissioned John Bury, an Augustinian friar, to reply to Pecock's ‘Re-