Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/260

Pelham Committee was appointed in 1850 Chichester was made head of the board, with the title of first church estates' commissioner. He retained the position until October 1878, and after his retirement from it continued to be an ecclesiastical commissioner. To him were to a large extent due the important reforms carried out in the management and distribution of church revenues. Chichester was also for half a century president of the Church Missionary Society, and was connected with the Evangelical Alliance, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the Church of England Temperance Society. He was also interested in the management of prisons; becoming in 1843 a commissioner of Pentonville prison, and editing in 1863 Sir Joshua Jebb's ‘Reports and Observations on the Discipline and Management of Convict Prisons.’ In spite of his evangelical views, he spoke on 16 July 1845 in support of the grant to Maynooth College. He was a regular attendant, and not infrequent speaker, in the House of Lords.

Chichester was appointed lord lieutenant of Sussex on 21 Nov. 1860, where he was very popular. He died at Stanmer House on 16 March 1886. He married, on 18 Aug. 1828, Lady Mary Brudenell, fifth daughter of the sixth Earl of Cardigan. She died on 22 May 1867, leaving issue four sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Walter John (b. 1838), who was M.P. for Lewes from 1865 to 1874, succeeded to the title.

[G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage; Doyle's Baronage; Brighton Argus, 17 March 1886 (with portrait); Times, 17 March 1886; Record, 19 March 1886; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Parl. Debates, 3rd ser. passim.] 

PELHAM, HERBERT (1600–1673), colonist, born probably in Sussex, but possibly in Lincolnshire, in 1600, was the eldest son of Herbert Pelham and Penelope, a younger daughter of Thomas West, second lord De la Warr. He must be carefully distinguished from a very distant relative, Herbert, son of Sir William Pelham, fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, who was born in 1602. The colonist, who was at no university, was brought up as a country gentleman. His uncle, Thomas Pelham, was a member of the Virginia Company, and Herbert Pelham and a younger brother William interested themselves in projects of colonisation.

In 1629 Pelham joined the Massachusetts Company. It would appear from Winthrop's ‘Journal’ that he arranged to sail with Winthrop for Massachusetts in the Arabella on Easter Monday 1630, but, though the younger brother went, Herbert did not actually go out till later, possibly 1635. There he became a freeman of the company, a prominent citizen, and a captain of the militia. He took an active part in the settlement of Sudbury, and later resided at Cambridge, where, in 1640, he and his family narrowly escaped being burnt to death with their house. He was made the first treasurer of Harvard College in 1643. In the following year he seems to have been in England; but, returning to the colony, became a member of the court of assistants in 1645. In 1646 he was one of the commissioners of the United Colonies for arranging a treaty with the Narragansett and Niantic Indians. In 1647 he seems to have returned to England for good, residing at Bures in Essex for some years, and interesting himself in the endeavour to form a society for the religious instruction of the Indians. Ultimately he removed to Suffolk, where he died on 1 July 1673. His property, according to his will, lay chiefly in Lincolnshire, Ireland, and Massachusetts Bay; he was heir to his younger brother, who died before him, in August 1667.

Pelham married, first, Jemima, daughter of Thomas Waldegrave, who died before his emigration; secondly, in 1638, in New England, Elizabeth, daughter of Godfrey Basseville or Bosvile of Gunthwaite, Yorkshire, and widow of Roger Harlakenden. By each wife he had five children. His daughter Penelope was wife of Josiah Winslow. It was his sister Penelope who married Governor Richard Bellingham [q. v.]

[Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography; Herbert Pelham, his Ancestors, &c., by Colonel Chester, republished 1879 from the Collections of the Massachusetts Hist. Society; Bennett Roll, a genealogical record, compiled by a relative of Pelham.  PELHAM, JOHN (d. 1429), treasurer of England, was the son of Sir John Pelham, a Sussex knight who fought in the wars of Edward III in France, and of his wife Joan Herbert of Winchelsea. He was in the service of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and afterwards of his son, Henry of Derby, subsequently Henry IV. On 7 Dec. 1393 he was appointed by John of Gaunt constable of Pevensey Castle for life. He was possibly one of the scanty band that landed with Henry at Ravenspur in 1399, and was certainly with him at Pontefract soon after his landing. Meanwhile his wife Joan Pelham sustained something like a siege from Richard's partisans in Pevensey Castle. An interesting letter, written in English and dated 25 July, from Joan to John is printed in Collins's ‘Peerage,’ viii. 95–6 (1779). Hallam, who reprints it in modern spelling (Litera-