Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/563

 us vi. DEC. u, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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HUGH PETERS. (See ante, pp. 221, 263, 301.) V. PETERS'S EABLY CABEER. BORN in 1598, Hugh Peters was the son of one Thomas Dyckwoode, his mother being Martha Treffry, daughter of John Treffry of T.effry in the parish of Linkinhorne, Cornwall. John Treffry had seven daughters, of whom Martha was the fifth, and died on 28 Jan., 1590 (Lieut. -Col. J. L. Vivian's ' Visitations of Cornwall,' pp. 559-62). This is probably why Dyckwoode's marriage with Martha took place at Fowey, in June, 1594. One falsehood in the tract entitled. ' A Dying Father's Last Legacy to an Only Child ' is thus exposed : Martha was not a Treffry of Place, near Fowey, but a cousin of the Treffrys of Place.

Peter and Peters are old surnames in Cornwall, and Peters was the name borne by an old family in Devon at the time. Dyckwoode, according to a custom of the times, changed his name to Peters (though his son Hugh invariably signed himself " Peter ''). Both Peters and Peter were, and are still, common surnames in Holland and Germany, and it is quite possible that the original ancestor of that family may have been a Protestant driven from the Continent by religious persecution. But no one will venture to ascribe a Conti- nental origin to the surname of Dyckwoode, and with this fact goes the second falsehood in the ' Dying .... Legacy ' to the effect that Peters was descended from a Continental Protestant refugee.

Hugh Peters was sent to Cambridge for his education, but no entry of his admission to any college has yet been discovered. The bursar of Trinity College has been so kind as to inf orm me that no such entries exist for that College during Peters's lifetime. He was expelled from the University " for debauchery/' and then joined " Shake- speare's Company of the Bevels " ; not, of course, in Shakespeare's time. Allusions to this fact are tolerably frequent, but Gardiner's assertion that it was said he became a " mountebank " is hardly accurate Whether he afterwards took his degrees or not is not clear. If so, he never placed the letters " M.A.'' after his name, as was customary, in his time.

A Hugh Peters who signed his name " Peters," and not " Peter " (as the regicide always did) graduated B.A. in 1618 and M.A. in 1622 from Trinity College, but there is absolutely nothing to connect him with

Hugh Peters the regicide beyond the signa- tures of the recipient of the degrees in the University books as " Hugo Peters " and " Hugo Peeters."' I have to thank the pre- sent Registraryof the University for tracings of these signatures.

In the year 1674 a Hugh Peters died at Combe in Teign Head in Devon (E. A. Fry, 'Calendar of Devon and Cornwall Wills and Administrations '), and this may have been the graduate of Trinity.

Hugh Peters's expulsion from Cambridge was alluded to in Mercurius Academicus (published at Oxford) in 1646 (eleventh- week, 23 Feb.) as follows : -

" Master Peters, the mad preacher, hath been a principal instrument in promoting the grand rebellion, and may prove the like in removing it. For not long since, in a sermon at Lincoln's Inn, he used this powerful rhetoric to win his auditors' attention, ' You came hither to make yourselves merry, but I shall tell you truth. The Kingdom of England is an Ass, and ever since this blessed Parliament rid this ass alone the silly beast drove very, very finely. But so soon as ever the Parliament took up a Committee-man, behind him, the ass hath so kicked and winced that I fear he will never leave until he hath cast off both his riders. For these Committee-men are the greatest oppressors that ever this kingdom- groaned under, and the very obstacle of our peace is because these Committee men have not yet married all their daughters ! ' And, indeed, so much truth he hath in some of these words delivered that we believe no man can have the impudence to gainsay it. But withall there is so much folly in it that if wise men had the sway of that part of this kingdom they would never suffer Mr. Peters to speake any more words than Baalam's ass did and give him such a discessit as once he had from Cambridge, whence his governors whipped him for his debauchery."

Peters ran away from England to Hol- land, probably in 1631, under an accusation which has already been described, and ran away from Holland to New England in 1635 in circumstances to be related in my next article. In New England Peters became a prosperous tradesman and slave- dealer, probably from this latter fact origi- nating the " spirits " in Ireland, as American authors admit. The "spirits" were the kidnappers who stole Irish children from their mothers and sold them into slavery in America.

There are many references in Royalist tracts to Peters's trading, but American references to it will be sufficient :

"Mr. Peters continued to trade with Salem,, and in 1642 he had a joint stock of oQOL, on which he made eighty per cent, profit." -C.M.H.S., Series I., vol. vi. p. 285.

In 1637, when the Pequot Indians were defeated and captured, Peters seems to have