PECK, Henry (1597-?1675), of Winchelsea and Lewes, Suss., later of Westminster

The Peck family settled in Sussex in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, and became prominent in the Cinque Port of Winchelsea, where Peck’s father was four times mayor between 1561 and 1570.28Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 85; Suss. Arch. Coll. xxiii. 35. Although John Peck’s cousin and reversionary heir Ashburnham Pecke† represented the borough in Parliament in 1593, John Peck appears to have had only minor gentry status in this period.29HP Commons 1558-1603; E. Suss. RO, RYE/140/43; WIN/2361/1/1. However, he and his wife were apparently well-connected; John’s friends (and overseers) included established local figures like Gray’s Inn lawyer Henry Apsley† of Ore and Harbert Springett of Lewes (father or grandfather of Harbert Springett*).30PROB11/100/346; PROB11/78/204. While at his death in 1602 he seems to have handed a rather modest inheritance to his son and heir, the four-year-old future MP – one-third shares went respectively to his widow and to his step-children, Joseph and Bridget Tufton – the estate, administered by Elizabeth Peck on her son Henry’s behalf, may have been more valuable than it appears.31PROB11/100/346; WARD9/160, ff. 15v-16.

Henry Peck may have been the youth of that name admitted in 1613 to the godly Emmanuel College, Cambridge, favoured by puritan gentry from Sussex; if so, Sir Thomas Pelham* was a near contemporary there as well as at Gray’s Inn.32Al. Cant. Peck was admitted to the latter (as son of John Peck of Winchelsea ‘esquire’) in November 1616, but not called to the bar.33Al. Cant; G. Inn Admiss. 144. His status was probably enhanced, or his prosperity confirmed, by his marriage in September 1621 to Martha Bludder, whose father Sir Thomas Bludder, a wealthy merchant with interests in navy victuals and the Virginia Company, had in his will of 1618 designated portions of £1,000 to each of his younger daughters.34Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. liii), 180-1; IGI; PROB11/133/703 (Sir Thomas Bludder).

It is evident that Peck himself soon engaged in commercial activity, perhaps profiting partly from the connections of his brother-in-law Sir Thomas Bludder*, an entrepreneur who was a gentleman of the privy chamber by late 1627; the naming of one of his younger sons as Sackfield or Sackville hints at a potential link . By September 1626 Henry Peck ‘esquire’ was, with Sir Henry Guilford or Guildford, in dispute with the corporation of Winchelsea over assessment for Ship Money; acknowledged as ‘foreigners’ with property in the borough, they considered themselves over-rated.35SP16/35, f. 78; SP16/36, f. 19; SP16/53, f. 113; SP16/59, f. 119; PC2/34, f. 106; PC2/35, f. 354; APC 1627, p. 60; Harl. 6803, ff. 46-9. Guilford had previously appeared in conjunction with Robert Sheppard, almost certainly a close kinsman of Peck’s, in a marsh-draining enterprise at Rye; a 1635 enquiry, which also named Guilford, was to find that ‘within the last twenty years’ Peck had been engaged in similar activity around Winchelsea.36Trin. House Trans. ii (London Rec. Soc. xix), 148. In partnership with one Peter Farner he was proposing the same around Rye in November 1626.37E. Suss. RO, RYE/47/106/6. This was in addition to interests further afield. In July 1627 Peck and his cousin Ralph Whitfield†, a rising Gray’s Inn lawyer, moneylender and colonial investor who was later to be retained counsellor to the Cinque Ports, were in dealings with controversial projector and diplomat Sir Sackville Crow† relating to a manor in Carmarthenshire; the grant of a reversionary interest to the pair involved a payment of £1,500 by Crow into the exchequer.38Coventry Docquets, 212; HP Commons 1604-1629. Peck and his son Henry still claimed property at Llangeler in the county in 1664.39C5/45/68.

In view of his later career, it seems plausible that by the 1630s Peck had built up a portfolio of business interests and was accustomed to handling large sums of money. He probably already had connections with the Sussex iron industry when in June 1638 Sir Sackville Crow assigned to him the remainder of a share in a lease from the crown of iron-works in the Forest of Dean. This was ostensibly in settlement of a debt of £7,200 due to Peck, who was set to receive £800 a year for nine years from the deal, but the naming with him in the transaction of Sussex grandee and iron-master Sir Thomas Pelham hints at an attempt by Wealden proprietors to gain a stake in a rival area then enjoying greater success.40Suss. Manors, ii. 293; SP18/75, ff. 31-2; CJ vii. 336b-337a; H. Cleere and D. Crossley, The Iron Industry of the Weald (1995), 135, 180-1. If so, the move gained little return either for Peck or his partners. In February 1640 Charles I, ignoring Crow’s and Peck’s claims, granted the share to Sir John Winter. While in March 1641 the House of Commons resolved that Winter was unfit to hold the lands on account of his recusancy, the first real hope of compensation came only in December 1644, when the Committee for Advance of Money discharged Peck’s assessment (at £150), on account of his losses in the Forest of Dean; the iron-works had been damaged by fire.41SP18/75, ff. 31-2; CCAM 489. This did not constitute a resolution, however, and in October 1645 his hopes receded when a parliamentary ordinance granted the stake in question to Major-general Edward Massie*, the prominent Presbyterian and governor of Gloucester.

In the meantime, Peck had achieved some political prominence in his county. He was appointed to the commissions for the subsidy (1640) and for sewers (July 1641), but it was the outbreak of civil war which brought him to the fore.42SR; E179/191/388; C181/5, f. 206v. On 7 October 1642 the House of Lords agreed that he, Edward Apsley and Harbert Springett should be added to those named in ‘instructions for Sussex’.43LJ v. 389b. In the spring and summer of 1643 he was nominated to the county committee, to the local committees for assessment and delinquents’ estates, and to the commission for scandalous ministers.44CJ iii. 45a, 173a; A Collection of all the Publicke Orders (1646), 134. His by now wide business experience probably explains his appointment in June 1644 as commissary-general of Sussex – responsible for procurement for the war effort – a post which he held until September 1646, and for which his accounts survive. That he was not also named to the commission for the peace may have something to do with his partial residence in London – he was living in Blackfriars in November 1644 – but also suggests that he may have associated with Harbert Morley* and Anthony Stapley I* and those more militant parliamentarians in the county who preferred the new bodies created by Parliament to the traditional arenas of influence dominated by the more moderate Sir Thomas Pelham and his friends.45CJ vi. 11a; CCAM 489.

The precise means which secured Peck’s election to Westminster in the autumn of 1645 as a recruiter MP for Chichester are unclear, although Morley and Stapley may have supported his candidature. A probable patron was Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland, who may have wished to reassert the influence in the borough which, before their parting of ways, had effected the return of the expelled former Member, Christopher Lewkenor*. Peck’s partner was Sir John Temple*, who was connected to the household of Northumberland’s sister, the countess of Leicester, and Peck’s association with the Northumberland/Temple interest appears to be confirmed by Peck’s first committee appointment on 8 December 1645, relating to funds for a conquest of Ireland, a subject close to Temple’s heart.46CJ iv. 368b.

However, Peck did not surface again in the Commons Journal until the following March, when he took the covenant, and although he was named as a commissioner for keeping scandalous persons from the sacrament (3 June 1646), he was then invisible until the autumn.47CJ iv. 489a, 562b. That his re-appearance in a modest burst of activity in the last few months of 1646 was followed by (or quite possibly accompanied by) a re-launch of his case for redress over his loss in the Forest of Dean seems unlikely to have been co-incidental. Added on 5 October to a committee considering a petition from Sir Allen Apsley’s creditors, Peck was subsequently placed on three others relating to the petitions or cases of aggrieved individuals, including one concerning compensation to William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, for the loss of his office in the court of wards (29 Oct.; 3, 24 Nov.).48CJ iv. 684b, 709a, 712b, 727a. Peck’s only other nominations that year were to the committee of privileges (16 Dec.), and to a committee for appointing preaching ministers for Chichester (11 Nov.), which he had plausibly promoted – both his and his father’s wills expressed a piety somewhat beyond the commonplace – and of which he was made chairman.49CJ iv. 719b; v. 14b. On 29 December the Commons heard his own petition over the iron-works, which was referred to the Committee for Advance of Money.50CJ v. 32b; SP18/75, ff. 31-2.

The remainder of Peck’s parliamentary career was to be dominated by the twin issues of his Forest of Dean claims and the conduct of his office as commissary-general in Sussex, and both became inextricably intertwined with factional fighting between Independents and Presbyterians, and with the political trajectory of the earl of Northumberland. Despite repeated calls for a report on the first to be made to the Commons (12 Jan., 1 Feb., 21 Apr. and 27 Apr. 1647), none was forthcoming until 5 May 1647, when Miles Corbett* delivered a short account, which resulted in another referral, this time to the Committee for Revenue, and in particular to William Cecil, 2nd earl of Salisbury, Northumberland’s brother-in-law and close colleague.51CJ v. 50b, 70a, 149a, 154b, 162b; vii. 336-7. To those disposed to be sympathetic, antipathy to the grant of the lands to Massie, by then a leader of the Presbyterian faction, was doubtless a motivating factor for assisting Peck. Nomination by Independents was probably behind Peck’s inclusion in the spring of 1647 in two important committees – that chaired by Miles Corbett*, considering an ordinance for the restraint of malignant ministers (22 Mar.), and that charged with investigating the appearance of two Leveller pamphlets critical of Presbyterian-led moves to disband the army, headed by Presbyterian leaders Sir Robert Harley* and Denzil Holles* (23 Apr.).52CJ v. 119b, 153a.

Thereafter, Peck’s occasional appearances in the Journal appear to reflect the occasional engagement of a minor Independent called on to help resist the disbandment of the New Model army and expose the Presbyterians who sought it. On 9 July, with Independents temporarily in the ascendant, he was named to a committee to consider information regarding the listing of men in London, a means of uncovering Presbyterianism in the City; ten days later, as a favourable outcome seemed within sight, he was granted leave to go to the country.53CJ v. 238a, 250a. He did not reappear until after the army and the Independents had reasserted control of the capital following the Presbyterian coup of late July-early August. Named on 9 October to a committee to consider those members absent without excuse, another means of investigating Presbyterian activity, on the 21st he was given leave to return to Sussex for a month, presumably at least in part to influence county committee business.54CJ v. 329a, 338b.

He was back at Westminster around the turn of the year, when he joined a committee discussing the payments to be made to officers of the Scottish army as they left England (25 Dec.) and was among MPs delegated to consider measures for the repair of churches damaged during the wars (10 Jan. 1648).55CJ v. 405b, 425a. Peck’s return to Parliament had evidently been accompanied by a renewal of his Forest of Dean claims: on 8 March the Commons recognised that he was still owed over £4,000 and set up a committee to consider any losses he might have sustained as a result of Parliament’s actions.56CJ v. 484b; SP18/75, ff. 31-2. It also saw an effort to expedite the scrutiny of his accounts as commissary-general for Sussex. He had submitted two accounts in April 1646, and a third late that December, after he had surrendered his office.57SP28/252i, ff. 297v, 339; SP28/256, unfol. In December 1647 he sought to speed the process by writing to Fenton Parsons, one of the Committee of Accounts, and was rewarded on 3 April 1648 with an order for a report, although in the usual fashion, the matter was the several times postponed over the spring and summer.58SP28/257, unfol.; CJ v. 524a, 537a, 623a; vi. 6a.

Meanwhile, on 1 June 1648 Peck himself had a turn at scrutineering when he was added to the committee considering the accounts of the army, an Independent-dominated group headed by Samuel Browne*, one of Northumberland’s close colleagues. In such hands the committee was probably intended to subvert the Committee of Accounts under the leadership of the Presbyterian, William Prynne*, but it also offered Peck an opportunity to influence his own case.59CJ v. 581b. In a summer of royalist insurgency, on 30 June he was despatched to seek approval from the Lords for a grant of power to the Sussex county committee to raise forces for the suppression of an uprising at Horsham.60CJ v. 618a.

Perhaps preoccupied with his responsibilities in Sussex, Peck was absent from the Journal between then and 8 September. That day yet another order for a report on his accounts was accompanied by one for the revival of the committee investigating his claims in the Forest of Dean, while he was named to a committee to prepare an ordinance for using money raised from sequestrations to fund a troop of horse in Surrey.61CJ vi. 10a, 10b. On 9 September his accounts as commissary-general were finally approved.62CJ vi. 11a. He received two more committee nominations – related to a petition from Peter Chamberlain, army physician and son-in-law of his Blackfriars neighbour Gideon Delaune, and to soldiers’ arrears (25 Sept.) – before a report from John Swynfen on 16 October prompted a resolution that, in compensation for his losses in the Forest of Dean, Peck should be awarded £4,281 18s 4d out of the sequestered estates of a number of Suffolk recusants.63CJ vi. 27b, 31b, 52b, 56b; SP18/75, ff. 31-2; LJ x. 557b; HMC 7th Rep. 58. The burden of this money was initially placed upon the Suffolk sequestrators; but on 16 November a new order was issued that all counties where these recusants held lands were to contribute; carried to the Lords by Sir John Danvers* on 17 November, it secured their concurrence.64CJ vi. 78b, 79a; LJ x. 594b; HMC 7th Rep. 63.

It proved a victory built on unstable foundations, however. In the interim, Peck parted from the radical supporters who had helped him get thus far and, like the earl of Northumberland, tried to pursue a settlement with the king in the autumn of 1648, in a move which mirrored that of Northumberland himself. On 27 October 1648, the day that the Newport treaty expired, Peck was appointed to a committee headed by two leading Presbyterians, Sir Robert Harley*, and Arthur Annesley*, which attempted to breathe new life into the negotiations.65CJ vi. 63a. This doubtless rendered him a prime candidate for seclusion from Parliament, and he was among those prevented from entering the Commons at Pride’s Purge on 6 December.66OPH xviii. 467-71. He also paid a financial price. On 21 December the Rump passed a new order stopping his payments and naming a committee to investigate the whole business, upon suspicion that the original order for payment had been procured illegally; of a committee of 13, ten were to be regicides, including four who were former colleagues from Peck’s own county.67CJ vi. 120a.

Initially, Peck appears to have retired to Sussex. In June 1650, when his son Henry was admitted to Gray’s Inn, he was described as ‘of Lewes’.68G. Inn Admiss. 254. The previous year he acquired the rectory of Shipley, 20 miles to the north west, from royalist delinquent Richard Molyneux, 2nd Viscount Molyneux [I].69Suss. Manors, ii. 394. In July 1650 he successfully petitioned the Committee for Compounding to secure his claim to Ifield parsonage and two farms in Surrey, bequeathed to him in 1645 by his lawyer brother-in-law Henry Bludder as mortgages forfeited by Sir Thomas Bludder*, and allegedly confirmed to Peck by the Surrey county committee in 1646, but evidently regarded by some as still part of Sir Thomas’s sequestered estate.70CCC 1498.

Peck also continued to seek the restoration of his lands in the Forest of Dean. The Nominated Parliament concluded on 20 October 1653 that there had been no irregular proceedings in the decision to pay him compensation, but did not resolve the issue before its dissolution.71CJ vii. 336b-337b. Early in 1654 Peck’s son, now described as ‘Captain Henry Peck’, petitioned Oliver Cromwell* on behalf of his father, claiming that the order to stop payments in December 1648 was made ‘on a bare motion, which is without precedent in Parliament’ and blaming the irregular attendance of another Sussex MP, the regicide James Temple*, for the subsequent failure to report the case. The business was referred to the committee for obstructions (25 Jan. 1654), and on 29 March it was resolved that a new order should be made to allow Peck to be paid, but once more no action appears to have been taken; in August a report into his case simply proposed an investigation by the next Parliament.72CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 96, 329; SP18/75, ff. 30-2.

Peck renewed his petitioning during the second protectorate Parliament, by which time he was living in Westminster, and once more his case was referred to a committee (22 Dec. 1656) for investigation.73CJ vii. 462a, 472a; W. Suss. RO, Add. MS 41044. On 14 March 1657 Sir Richard Onslow*, another of Northumberland’s friends, made a report on Peck’s claims, whereupon the Commons resolved that no reason could be found to support the allegations of corruption made in 1648. At the division of the House over this report, Onslow and Sir Roger Burgoyne acted as tellers in Peck’s favour, while Colonel Francis White and Captain Adam Baynes represented the opposition.74CJ vii. 503. It appears that the radicals who had stopped Peck’s money being paid in 1648 continued to oppose him in the 1650s. While Onslow’s report was accepted, and the council of state ordered the investigation of some means for paying him, in September the protector claimed to have insufficient revenue for the purpose.75CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 360; 1657-8, p. 88.

Peck’s continuing hopes for restitution may explain his political activity at the end of the decade, when he appears to have been active in promoting the readmission of the purged members.76CCSP iv. 207, 220. With others who had sat in the Long Parliament, he returned to Westminster in February 1660, and was named to the committee considering the London militia, and to the commission for the militia in Middlesex.77CJ vii. 856a, 867b. Three days later the Commons resolved to make a payment to Peck, but although the bill for satisfaction of his claims was passed on 15 March, the dissolution of Parliament the next day dashed his hopes once more.78CJ vii. 855b, 861a, 866b, 871a, 873a, 877a.

After the Restoration, Peck’s case was championed by those who recognised an opportunity to make political capital out of his treatment during the interregnum. Encouraged by further petitions, on 11 December 1660 Parliament resolved to pay Peck out of the excise on foreign commodities.79CJ viii. 203-4; LJ xi. 194a, 204b, 206b; HMC 7th Rep. 135, 137. In April 1661 a warrant was issued to the excise commissioners for the payment of Peck’s money, on the grounds that Peck’s estate had been taken from him and disposed by the late usurping powers. By this stage Peck had been named a gentleman of the privy chamber extraordinary, but he was still trying to secure his money in October 1666, when his case was recommended to Clarendon (Edward Hyde*).80CTB i. 236; SO3/14, unfol. ; CCSP v. 562, 564.

Peck did not again sit in Parliament, but he was far from retiring from public life, and probably remained fairly prosperous. About 1659 his son Henry married Anne, daughter of Abraham Delaune (d. 1637) of Sharsted, Kent, and granddaughter of both the wealthy physician Gideon Delaune (d. 1659) of Blackfriars and colonial investor Sir Edwyn Sandys†.81Regs. of St Margaret, Westminster (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 4, 15; Westminster Abbey Regs. (Harl. Soc. x), 343. Both Henrys lived in the parish of St Margaret’s, Westminster: in hearth tax records for 1664 one, probably the elder, had ten hearths in Chapel Street; the other had five hearths in ‘the Little Ambery’.82BHO, Hearth Tax Westminster, 1664 (accessed 17 Sept. 2015). While Henry the younger was made a subsidy commissioner in 1660, it was more likely to have been his father who was a commissioner for hackney carriages and a justice of the peace.83SR; Mdx Recs. iv. 1–6; C231/7, p. 350, 373. The former MP was probably the Henry Peck who petitioned in March 1674 for £1,000 ‘with interest for foreign commodities’ assigned to him by Sir Allen Apsley, receiver general to the duke of York, from the exchequer, in addition to £1,000 of £3,347 already received.84CSP Dom. 1673–1675, p. 303; CTB vii. 532. He was ‘in good health’ when he made his will on 1 April 1675, but died later that year. An inventory of his goods apparently taken that December was registered the day after probate was obtained in February 1676.85PROB4/17000. His son and heir was dead by late 1680, and no further member of the Peck family sat in Parliament.86Westminster Abbey Regs. (Harl. Soc. x), 343.