PEEK, Nicholas (d.c.1463), of Layham, Suff. and Colchester, Essex.

From a Suffolk landowning family, Peek was admitted to the freedom of Colchester relatively late in life. The Peeks were not prominent gentry, although reputedly Sir William Rushbrooke was Nicholas’s maternal grandfather. F. Blomefield, Norf. x. 316-17. He did not become a burgess until 1440-1, ‘Oath bk.’ D/B 5 R1, f. 89d. in spite of a long connexion with the town before that date. As early as 1408, he and his father were party to a conveyance of property in Colchester and the adjoining hamlet of Greenstead. Colchester ct. roll D/B 5 Cr50, m. 37. Furthermore, he married the daughter of a prominent townsman long before he became a burgess and it was as ‘of Colchester’ that he was distrained for knighthood in 1439.

Before taking up residence in the town, Peek lived a few miles to the north, at Layham in Suffolk. (It was as of Layham, ‘franklin’, that he was sued for debt in the court of common pleas by William Tendring of Essex and John Costentyn in Henry IV’s reign.) CPR, 1416-22, pp. 63-64. He probably succeeded to lands in Rushbrooke, Rougham and other parishes in west Suffolk after the death of his widowed mother, Eleanor, and he also acquired the manors of Shelley and ‘Raynes’ in the same county, formerly the property of the Clifton family. CP25(1)/223/112/20; C1/16/245-6; W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, vi. 80. He was appointed a tax collector in Suffolk in the early 1420s and he attested the election of the county’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1423. In 1433 he witnessed an exchange of manors between Sir Roger Chamberlain* and Philip Maunoke, by which Chamberlain gave Maunoke his manor at Stoke Nayland (near Layham) in return for Maunoke’s manor at Thorpe Morieux. CCR, 1429-35, pp. 248, 252. Peek himself had dealings with Maunoke in February of the same year, giving him a recognizance for £20 to guarantee that he would not evict him from certain plots of meadow in Stoke Nayland. CCR, 1429-35, p. 232.

There is little evidence for Peek’s holdings in Colchester, although in the mid 1450s he was presented in the borough court for holding a field (known as ‘Brokhole’) and lane (the ‘Grenewey’) in severalty rather than in common, and for failing to clean a ditch at ‘Fordhamslond’. Colchester ct. roll, 1455-6, D/B 5 Cr66, mm. 2d, 11d, 12. He also held a garden near St. Helen’s Street in the right of his wife, Ibid., 1460-1, D/B 5 Cr71, m. 15. who had probably inherited other properties in the town. Elsewhere in Essex, Peek acquired the manor of East Newland in St. Laurence, formerly the property of Thomas Godstone*, who was probably his wife’s stepfather. Soon after Godstone’s death in the spring of 1432 the three daughters and coheirs of Thomas Weston and their husbands, claiming that the dead man had intended that they should succeed to the property, took action in Chancery against him and the dead man’s brother John*, but they lost their case. VCH Essex, ix. 59; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 197; C1/9/328.

Peek’s involvement in the borough prior to the 1440s probably explains why he was elected one of the bailiffs of Colchester so soon after his admission to the freedom and possibly before he became an alderman. He might have been elected alderman in Sept. 1441, but Colchester’s ct. roll for 1441-2 has not survived. During his first term as bailiff, the town’s government made an ordinance imposing fines on those members of the common council who failed to attend borough assemblies. Red Ppr. Bk. Colchester ed. Benham, 159-60. He had already completed a second term in the office when returned to his only known Parliament, the brief assembly of 1447. In the spring of the following year, he obtained a grant from the Crown exempting him from all further offices and commissions for the rest of his life, CPR, 1446-52, p. 154. although he began another term as bailiff in September 1449 and the government appointed him a tax collector in Suffolk and Essex four years later. His third term as bailiff was an eventful one, since it coincided with Cade’s rebellion. At the beginning of July 1450, there were disturbances in support of Cade at Colchester, and an armed mob gathered in the town in September, claiming that Cade was still alive and swearing to stand by him. Peek and his fellow bailiff, Thomas Wood*, arrested one of the ringleaders but a few days later his associates broke into the town gaol and released him. Peek witnessed the attack on the gaol but he was powerless to stop the rioters, who threatened to kill him. In February 1453, when (Sir) John Prysote* and other commissioners of oyer and terminer came to Colchester, Peek was one of the jurors who indicted William Lecche* for taking part in the disturbances of July 1450. Given that Lecche had been one of those who had succeeded Peek and Wood as bailiffs in the following September, it is hard to believe that he had really become involved in Cade’s revolt and it is possible that the indictment was motivated by personal enmities among the burgesses. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 415, 503; I.M.W. Harvey, Jack Cade, 94, 109, 143-4; KB27/772, rex rot. 6; KB9/26/1/17.

Late in life, Peek took action in Chancery against his niece Alice (daughter of his sister Maud) and her second husband, John Twyer. In his bill he stated that he wished to sell certain lands in Essex and Suffolk because he was ‘gretly aged’ and childless, but that the couple had deterred potential purchasers by asserting that the lands were entailed on Alice. The Twyers countered by claiming that Peek himself had often acknowledged that his manors of Shelley and ‘Raynes’ in Suffolk were entailed on Alice, who would inherit if he died without issue. Peek replied to this answer by asserting that he had free disposal of the manors in question. C1/16/245-7; Blomefield, x. 316-17. Alice had previously been the wife of John Strange, s. and h. of Sir John Strange† of Hunstanton, Norf. and Thorpe Morieux, Suff. The Twyers failed to make good their claim and Peek afterwards conveyed them to John King of London, who died seised of Shelley in 1469, and his feoffees. CCR, 1461-8, p. 332; PCC 28 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 216-17). King and his feoffees successfully sued the Twyers in the mid 1460s, for grazing their livestock on the disputed lands: KB27/816, rot. 84. Peek disappears from view after September 1462 when he witnessed a couple of conveyances of property in Colchester, Colchester ct. roll, 1470-1, D/B 5 Cr74, m. 13d. and he was already dead when his wife made her will on 9 June 1465. She requested burial in the chapel of St. John the Evangelist in St. Martin’s church but the will does not indicate if the church was also Peek’s burial place. He does not feature in the will, possibly because Katherine had not felt any great affection for him. Among those whom she did remember were Joan Bishop, wife of John Bishop IV*, and various members of the Foorde family. She left Joan a property known as the ‘Pondegardyn’ and directed that William Foorde* should have her ‘place’ in Colchester. She made the gift to William upon condition that he gave her executors £47 10s. and supported a local friar whom she had asked to pray for her soul. For her further spiritual welfare, she left £20 to a priest, John Colman, whom she requested to sing masses, for two years at Cambridge and for a third year in St. Martin’s church. It appears that Peek had granted her free disposal of East Newland, since she ordered the feoffees of the manor to sell it, directing them to allow first option of purchase to the abbot of St. John’s, Colchester. She appointed two executors, John Colman and John Foorde*, and named her ‘cousin’ John Bishop supervisor of the will. She died before the end of January 1466, the will’s date of probate. PCC 12 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 93). East Newland passed to the abbot after her death and it was one of the abbey’s possessions after the suppression of that house in 1539. P. Morant, Essex, ii. 373.