PEARD, George (1594-c.1644), of Barnstaple and the Middle Temple.

George Peard’s father, John Peard, considered himself a gentleman, with an estate in and around Barnstaple, not in the wider county of Devon. There were others of the name in that town from at least the early sixteenth century. John Peard was mayor in 1606 and 1622, and must have worked himself up from the mercantile class eventually to be considered among the urban gentry, beyond the civic corporation and its cursus honorum.11PROB11/161/51; J.B. Gribble, Memorials of Barnstaple (Barnstaple, 1830), 202-3. George Peard’s uncle, of the same name, had sat for Barnstaple in the Parliaments of 1597 and 1604.12HP Commons, 1604-29. His maternal grandfather, Roger Beaple, was a prominent merchant who served two terms as mayor during the 1590s.13Gribble, Memorials, 202-3. George Peard was sent to the Middle Temple evidently with the intention that he should follow a legal career. Five years after his arrival there, he took a Devonian pupil, John Northcote*, and he was called to the bar in 1620. He oversaw the studies of John Doddridge*, his cousin, who was to follow Peard into Parliament for Barnstaple, and he was joint supervisor with John Maynard* of another pupil.14MTR ii. 567, 633, 653, 754, 842; PROB11/196/67. Peard practised law in London and on the western assize circuit, and seems only to have taken on minor office at the Middle Temple, suggesting that by the 1630s he was spending much of his time in the south west.15Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 2, 28, 36, 54, 58; MTR ii. 866, 920, 926. Twenty-one Barnstaple men signed an agreement in 1627 that Peard should be retained as legal counsel, the first formal association between the borough and him.16N. Devon RO, B1/46/222.

By January 1638, Peard had been appointed deputy recorder in his home town. The ‘remembrance book’ of Barnstaple, or rather the surviving later copy of it, describes Peard as recorder, not deputy, in May 1643, but the original town court book notes Peard still as deputy recorder five months later than this, suggesting an error of transcription.17Cotton, Barnstaple and the Civil War, 152-3; N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 41; B1/3976. By the time of his appointment, his family had already become the focus of opposition in Barnstaple to Ship Money. His mother refused to pay in 1637, and Peard himself followed suit the following year.18SP16/376/138, SP16/415/111, SP16/428/114. This defiance seems not to have set Peard apart from the mainstream within Barnstaple’s town government or to have damaged his prospects. He was asked in December 1637 to take the patent of the high stewardship to Edward Sackville†, 4th earl of Dorset, hardly a radical figure.19N. Devon RO, B1/612. As deputy recorder and a native of the town with strong links to London’s legal world, he made a very plausible candidate when elections were held for the first Parliament of 1640.

An outspoken critic, 1640

Peard made an immediate impact when he arrived in London to take his seat. He was elected to the important privileges committee on 16 April, was probably appointed chairman of the committee of the whole House for courts of justice the same day, and was outspoken in his speeches.20CJ ii. 4a, 12a; Aston’s Diary, 5. When William Dell* was bested by John Pym in an exchange over Pym’s misreported words on religion, Peard described Pym’s mauling of Dell as ‘murther, because he said it was done in cold blood’.21Procs. Short Parl. 169. On 23 April, Peard made a long and effective speech denouncing the levying of Ship Money as an infringement of liberty, ‘the salt that seasoned all’. The tax he and his mother had refused to pay took away not only goods but also persons, as he alleged that writs of habeas corpus were hard to obtain.22Procs. Short Parl. 172 The reference in his peroration to Ship Money as ‘an abomination’ ran ahead of the more cautious and diplomatic tone of his colleagues, who backed government office-holders like Edward Herbert I* and Sir Thomas Jermyn*. When challenged, Peard dug himself further into trouble by opining that ‘he that had no religion was a devil’, asserting that he himself had ‘an English heart’ and wishing darkly that others had ‘English ears’.23CJ ii. 9b-10a; Procs. Short Parl. 173. This was taken as a slur on the judges, implying foreign (i.e. Catholic and courtly) influences upon them.24Aston’s Diary, 40. When William Lenthall* reported from the committee of the whole House in censorious terms on a complaint about Peard, the latter stood in his place to acknowledge his offence (23 Apr.). The episode probably did him no harm at all in terms of his reputation as an outspoken reformer.

Peard also spoke in debate critically of Archbishop William Laud’s policy of treating the communion table in churches as an altar, seeing Laudian reforms as ‘contrary to the practice since the reformation’.25Aston’s Diary, 90, 93. He promoted the bill that ministers of religion should not be justices of the peace on 30 April.26Aston’s Diary, 98. Later that day, he made a long and evidently impressive speech again on the subject of Ship Money. He championed the common law, which made the king’s subjects ‘not in the state of villeinage, tenants at will’.27Aston’s Diary, 101. Embarking on a long historical survey of precedents which began with Esau and Jacob and ended with the Petition of Right of 1628, Peard played on the commonplace analogy between the kingdom and the human body. Parliament was ‘the physician of the commonwealth’; the judges were the subordinate ‘apothecaries, that administer and must not mix a drug of their own’. Apart from the affront to taxpayers, Ship Money was objectionable as provocative internationally and abusive of due legal process. Above all, it was a threat to property itself.

Without security in property, no man will marry that cannot leave his estate, no man industrious if not sure to enjoy his labours, no man sow he may reap ... No [man] may provide for a daughter, nor bring up a son at university ... No man eat but in danger to have his meat taken away or be taken away from his meat.28Aston’s Diary, 102.

Peard reported from the committee of the whole House on courts of justice two days after his censure. His request to the House that important petitions to the committee should be assigned to counsel was agreed. Before the Parliament was dissolved he was also named to the committee working on a bill for reform of church courts, and spoke on the contested election at Aylesbury (1 May).29CJ ii. 12b, 17b; Aston’s Diary, 60, 109. Not surprisingly, he was critical of civil law processes as applied in church courts: ‘as they had their authority from Caesar, let them acknowledge their authority from Caesar’.30Aston’s Diary, 110.

For a novice Parliament-man, Peard had been very successful in making an impact at Westminster, and was easily returned to the second Parliament of 1640, despite controversy in Barnstaple surrounding the borough’s second seat. He was just as vigorous in the opening months of the Long Parliament, being named to 20 committees before 31 December. He was again included on the privileges committee, and with Pym, William Strode I and Oliver Cromwell sat on the committee for the long-imprisoned victim of the king’s personal rule, Alexander Leighton (9 Nov.). Membership of this committee, as well as his general busyness in the opening weeks marks him as a sympathiser and associate of John Pym and the reforming ‘junto’.31CJ ii. 21a, 24a. On the same day as the committee sat on Leighton’s case, he moved that no-one associated with a ‘project’ or monopoly should be allowed to sit in the House, and a week later was included in a committee on monopolies, which he went on to chair.32Procs. LP i. 72; CJ ii. 30a. Peard was included among the important committee of 24 who were required to draw up for the House a statement on the issues facing the kingdom, and the following day brought in a report from Barnstaple that an Irishman detained there had threatened to burn down the town, declaring that pope and king were all one to him.33CJ ii. 25a; Procs. LP i. 118, 119. This lurid story led him into a demonizing attack on Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, arguing that no Member should even visit him without explicit permission.34Procs. LP i. 168. As in the earlier Parliament, some of his colleagues took offence at Peard’s vituperative zeal, and on 24 November he was cleared by vote from a charge that in reference to Strafford he had said that ‘regal’ power in a subject was tyrannical.35CJ ii. 35a, Procs. LP i. 271. Nothing daunted, Peard went on to move that a charge be read against Strafford (25 Nov).36Procs. LP i. 292 In March 1641, it may well have been the Strafford case that lay behind Peard’s quarrel with Sir William Carnaby*.37CJ ii. 111b.

In the opening weeks of the Long Parliament, Peard returned to the subject of Ship Money, which had evoked from him his most memorable speech in the Short Parliament. On 24 November he moved a day’s debate on the topic, and on 7 December, he made a speech accusing the judge, Sir William Jones, of ‘lying in extremis’. On this occasion Peard carried the House with him in his expressed hope that ‘this day should be the funeral day of Ship Money’, and he was despatched to interview Jones.38Procs. LP i. 270; Northcote Note Bk. 38. A number of other topics suggest that Peard was working closely with Pym and the junto. He spoke in favour of restoring the parliamentary franchise to Ashburton and Honiton (26 Nov.), constructing a legal argument that turned on definitions of liberty and explaining to the House how those towns had been ‘ground poor’ so that they had lost their privileges.39Procs. LP i. 306, 315, 316. The same day, he attacked Laud’s recent book of Canons, arguing not that canons could never be made, but that they should never be made against the law, rather glossing over which code of law, common or civil, he meant. The so-called ‘etcetera oath’ he denounced as ‘absurd, scandalous and insidious’ and particularly offensive to those he called the ‘strong brethren’ of Scotland. The eventual consequence of leaving the Canons unchallenged would be a victory for Catholicism, because the book was the ‘bait’, the oath the ‘hook’ to papists.

If we let this pass, like the man who had the devil cast forth of him, who went home and had seven more than the first which did enter into him, and so in time popery will be brought far more into this kingdom than formerly.40Procs. LP i. 308, 309, 314-5, 323-4; Northcote Note Bk. 10.

Peard was named to a committee on the Canons on 9 December, struggled to clear parliamentary time for further debate on the Canons on the 14th December, and called for a select committee to prosecute its draughtsmen ‘for their crime’ (16 Dec).41CJ ii. 48a, 52a; Northcote Note Bk.70; Procs. LP i. 592.

The nemesis of Parliament’s enemies, 1641-2

Before the year was out, Peard contributed his share to the pursuit of high profile targets of the junto. After Lord Keeper Finch (John Finch II†) had defended his conduct as Speaker in the 1628-9 Parliament, Peard, as a member of the committee on breaches of privilege, denounced his compliance with the government (21 Dec.): ‘If Speaker will be silent we are dumb. That [is] blowing up the House without gunpowder’.42CJ ii. 53b; Northcote Note Bk. 98-9. Peard seems to have been condemning Finch for not having read the Remonstrance on 2 March 1629, although Sir Simonds D’Ewes* understood Peard’s speech to be essentially an attack on the current judges. It was certainly true that Peard wished to link Finch, who had ruled against John Hampden* in 1637, with Ship Money. In reference to the Ship Money verdicts, he alleged how ‘one of the judges dying said, that villain Finch undid me, for he made me to subscribe’.43Northcote Note Bk. 98 and n. He looked forward (24 Dec.) to Sir Henry Mildmay’s* pursuit of William Piers, bishop of Bath and Wells, ‘a crafty fox’.44Northcote Note Bk. 111. On 10 December, the House gave Peard leave to be legal counsel in the House of Lords to Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, a prominent junto member, later joining John Maynard* in a similar role.45CJ ii. 49a, 73a.

In 1641, Peard was named to 73 committees. That year he acted as legal counsel before the Lords on 7 occasions, suggesting that his service for Lord Brooke had been regarded as a success.46CJ ii. 73a, 81b, 86b, 96b, 151b, 230b, 263a. Among his colleagues on these assignments were Maynard, Oliver St John* and Sir Thomas Widdrington*. Peard chaired the committee of the whole House on the courts of justice, as he had done in the previous Parliament. Its work was closely related to that of a committee on the courts of star chamber and high commission, to include the cases of individual victims of them (25 Jan. 1641).47CJ ii. 44b, 72b. By 21 January, he had taken the chair at the committee on monopolists. He recommended successfully on that day that four Members be expelled the House. On 2 February he succeeded in removing another, and also took on the consideration of all monopolies, except a limited number before other committees.48CJ ii. 70b, 71a, 75a, 77a, b. His chairing skills were also in demand when MPs sat as a committee for the whole House. On 3 February, in that capacity, he chaired a debate on the treaty with Scots, and reported that £300,000 had been allocated them. In the spring he chaired committees of the whole House on the Strafford attainder bill six times (14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21 Apr.).49CJ ii. 77b, 78a, 120b, 121a, 123a, 123b, 124a, 125a. On 16 April, part of his duties as chairman was to persuade the Lords to continue sitting when the Commons was finding it difficult to reach a conclusion, and on the 19th he accepted Pym’s motion that the lawyers of the House should debate whether an attempt to subvert the laws amounted to treason.50CJ ii. 122a; Procs. LP iv. 7. He reported the attainder bill for the last time on 21 April, and a week later chaired the whole House on the subsidy bill, bringing that to fruition that day, despite inauspicious beginnings on 23 April, when a thin and directionless House made heavy weather of the subject.51CJ ii. 126b, 130b; Procs. LP iv. 77. Despite these successes, he could sometimes move ahead of the House, as on 27 April when his motion that there should be a poll tax of £10, on those with estates of over £100, was ‘not liked’.52Procs. LP iv. 116.

Peard took the Protestation on 3 May, evidently thinking of it as an oath of association such as that under Elizabeth.53CJ ii. 133a; Procs. LP iv. 181. The following day he moved that Catholic priests be declared enemies of the state, and with William Wheler, Sir Robert Pye I and Sir Edward Hungerford was tasked with ascertaining which Members had taken the Protestation and which not.54Procs. LP iv. 116; CJ ii. 133b. On 11 May, he presented a paper on deans and chapters, which set capitular income at £28,400 in long-established rents. Peard proposed that £8,400 of that amount should be diverted to augment poor livings, and argued that new market rents would improve the remaining sum tenfold, with the potential for achieving £900,000. In proposing that these rents would make better security than other ways of raising money, and would be more acceptable to a country already burdened with illegal taxes, Peard was evidently thinking of the revenue as an alternative to Ship Money and other impositions currently under attack. Peard spoke twice in favour of this, and was supported by Oliver Cromwell, but the proposal was not taken up.55Procs. LP iv. 320, 325. Despite this check, Peard persisted in advocating the abolition of deans and chapters (15 June), viewing them as ‘trees that cumber the ground’.56Procs. LP v. 168, 177. He made greater progress in his campaign against popery. On 1 December 1640 he had been named to the committee on recusants, a direct development from the committee of 24 (10 Nov.).57CJ ii. 42b. He went to the lord chief justice of the king’s bench on 19 May, to appeal against the protection afforded a priest by the Spanish ambassador, and on the 21st moved that names of papists be brought into the House from all over the country.58CJ ii. 150a; Procs. LP iv. 458, 507. That day he also told in a division, for the first of only two occasions during his parliamentary career. On whether to receive a report from a committee of the whole House on the treaty with the Scots, John Crewe I (who had chaired the committee) and Peard were tellers for the yeas and lost the division by 5 votes (the clerk of the House mistakenly recorded them as tellers for the noes). Frustrated at losing this vote, Peard tried to have the House called and the absentees fined.59CJ ii. 153b; Procs. LP iv. 510-11, 516.

In the wake of the army plot, Peard was keen to root out fellow-travellers of the plotters. Supporting John Glynne’s motion that the principal actors, Henry Jermyn*, George Goring* and Henry Percy* were guilty of high treason, Peard called for them to be sent to the Tower (14 June).60Procs. LP vi. 136. On 8 July he moved that some army officers in and around London and some MPs, connected to the army, ‘that deserve not well’, should get no pay.61Procs. LP v. 564. In pursuit of this notion that sheep should be separated from goats, Peard saw the call of the House as a way of compelling individuals to declare their loyalties for or against the reformers. He moved for a call on 21 May, and was seconded by Sir Simonds D’Ewes. He was named to a committee for MPs ‘better to discharge their consciences’ (3 July) but courted controversy again on 20 July when he was the prime mover against Members who left the chamber without permission. Peard was to collect two shillings from each defaulter, and with Edward Hyde* and two others pursued those who had left the chamber and had not returned on summons. Later that day the fine was doubled, the revenues allocate to the Westminster poor.62CJ ii. 217b, 218a. Naturally, this was not universally popular; D’Ewes thought it ‘much retarded the public service’ and was unworthy of a Member.63Procs. LP vi. 21 Even so, it was Peard who obtained leave, not without difficulty, for fellow-Devonian Edward Seymour (14 June), even though they shared little in common in politics.64Procs. LP v. 130.

Peard was doubtless an enthusiastic member of the committee to make Ship Money illegal (19 June), and reported from it on 26 July, when the bill was engrossed.65CJ ii. 181b, 224a. He reported two other bills that day. One was a bill which allowed the free importation of gunpowder. Peard was chairing the committee for that by 24 June; its interest for him personally probably lay in its origins as a response to the piracy which threatened the interests and livelihoods of maritime towns such as his own.66CJ ii. 184a, 219b, 224a. The third was the bill which declared it unlawful to compel a man to take a knighthood. Peard’s draughtsmanship on this bill was noted in the House. It was ‘so exactly penned that the committee did not alter one syllable’.67CJ ii.224a; Procs. LP vi. 93-4. Thus in a single day, Peard would not only have earned the approval of his constituents but also struck significant blows against two significant aspects of the regime of the personal rule. He might have been forgiven for feeling self-satisfied, but Sir Nevill Poole*, for one, considered that Peard had affronted the committee on Ship Money. William Cage* came to Peard’s support, and the bill went through.68Procs. LP vi. 93-4.

In the summer of 1641, Peard was busy searching out records of Convocation, prior to launching the impeachment of bishops, for whom he evidently haboured no more fondness than he did for deans and chapters. It was their involvement in constructing the controversial Canons that seemed to move Peard most.69CJ ii. 233b, 234b; Procs. LP vi. 184. He moved a conference with the Lords (28 July) to persuade them to join the Commons in petitioning the king for the sequestration of the impeached Archbishop Laud from his office.70Procs. LP vi. 121. He continued to harry the army plotters, calling on 3 August for Henry Percy’s* case to be dealt with, and the following week for both Percy and Henry Jermyn to be punished for a ‘higher and more wicked plot than gunpowder treason’.71Procs. LP vi. 221, 371. He was keen to draw comparisons between the misdeeds of these plotters and Strafford’s crimes, making the obvious point that both wished to use an army for their wicked purposes, and arguing that a blow against Parliament was a blow against the king, as ‘the Parliament is the body, the king is the head’.72Procs. LP vi. 379, 382. His evident skills in drafting legislation were put to good use in August, when, against the background of the king’s intended journey to Scotland despite the alarm and disapproval of Parliament, the treaty with the Scots was completed against the clock. Peard saw the bill quickly through to its final stages on 9 August. With fellow-Devonian John Upton* and Orlando Bridgeman*, Peard examined the bill, reported amendments to it, helped manage a conference with the Lords and brought back the peers’ approval to some but not all amendments, all in the single day.73CJ ii. 247b, 248a, 249b; Gardiner, Hist. England 1603-1642, ix. 416-7. It was noted that the most significant amendment that Peard steered through during this process was an omission of any reference to the English lords spiritual.74Procs. LP vi. 316, 317. The final version of the treaty included a clause that bound both nations to move towards unity of religion, so there is nothing to suggest that Peard would have harboured any reservations about progress towards a form of Presbyterianism in England.75Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 368.

On 6 August, Peard had been a teller with Edward Bayntun for keeping the customs farmer Sir Thomas Dawes in custody. Peard’s hard line, though unsuccessful in the division, may well have been popular in the commercial port of Barnstaple. That day, the case of the Barnstaple election at last came to judgment.76CJ ii, 239b, 242a. It is striking that despite his own membership of the privileges committee, Peard had done nothing to resolve the question mark over the status of his fellow-burgess, Richard Ferris. Little over two weeks after a new writ had been ordered for a fresh election for the seat Ferris had vacated, Peard disappeared from the record at Westminster until 9 November.77CJ ii. 268a, 308a. Some of this period (9 Sept. – 22 Oct.) included the parliamentary recess. There seems little doubt that he went back to Barnstaple. Tracing his movements is difficult, since the borough noted him as deputy recorder in court proceedings which took place when he was beyond doubt at Westminster, but he was certainly in his home town on 22 October, when he regularized a lease formerly made to the town’s puritan lecturer, William Crompton.78N. Devon RO, B1/339.

When Peard eventually returned to the House, it was to resume work on a number of projects that had occupied his attention earlier in 1641. He was named to the committee to examine arrested Irish suspects (24 Nov.) and continued to pursue the suspects in the army plots (1, 6 Dec.).79CJ ii. 324b, 329a, 333a. His belief in a Catholic fifth column was fuelled by the atmosphere of crisis. On 13 December, he helped manage a conference with the Lords on five priests condemned to death, pressing that the French ambassador be asked not to interfere in future cases. That day, he was also named to the committee on the appearance of armed men outside the palace of Westminster, and later in the month to committees intended to stop Thomas Lunsford, regarded by MPs as a renegade, from becoming lieutenant of the Tower.80CJ ii. 340a, 341a, 354a, 355a. The armed men had been sent by the king to replace the guard under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and they were under the command of the earl of Dorset, to whom Peard had delivered Barnstaple’s commission of high stewardship in 1637.81Gardiner, Hist. England 1603-1642, x. 86. Such was the tension that a committee Peard chaired on whether signatures to the London petition had been obstructed felt obliged to ask two king’s serjeants whether they had heard anyone say that throats would soon be cut (20 Dec.).82CJ ii. 350a.

Any obligations Peard felt towards Dorset must have been under severe strain at this point, and may explain why he played less of a part in the events of December 1641/January 1642 than might have been expected in someone of his outspokenness. He tried to secure the impeachment of army plotters on 23 December, but during the attempt by the king on the Five Members (4 Jan. 1642) his only known response was to chase after the delegation sent to inform the City of the danger, to remind them to keep their mission confidential. He then kept silence until 15 January, when he joined in the attack on Attorney-general Edward Herbert I*.83CJ ii. 354a; PJ i. 8, 83. He remained active in the attack on the bishops. He was one of a small committee of four that managed the records relating to the prosecution (1 Dec. 1641) and went on 31 December to remind the Lords of the bill to remove the bishops from that House. He made further visits to the peers on this subject on 17 January and 14 February.84CJ ii. 329a, 364a, 364b, 385b, 431b. During these exchanges, Peard declared that bishops had voted in Parliament for 500 years, provoking disagreement from D’Ewes, as antiquarian-minded as ever, who put it at 350 years.85PJ i. 314. Peard took to the Lords for their approval (14 Feb.) an order to indemnify Major-general Philip Skippon* as commander of guards at Parliament and the Tower: in 1646, Skippon would succeed to Peard’s parliamentary seat at Barnstaple.86CJ ii. 431b.

On 29 January, Peard’s implacable pursuit of the army plotters led him to a confrontation with the king’s cousin, James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, who wanted to protect Henry Jermyn and Henry Percy. When Richmond’s steward came to the Middle Temple to ask Peard to desist, the latter replied ‘He came to the Parliament to serve God, the king and his country, and if in the contemplation of these three he might serve [Richmond] he would, otherwise not’. Meeting Peard in the Lords, Richmond, in tones of ‘anger and disdain’, upbraided him: ‘I had thought Mr Peard, you had been my friend, but I see it was but a show of friendship; and that, from henceforth, he must expect but a show of love from him’.87CJ ii. 403a. Peard’s determination to regale the House with this narrative, which resulted in a hearing in the Lords against Richmond, brought out the irrepressible side of his character.88CJ ii. 406b. He was equally forthright in his condemnation of George Lord Digby* (19 Feb.) as a ‘Judas’ for organizing a show of force for the king.89PJ i. 424. Other objects of Peard’s wrath included Sir George Strode of Kent for his criticism of Parliament in its treatment of Lord Digby, John Digby, 1st earl of Bristol (6 Apr.), and Sir Edward Dering*. These were actors in the Kentish petition, and Peard chaired the committee which brought in articles of impeachment against Strode, managing conferences with the Lords on them.90PJ ii. 133, 192, 198, 201, 248-9, 300; CJ ii. 501b, 511b, 536ab, 549b, 550b, 565b.

During the second reading of a bill against the Vintners' Company, the Bristol burgesses Humphrey Hooke and Richard Longe were accused of being monopolists. Peard’s former committee on that topic was revived, and on 5 Feb. 1642 he resumed the chair.91CJ ii. 415a. The Bristol case went slowly through the House, with Peard’s report postponed, but on 12 May his committee found against Hooke and Longe, who were expelled as monopolists.92CJ ii. 541b, 565b, 567b. On 21 February, Peard was explicitly named as an assistant to Pym in the preparation and reading of a Declaration on the ‘grounds of jealousies and fears given to the Parliament’, the first of a long exchange of such documents between king and Parliament, described by a modern authority as ‘a form of public negotiation’.93CJ ii. 448a, 467a; Russell, Fall of the British Monarchies, 478. As the war of words became more voluble, there was the occasional sign that Peard was not fully integrated into the group that formed the king’s most fierce critics. When the ‘fiery spirits’ shouted down D’Ewes on 14 April, during a debate on the king’s proposed expedition to Ireland, Peard ‘with great vehemency’ (characteristically) reproved them.94PJ ii. 171. Peard was recommended for service in the Lords as counsel not by one of the junto, but by the much more ambivalent John Selden (21 Apr.).95PJ ii. 197.

Despite these suggestions that he retained an independent perspective on events, Peard nevertheless remained dogged in pursuit of his prey. During the spring and summer of 1642, he sat on committees to impeach delinquents in general (4 May), to charge Sir William Boteler of Hertfordshire (12 May), to impeach Thomas Gardiner, the recorder of London (18 May), nine peers (11 June), Henry Hastings, son of the 5th earl of Huntingdon (30 June), Sir Richard Gurney, the former lord mayor of London (7 July) and Clement Spelman of Gray’s Inn (11 July).96CJ ii. 556b, 568a, 576a, 577b, 620b, 645b, 658b, 660a, 664a, 681b; PJ iii. 173, 191. Of these cases, he took a leading role in the cases of Gurney and Spelman, neither of them the largest fish. He reported to his own House that the Lords objected to Boteler as a ‘notorious delinquent’ (11 July).97PJ iii. 199. He was reported (10 May), as taking a dismissive attitude to the king’s children. In a debate on fears that the prince of Wales was to be sent abroad and would thus fall under the spell of Catholic influences, Peard apparently indicated that if this were to happen, ‘it was no great matter, for there were more of the line’.98HMC 5th Rep. 178.

Other than in his capacity as nemesis of Parliament’s enemies, Peard moved progress with a taxation bill on 18 February, promised £20 a year to the Irish campaign (27 Apr.) for which he was commended in the Journal, and on 20 May sought with a bill to make papists liable for funding the Irish expeditionary force.99PJ i. 412, ii. 233; CJ ii. 544a, 570b, 580b, 671a. On 27 June he reported a conference with the Lords on tonnage and poundage.100CJ ii. 641b. On 9 August, with Alexander Rigby I, Sir Henry Mildmay and Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Peard was asked to prepare a Declaration against efforts by royalists in the country to bring in money for the king’s embryonic army.101CJ ii. 711a. Then, after, 12 August, Peard disappeared from the parliamentary record, not to be mentioned again until 24 October, when he was given leave to remain in Barnstaple ‘for service of that town and country’ during the civil war.102CJ ii. 716b, 821a. He never returned to Westminster. The dispensation he received seems odd, especially since Barnstaple had no other burgess in Parliament that could continue to represent the town. But the royalist Henry Bourchier, 5th earl of Bath, held the dominant political interest in north Devon, and it may have been judged by all parties concerned, in Barnstaple as well as in both Houses, that someone of Peard’s energy and commitment to the parliamentary cause could be of greatest effect in his home territory.

Barnstaple’s protector, 1642-44

Peard had evidently returned to Barnstaple by 20 August, when he attended a meeting to appoint a professional soldier to drill the trained band; a week later, he committed himself to funding an armed man for the town militia.103N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, pp. 35, 37. On 17 October, he was one of the four civic leaders who organized a council of war in the town, and was the first to offer a substantial contribution to the defence fund.104N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, pp. 38, 39. It was inevitable that in January 1643 he would be first among those given the responsibility of raising a town rate for defensive purposes, and in May that he took a leading part in reorganizing the council of war so that it included the resident officers Robert Bennett* and Robert Rolle*. The last time he appeared at the borough court, with the title of deputy recorder, was 16 October 1643.105N. Devon RO, B1/3976. This was after the town had surrendered to the royalists in September, in defiance of Peard’s urgent advice.106A Continuation of Certain Speciall and Remarkable Passages no. 10 (29 Feb.-7 Mar. 1644), 3 (E.36.1); Cotton, Barnstaple and the Civil War, 212. He must then have fallen ill, as the royalist newspaper, Mercurius Aulicus, had to print an apology for earlier reporting him to have been at Westminster, among those managing the future process of the great seal. In an allusion to Peard’s former work in enforcing attendance in the House, the newspaper joked that he was no more likely to become lord keeper as he was to resume as Commons doorkeeper, since he was lying sick in Barnstaple, ‘his vote, his law and his hair having all forsook him’.107Mercurius Aulicus no. 43 (22-28 Oct. 1643), 599-600 (E.75.13).

Peard’s last months are hard to trace. The hostile press printed a story in January 1644 that ‘Master Beaple’, a relative of Peard’s and a leading Barnstaple citizen, had struck out Peard’s name from his will as an executor, blaming him bitterly for his involvement with the parliamentarians, which on his deathbed he repented.108Mercurius Aulicus no. 2 (7-13 Jan. 1644), 770-1 (E.30.1). If this was Richard Beaple (d. 1643), Peard’s name seems in fact to have remained in the will as one of his ‘well-beloved friends’.109PROB11/192/519. Barnstaple, ‘Master Peard’s nest’, refused the royalist Protestation in February 1644. Peard’s personal surrender to arrest remained an unfulfilled condition for the peaceful transition from parliamentarian to royalist control in September 1643, but when Prince Maurice called upon the town in February 1644 to make good its complete surrender, there was a revolt against the royalist administration. The uprising was attributed to Peard, a ‘son of perdition’, amply suggesting that he was still a local force to be reckoned with.110Mercurius Aulicus no. 8 (18-24 Feb. 1644), 343 (E.37.1); Cotton, Barnstaple and the Civil War, 238-9. It was reported at the beginning of March that he had been taken forcibly to gaol at Exeter, and on 18 March he drew up his will, ‘seriously considering the uncertainty of mine abode in this house of sin and dust’, in which he referred to goods stolen from his house and the need for his heirs to seek compensation for damage both to the house and his goods.111A Continuation of Certain Speciall and Remarkable Passages no. 10, 3; PROB11/196/67. He took particular care in the will for his namesake and nephew, George Peard, and hoped that another nephew would become a minister. He made a codicil to his will on 9 June, but the precise date of his death is unknown. After his death, a memorial was erected to his memory in Barnstaple church, portraying him in full bust. It commemorated ‘a soldier of Christ, under whose banner he fought against the world, the flesh and the devil’. He was said to have died ‘in the year of his captain, 1644, of his warfare, 50’, which if taken literally means he died before 28 July.112Chanter, Lit. Hist. Barnstaple, 24-5. He remained unmarried at the time of his death.