John Peckham was a well-to-do man and an early settler of Rhode Island around 1638/9. Was he the same person as the John Peckham, second son of Henry Peckham of Nyton manor, who was baptized 8 Apr. 1595 at Boxgrove, Sussex, England and who was chaplain to the Earl of Hertford in 1634? When did John come to America? When and where did he marry his first wife Mary Clarke (sister of Dr. -- and later Rev. -- John Clarke)? When did he move to Rhode Island?
For a summary of John Clarke and family, see http://www.bonevich.com/clarke/clarkegen4.php
John Peckham's second wife Elinor was admitted to the church in 1648. She had children including Clement and Rebecca, leading to the general assumption that she was the daughter of Clement and Rebecca (Holbrook) Weaver. Is there any further evidence supporting this assumption?
Stephen Farnum Peckham wrote of John Peckham in NEHGR in 1903 (online at http://books.google.co.id/books?id=ZasL5T7AmxcC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=john+peckham+newport&source=bl&ots=Fsj5m69CCH&sig=qZnJsCfTiHpbZdR8hgfwPco0VtU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0I3DUuzWK-OgigeChYDIDA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=john%20peckham%20newport&f=false ) :
"He was a brother-in-law of John Clarke, and his lands were allotted along with those of William Freeborn, John Coggeshell, and others who were the first settlers of Aquidneck in 1638 where, on May 20th, his name was on a list of those who were admitted inhabitants of Newport."
There's a problem here -- Newport wasn't founded until 27 Apr. 1639, by John Clarke, John Coggleshell, and six others who broke away from the Ann Hutchinson group. The Hutchinson group established their settlement in Rhode Island in May 1638, with the help of Roger Williams, whose tiny group (12 families) settled in Rhode Island in 1636. Was Stephen Farnum Peckham off by a year when he said 1638? What is the nature of the document that he cited? Was it a list of first settlers of Newport? If so, then of course it implies that Peckham was in Rhode Island earlier, as part of the Hutchinson group, which suggests that he was in Boston before.
Was John Peckham already married to Mary Clarke when he settled in Newport? If so, that could shed some light on the question of where he was before coming to Rhode Island. Perhaps there are good approximate birth years for his children. Is there any reason to suspect that he WASN'T in Boston before Rhode Island?
20 years after his 1903 article in NEHGR, Stephen Farnham Peckham published his genealogy of the Peckham family in England and America (scanned images available at ancestry.com). In this book, (pp. 207-208) Peckham gives a speculative explanation of how John Peckham, Anglican priest and chaplain to an Earl in 1634, came to be a religious dissenter in Rhode Island in 1638. How much of this, and in what form, should be included in the wikitree profile of John Peckham? Here is the relevant quote:
"We left John Peckham in 1634, Chaplain to the Earl of Hertford, who at that time was William Seymour, later Duke of Somerset. We next hear of John Peckham in Rhode Island in 1638. We have no record of what occupied his attention in the years between the two dates. We can, however, from what preceded and what followed these dates, conjecture with a large degree of probability the events of his life.
"William Seymore, Duke of Somerset, was one of the most powerful noblemen of the reign of Charles the First. One of his most familiar country seats was Petworth, about twelve miles north of Chichester, in the neighborhood in which the Peckhams lived. A chaplain of a nobleman of this character would be brought in contact with many of the leading spirits of that age. The Duke enjoyed, during the whole of King Charles the First’s reign, the confidence of his King, with the exception of the episode of his marriage with Arabella Stuart, which proved more unfortunate for the lady than for him. There is no doubt that as Chaplain to this nobleman, John Peckham made the acquaintance of Sir Henry Vane the younger. Sir Henry Vane the elder was Comptroller of the Household of Charles the First, and consequently intimately associated with the King. He lived on the old Peckham Manor which his great-grandfather had purchased or inherited from the heirs of William Peckham, who was cup bearer to Archbishop Thomas Bourchier. This site was the home of the Vanes from the middle of the Fifteenth to the middle of the Eighteenth centuries. Sir Henry Vane was born and reared there.
"There can be little doubt that the extreme theological views which were formulated in the mind of Sir Henry Vane during his early years, became the convincing arguments that turned John Peckham from his allegiance to the Church of England. These more or less extreme views may be described in the language of that day as those of a Baptist Lollard. No doubt John Peckham came to Boston with Sir Henry Vane in 1634. He probably met there Mary Clarke, who had accompanied her brother, Dr. John Clark, to Boston [p. 208] at about the same time. Their acquaintance resulted in their marriage, of which no record can be found; probably in consequence of the fact that as Baptist Lollards, both families were outside the churches, which were then strictly Congregational and antagonistic to the Lollards.
"While there are no records to be found in Boston, all of the circumstances attending the subsequent lives of the Clarks and the Peckhams and their relations with each other, tend to make these suppositions almost certainties. As a clergyman of the Church of England, having taken very strict vows of ordination, John Peckham would be reluctant to take an active part in theological acts or discussions which would openly ally him with the party who opposed the English Church. We, therefore, reach this conclusion that John Peckham and Mary Clark were married some time during the administration of Sir Henry Vane as Governor of the Massachusetts colony, and, that having formed this connection with the Clark family, he did not return to England with Sir Henry, but stayed and followed the fortunes of the Clarks at Rhode Island.
"While his name does not appear on the list of those disarmed in Boston, nor among the followers of Wheelwright, nor was he one of the signers of the Portsmouth Covenant, yet he must have been one of the party known as the Ann Hutchinson party, who founded a settlement on the north end of Rhode Island, which became the town of Portsmouth. His lands were allotted along with those of William Freeborn and John Coggeshall, who were among the first settlers of the Island of Aquidnick, or Rhode Island, where, on May 20th, 1638, his name appears in a list of those who were admitted inhabitants of Newport. In 1640 the bounds of his lands were established. On March 16th, 1641, he was admitted a Freeman. In 1648 he was one of the 10 male members of the First Baptist Church of Newport in full communion. This same year his second wife Eleanor Peckham, his second wife, was baptized."