most fitting person in the town to plant the memorial oak-tree. He directed much vigorous verse against what he regarded as theological superstition and political tyranny; but his finest poetical work was of a contemplative kind. Three volumes of his poems have been published, viz.: ‘Poems and Songs’ (1864), ‘Hours of Reverie’ (1867), and a selection of published and unpublished verse (to which is prefixed a portrait of Peacock), edited by the present writer for the benefit of the widow in 1880.
[Prefaces to Works and private information.]
PEACOCK, LUCY (fl. 1815), bookseller and author, kept a shop in Oxford Street, and wrote tales for children, for the most part anonymously. Among the earliest of these were ‘The Adventures of the Six Princesses of Babylon in their Travels to the Temple of Virtue: an allegory’ (1785; 3rd edit. 1790), and ‘The Rambles of Fancy, or Moral and Interesting Tales’ (2 vols., 1786). In the following years she contributed to the ‘Juvenile Magazine’ similar tales, which were reissued in ‘Friendly Labours, or Tales and Dramas for the Amusement and Instruction of Youth’ (Brentford, 1815). Other of her publications were: ‘The Knight of the Rose’ (1793; 2nd edit. 1807); ‘The Visit for a Week’ (1794; 7th edit. 1812), which was translated into French in 1817 by J. E. Le Febvre; ‘Emily, or the Test of Sincerity’ (1816); and ‘The Little Emigrant: a Tale’ (4th edit. 1820).
Miss Peacock also translated from the French ‘Ambrose and Eleanor, or the Adventures of Two Children deserted on an Uninhabited Island’ (1796, 1812, by R. and L. Peacock), an adaptation of ‘Fanfan et Lolotte;’ Veyssière de la Croze's ‘Grammaire Historique’ (1802), and ‘Abrégé Chronologique de l'Histoire Universelle’ (1807).
[Literary Memoirs of Living Authors of Great Britain, 1798; Dict. of Living Authors, 1816; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.]
PEACOCK, REGINALD (1395?–1459?), bishop of Chichester. [See Pecock.]
PEACOCK, THOMAS (1516?–1582?), president of Queens' College, Cambridge, born at Cambridge, about 1516, was son of Thomas Peacock, burgess of Cambridge, whose will, dated 1528, was proved in the court of the archdeacon of Ely in 1541. He was admitted fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1534, and graduated B.A. 1534–5, M.A. 1537, and B.D. 1554. He adhered to the old religion; and in the disturbance in St. John's College leading to the visitation by Thomas Goodrich [q. v.], the protestant bishop of Ely, on 5 April 1542, Peacock was one of the appellants (Baker, Hist. of St. John's, p. 116). He subsequently became chantry priest in St. Lawrence's Church, Ipswich, and rector of Nacton, and from 23 April 1554 to 1556 was prebendary of Norwich. On 1 April 1555 he signed the Roman catholic articles promoted by Dr. Atkynson and others (Lamb, Cambr. Documents, p. 175), and on 25 Oct. Thirlby, bishop of Ely, whose chaplain he was, presented him to the rectory of Downham, Cambridge. In 1556 he exchanged his Norwich prebend for one in Ely Cathedral. On the occasion of Cardinal Pole's visitation of the university (11 Jan. 1556–7) Peacock preached in Latin before the visitors in St. Mary's Church, ‘inveighing against heresyes and heretyckes as Bylney, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, &c.’ (Foxe, Acts and Monuments, viii. 266). On 31 Jan. 1558 he was presented by the bishop of Ely to the rectory of Barley in Hertfordshire, and on 23 Nov. of the same year was elected president of Queens' College, Cambridge.
Refusing to comply with the change of religion at the accession of Elizabeth, he lost all his preferments. He resigned the presidency of Queens' College on 1 July 1559, in order to avoid expulsion. He made various benefactions to the churchwardens of the parish of Holy Trinity (cf. Reports of the Charity Commissioners, xxxi. 72) and to the corporation of Cambridge. He died about 1582 (see Cooper, Annals of Cambr. ii. 366).
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr.; Blomefield's Norfolk, ii. 666; Cooper's Annals of Cambr. ii. 114, 366; James Bentham's Hist. and Antiq. of the Conventual and Cathedral Church of Ely, p. 260; Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 80; Rob. Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, iii. 385; Addit. MS. 5808, p. 138; Cotton MS., Titus, c. x. 6; Baker's Hist. St. John's College, pp. 116, 335; Browne Willis's Cathedrals, ii. 387; State Papers, Dom., Eliz. 16 March 1559; Charity Comm. Reports, xxxi. 30, 72; Baker MS. xxx. 218, 253, 266.]
PEACOCK, THOMAS BEVILL, M.D. (1812–1882), physician, son of Thomas Peacock and his wife Sarah Bevill, members of the Society of Friends, was born at York on 21 Dec. 1812. At the age of nine he was sent to the boarding-school of Mr. Samuel Marshall at Kendal, where he remained till apprenticed to John Fothergill, a medical practitioner at Darlington. In 1833 he came to London, entered as a student of medicine at University College, also attending the surgical practice of St. George's Hospital,
