Background
He was born in 1598 in Fowey, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, the son of Thomas Dirkwood or Dyckwoode, who subsequently assumed the surname of Peter, and Martha Treffry. He was baptized at Fowey in Cornwall in June 1598.
He was born in 1598 in Fowey, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, the son of Thomas Dirkwood or Dyckwoode, who subsequently assumed the surname of Peter, and Martha Treffry. He was baptized at Fowey in Cornwall in June 1598.
He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1613; received the bachelor's degree in 1617/18, and the master's, in 1622.
He was ordained deacon December 23, 1621, and priest June 18, 1623, by George Montaigne, Bishop of London. After preaching in Essex, he removed to London, where he lectured at St. Sepulchre's, and became associated with the Puritan feoffees who were raising a fund to buy up impropriations in England, and a member of the Massachusetts Bay Company. The appointment of Laud as bishop of London and the rise to power of the high church party caused him to leave England about 1629.
After traveling through Germany, he assisted John Forbes in the congregation of English merchants at Delft and preached to an English congregation at Rotterdam. At the latter place he was joined by William Ames, and perhaps under Ames's influence drafted a covenant for the church embodying the principles of congregationalism, and refused communion to all who would not accept it.
He invited John Davenport when the latter failed to win installation as co-pastor with John Paget of the English church at Amsterdam, and here he and Davenport engaged Lion Gardiner to go to New England for the Warwick patentees. His movements in Holland were watched by emissaries of Laud, now archbishop of Canterbury, and probably for this reason he placed John Davenport in charge of his congregation in Rotterdam and departed for New England.
On October 6, 1635, Peter arrived in Massachusetts Bay, and on December 21, 1636, succeeded Roger Williams as pastor of the church at Salem. At the time of his settlement at Salem, the church adopted a covenant in some of its details resembling the covenant that he had drafted for the church in Rotterdam. On March 3, 1635/36 he was admitted a freeman of the Bay Colony, and took an active part in the affairs of New England.
Soon after his arrival in Massachusetts he and Henry Vane called a meeting to heal the breach between John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley. He served on committees appointed May 25, 1636, and March 12, 1637/38, to draft a code of laws for the colony. He concerned himself with the settlement of the Warwick patentees at the mouth of the Connecticut River, and in the summer of 1636 accompanied George Fenwick to Saybrook.
In November 1637 he attended the examination of Anne Hutchinson by the court at Newtown, and in the following March, her trial before the church at Boston. He was a member of the committee appointed November 20, 1637, "to take order for a colledge at Newetowne, " was one of those to whom the building of the college was intrusted, and his name appeared as an overseer of the college on the theses printed in 1642.
With others, he was sent by the governor and council of Massachusetts to settle a dispute in the church at Piscataqua and on leaving that place lost his way and wandered for two days and a night in the woods. He encouraged the fisheries, trade, and shipbuilding of New England. Against the will of his Salem congregation, he was appointed one of three agents to represent Massachusetts Bay and to further the reformation of the churches in England, and on August 3, 1641, sailed from Boston for the mother country.
In England he secured support for the Bay Colony and Harvard College and assisted in arranging a settlement with the creditors of New Plymouth. In negotiations with the Dutch West India Company he failed to settle the boundary between New England and New Netherland for lack of a commission from Connecticut, although one had been sent to him soon after his departure from New England.
He always intended to return to New England, but with the outbreak of civil war in England he became involved in the affairs of the mother country, and made the poor health from which he suffered all his life an excuse for delay. During the summer of 1642 he served as chaplain with the forces of Alexander, Lord Forbes, in Ireland; in 1644, with the forces of the Earl of Warwick; in 1645 and 1646, with the New Model Army; and in 1649, with Cromwell in Ireland. With the duties of chaplain he combined those of war correspondent and reported the activities of the army to the House of Commons.
He was one of the ministers appointed to preach before the Council, for which he received an annuity of £200 and lodgings in Whitehall, and so impressed a visiting New Englander with his high station that he was addressed as Archbishop of Canterbury, which "passed very well. "
With the overthrow of the Protectorate, he fell from power. On January 9, 1659/60, he was turned out of Whitehall; on May 11 the Council of State, and on June 7 the House of Commons ordered his apprehension; on August 20 he was excepted from the Act of Indemnity; on September 2 he was arrested and committed to the Tower; on October 13 he was tried and condemned; and on October 16, 1660, he was executed at Charing Cross.
Hugh Peter was famous as the supporter of the Parliamentary cause during the English Civil War, and thus became highly influential. He was a close associate and propagandist for Oliver Cromwell, may have been the first to propose the trial and execution of Charles I and was believed to have assisted at the beheading. He was the author of "God's Doings and Man's Duty", "A Word for the Army and Two Words for the Kingdom", "A Dying Father's Last Legacy".
He was a firm supporter of non-separating congregationalism or the "New England way".
Peters's preaching and addresses to Parliament on Cromwell's behalf had made him too well known as a Puritan opponent of the royal house of Stuart for any disavowals to save him, and repentance was probably his best hope.
Quotes from others about the person
He is characterized by Winthrop as "a man of a very public spirit and singular activity for all occasions. "
About 1624 Peter married Elizabeth, the daughter of Thomas Cooke of Pebmarsh, Essex, widow of Edmund Reade of Wickford, Essex, and mother of the second wife of John Winthrop, Jr. She did not accompany him to New England and died in 1637 or 1638. Sometime before September 4, 1639, he married Deliverance Sheffield, a widow, who was the mother of his only child, Elizabeth, baptized at Salem October 1, 1640.
His later life was clouded by the insanity of this second wife. In 1665 his daughter married Thomas Barker at All Hallows, London Wall, and as a widow in low circumstances, in 1703 laid claim to his Salem estate.
