Harry Peckham

Harry Peckham (1740^[2] – 10 January 1787) was a King's counsel^[3] and sportsman who toured Europe and wrote a series of letters which are still being published over 200 years later. Peckham was a member of the committee that drew up early laws of cricket^[4] including the first inclusion of the Leg before wicket rule.^[5] The diarist James Woodforde makes reference to Peckham playing cricket at Oxford in 1760^[6] and he was still playing in 1771.

Biography

Peckham was the only son of Reverend Henry Peckham, a clergyman of Chichester in Sussex.^[1] He was a contemporary of James Woodforde at school ( Winchester College) and at New College, Oxford where he was also a friend of Francis Noel Clarke Mundy.^[4]

The diarist James Woodforde makes reference to Peckham playing cricket at Oxford in 1760 and 1761.^[6]

Peckham was a member of the private Markeaton Hunt. In 1762–3, his friend Mundy commissioned a set of six portraits. Each of the subjects was in the distinctive dress of the Markeaton Hunt, consisting of a blue coat over a scarlet waistcoat and yellow breeches. Peckham sat for one of these paintings. The paintings hung at Mundy's ancestral home, Markeaton Hall.^[7]

Peckham entered Middle Temple in 1764 and was called on 29 January 1768.^[1] In the same year he toured through Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, Paris, Rouen, and Calais. His letters home were published by George Kearsley ^[8] amongst a number of travel books Kearsley published in London. Peckham's writings were and are still considered witty and interesting.^[4] His book records a view of Europe before the political upheavals and is considered to give a Whiggish view of how the Netherlands was a successful outcome of the union of liberty, commerce and Protestantism.^[9]

The following quotations from Peckham's Tour of Holland... give some idea of his wit and style:

Of a picture of St Anthony in the chapel of the Sorbonne, Paris, he wrote -

He is seated in an armed chair, not a very common convenience in a desert, nor a very proper attitude for a preacher; but his hair is greyish which I suppose to be an apology for the sitting.

Also in Paris he visited "the miserable college of English Benedictines" where -

...lies in state that silly fellow James [James II] not yet buried; for his followers, as weak as their master, think that the time will come when his family shall reign again in Britain; he therefore lies ready to be shipped off for England, to sleep with his ancestors in Westminster Abbey.

The Dutch language, he suggests -

....even from the mouth of a beauty would be an antidote to venery.

And of the French -

Their religion seems calculated for the vulgar, and is rather to amuse than to amend.^[10]

Peckham continued to play cricket as it seems likely that he was the 'Mr Peckam (sic), jun' who played for the Gentlemen of Sussex against the Gentlemen of Hampshire at Broadhalfpenny Down on 20 August 1771.^[11]

In 1774, Peckham sat on the committee that formulated some early laws of cricket. They were settled and revised at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall on Friday 25 February 1774. The meeting was chaired by Sir William Draper and the committee included the Duke of Dorset, the Earl of Tankerville and other "Noblemen and Gentlemen of Kent, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex, and London".^[12] This meeting agreed one of the earlier sets of cricket rules and is acknowledged as being the first where the Leg before wicket rule was introduced.^[5]

In 1781 Peckham was junior counsel to the former attorney-general John Dunning in the unsuccessful defence of François Henri de la Motte accused of supplying naval secrets to the French.^[13] Dunning was taken ill during the trial and Peckham found himself having to conduct the defence in a case which is said to have been the inspiration for the trial of Charles Darnay in Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities.^[14]

On 22 May 1783 Peckham wrote to the prime minister 3rd Duke of Portland from the Inner Temple thanking him for his 'Interposition in my favour'.^[15] He was called to the bench on 20 June 1783.^[1]

Peckham died only two years after his father^[16] on 10 January 1787 at the age of forty-six and was buried in the Temple Church on 19 January 1787.^[17] According to Ben Nicolson, author of a major work on Joseph Wright of Derby, Peckham suffered a broken neck whilst hunting.^[18] His name was added to a white marble monument erected on the north wall of Chichester Cathedral, noting that he was Recorder for Chichester. This monument had been created for Peckham's parents by his sister Sarah Farhill.^[16]

Major works

• Harry Peckham's Tour, Harry Peckham & Martin Brayne (Editor), The History Press ISBN 978-1-84588-619-6

References