Robert Peck

Of Beccles, father of Joseph Peck (bp. 1587), per Ira Peck, who calls him a “gentleman” entitled to coat-armour. His children: Richard (d. without issue), Nicholas (m. Rachel Young), Robert (rector at Hingham, Norfolk), Joseph, Margaret, Martha and Samuel.

His will, dated March 1592/3, “in the xxxv yere” of Elizabeth, was made while he was “sick and weake of body at chemisfforde in the cowntye of Essex … of a pluresye.” It gives his wife Hellen, “in consideration of the paiment of my debts the bringinge up of my children and the finishinge of the houses which I am now in buildinge,” his houses and lands in Beccles and Barsham for her life, and gives his son Richard “my houses where in I dwell in Blibergate street” (Ira Peck pp. 21-23).

Mollie Pfeiffer gives his wife as “–– Norton”; Ira Peck says Hellen Babbs, and “Norton” appears in the visitation only as the married name of a Margaret Peck. Mollie makes his son Joseph “a lineal descendant for twenty-one generations of John Peck of Belton.” The printed visitations she cites begin with Richard Peck of Wakefield and have no Beccles branch, and Ira Peck says the British Museum pedigree lacks “the two last families, those of Robert and Joseph, which are added to it.” His place in the Peck family of Wakefield is therefore unproven.

Open questions

• His parents, and his place (if any) in the Peck family of Wakefield.