Peter Peckard

Peter Peckard (c. 1718 – 8 December 1797) was an English Whig, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, Church of England minister and abolitionist. From 1781 he was Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was incorporated at Cambridge in 1782, appointed vice-chancellor in 1784, and created Doctor of Divinity (DD) per literas regias in 1785. In April 1792 he became Dean of Peterborough.

The son of the Rev. John Peckard of Welbourn, Lincolnshire, he matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford on 20 July 1734, then aged 16, and was admitted on 9 October. He graduated B.A. 1738, M.A. March 1741–2, and became scholaris, or probationary fellow, in 1744. After having been ordained in the Church of England, he seems to have become a chaplain in the army, to have married about 1752, and to have settled for a time at Huntingdon. His wife was Martha (1729–1805), eldest daughter of Edward Ferrar, attorney at Huntingdon.

He was appointed in 1760 to the rectory of Fletton and the vicarage of Yaxley, both near Peterborough. A dispensation for the holding of these two livings at the same time was needed, and it was obtained with difficulty from Thomas Secker, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Peckard was considered heterodox upon the question concerning an intermediate or separate state of conscious existence between death and the resurrection, and his examination was several times adjourned. He obtained his dispensation at last, but only after he had signed four articles to some extent modifying his views, and it was given at a date when the second benefice was within a day or two of lapsing.Edward Law commented that "Peter Peckard has escaped out of Lollard's tower with the loss of his tail."

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