Robert Peat

Sir Robert Peat (c. 1772–20 April 1837) was an Anglican cleric and, according to some sources, the first Grand Prior of the revived English langue of the Order of Saint John.

Peat was born in Hamsterley, County Durham, England, the son of John Peat (died 1805), a watchmaker and silversmith, and Anne Heron (died 1778), of the Herons of Chipchase Castle. He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge as a ten-year man on 20 April 1790 and later received a Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Glasgow in 1799.

On 21 November 1790, Peat was appointed to the Order of Saint Stanislaus by the King of Poland. His obituary says that he was appointed for services rendered to that king by a relative of Peat and his entry in the British Herald says that this was in connection to land willed to him by a John Vesey of Warsaw. Peat's house was broken into on 25 October 1808 and papers relating to his Polish estates were reported stolen.

In 1804, Peat was permitted by King George III to accept and wear the order's insignias. Appearing in court in 1808 after being attacked outside of the Drury Lane theatre, the defence objected to calling Peat "Sir" as he had not been appointed to any order of knighthood in the United Kingdom. However, the Lord Chief Justice, presiding, stated that knighthood was a "universal honour" and thus the appellation applied to him.

Peat had also been a military chaplain in the Peninsular War. He was appointed a steward of Queen Charlotte's Lying-In Hospital in 1817, elected a fellow of the Medico-Botanical Society of London in 1830 and had married the author Lucy Clementina Davies and Francis Henry Davies at St Marylebone Parish Church in 1823.