PECOCK, REGINALD (c. 1390 - c. 1461), bishop
Date of birth: c. 1390
Date of death: c. 1461
Gender: Male
Occupation: bishop
Area of activity: Religion
Author: Ivor John Sanders
Possibly of Welsh origin: tradition says he came from Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, and although no definite evidence supports this, there were Pecocks in this town in the Middle Ages. Jenkyn le Whitt of Tenby, who died 1461, married Elen, heiress of Jenkyn Pecoc of Laugharne and Tenby, and Reginald Pecock may have sprung from this family, though the coat of arms attributed to him is different from that borne by Elen Pecoc. He is called ' presbyter dioecesis Menevensis,' but neither this nor his appointment to a Welsh see is proof of Welsh origin, while there is no sign of Welsh influence in the English dialect which he wrote. Pecock was a Doctor of Divinity of Oxford, Fellow of Oriel College, 1414-25, ordained 1420-1, rector of S. Michael Royal and master of Whittington College, London, 1431-44, bishop of S. Asaph, 1444-50, bishop of Chichester, 1450-8. [About 1455 appeared his Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy, an answer to Lollard attacks on the Church. But in later writings (see D.N.B.), he expressed views which were considered heretical.] Tried for heresy on 28 November 1457, he retracted on 3 December, his recantation being read and his books burned at S. Pauls Cross, 4 December, after which he was sent, under nominal arrest, to Canterbury and Maidstone. Deprived of office after August 1458, he was sent to Thorney Abbey, Cambridgeshire, where he seems to have died c. 1461; the place of his burial is unknown.
Author
- Ivor John Sanders, (1911 - 1991)
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Heraldic Visitations of Wales and Part of the Marches between the years 1586 and 1613, under the authority of Clarencieux and Norroy, two kings at arms (Llandovery 1846)
- E. Laws and E. H. Edwards, Church book of St. Mary the Virgin, Tenby (Tenby 1907)
- W. K. R. Bedford, The Blazon of Episcopacy being the arms borne by or attributed to the archbishops and bishops of England and Wales with an ordinary of the coats described and of other episcopal arms (1858, 1897)
- V. H. H. Green, Bishop Reginald Pecock a study in ecclesiastical history and thought (Oxford 1945)
Sources
- Wikipedia Article: Reginald Pecock
Further Reading
Published date: 1959
Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-RUU/1.0/
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