Peter would seem to have been one of those men gifted with
what is sometimes called eloquence; that is, the faculty of stating
things powerfully from momentary feeling, and not from that conviction of
the higher reason which alone can give force and permanence to words. His
letters show him subject, like others of like temperament, to fits of
"hypocondriacal melancholy," and the only witness he called on his trial
was to prove that he was confined to his lodgings by such an attack on
the day of the king's beheading. He seems to have been subject to this
malady at convenience, as some women to hysterics. Honest John Endicott
plainly had small confidence in him, and did not think him the right man
to represent the Colony in England. There is a droll resolve in the
Massachusetts records by which he is "desired to write to Holland for
500_l._ worth of _peter_, & 40_l._ worth of match." It is with a match
that we find him burning his fingers in the present correspondence.
Peter seems to have entangled himself somehow with a Mrs. Deliverance
Sheffield, whether maid or widow nowhere appears, but presumably the
latter. The following statement of his position is amusing enough: "I
have sent Mrs D. Sh. letter, which puts mee to new troubles, for though
shee takes liberty upon my Cossen Downing's speeches, yet (Good Sir) let
mee not be a foole in Israel.
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