" To me Peter's highest promotion seems to have been that he walked
with John Milton at the Protector's funeral. He was, I suspect, one of
those men, to borrow a charitable phrase of Roger Williams, who "feared
God in the main," that is, whenever it was not personally inconvenient.
William Coddington saw him in his glory in 1651: "Soe wee toucke the tyme
to goe to viset Mr Petters at his chamber. I was mery with him & called
him the Arch Bp: of Canterberye, in regard to his adtendance by ministers
& gentlemen, & it passed very well." Considering certain charges brought
against Peter, (though he is said, when under sentence of death, to have
denied the truth of them,) Coddington's statement that he liked to have
"gentlewomen waite of him" in his lodgings has not a pleasant look. One
last report of him we get (September, 1659) in a letter of John
Davenport,--"that Mr Hugh Peters is distracted & under sore horrors of
conscience, crying out of himselfe as damned & confessing haynous
actings."
Occasionally these letters give us interesting glimpses of persons and
things in England. In the letter of Williams just cited, there is a
lesson for all parties raised to power by exceptional causes. "Surely,
Sir, youre Father & all the people of God in England .
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