Peter Peckard (c. 1718 – 8 December 1797) was an English Whig, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, Church of England minister and abolitionist.
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.
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.
He built a new parsonage-house at Fletton, and was permitted by the patron, John Proby, 2nd Earl of Carysfort, to nominate his successor to the benefice.
The Zong massacre of 1781 prompted Peckard to speak strongly against slave trade in his sermons, some of which were published as tracts and pamphlets.
[1] On becoming vice-chancellor at Cambridge he set the Latin essay competition question, "Anne Liceat Invitos in Servitutem Dare?"
Among Peckard's other sermons and tracts were: He published anonymously in 1776 a treatise on Subscription with Historical Extracts, and in 1778 a pamphlet Am I not a Man and a Brother?
Some of Peckard's manuscripts, which were helpful to students of the genealogy of the early New England settlers, are referred to in John Wingate Thornton's First Records of Anglo-American Colonisation, Boston, 1859.