PEACHEY, John (1749-1816), of West Dean, Suss.

In 1774 Peachey was suggested as a possible candidate at Tregony. If Bamber Gascoyne or Thomas Best was unwilling to pay the sum required for the seat, North wished it to be offered to Peachey whose father would, he thought, ‘pay the whole demand for his son’.North to Robinson, 6 Oct. 1774, Abergavenny mss. Peachey however, did not stand, but in 1776 when John Pownall, M.P. for St. Germans, ‘had set his heart on being made a commissioner of excise’, his friend and patron Edward Eliot ‘in order to assist him ... chose Mr. Peachey in his room ... Mr. Pownall and Mr. Peachey thinking alike in politics, their votes were equal as to the public’.Eliot to Edw. Gibbon, 24 Aug. 1780, Add. 34886, f. 112. Peachey supported Administration regularly during this Parliament. In 1779 the Public Ledger called him ‘a railer against Opposition when he opens his mouth, which is but seldom’. In fact, no speeches by him are known.

In 1780 with Government support he was returned unopposed at New Shoreham, and apart from voting in opposition on Conway’s motion against the war, 27 Feb. 1782, regularly voted with Administration. He voted for Shelburne’s peace preliminaries, 18 Feb. 1783, yet in Robinson’s list of March 1783 was still described as a supporter of North. He did not vote on Fox’s East India bill, but in Stockdale’s list of 19 Mar. 1784 was classed as a follower of Pitt.

Returned again for Shoreham in 1784 after a contest in which he was head of the poll, his one recorded vote in this Parliament was for Pitt on the Regency. He was again a candidate for New Shoreham in 1790, but withdrew a week before the election.

He died 27 June 1816.