Samways, Peter (1615 -1693)

Peter Samways was born in Eltham in Kent, son of ‘a person about the court’. He was educated at Westminster School and was a Scholar of Trinity College Cambridge, where he was admitted 10 April 1635, took his B.A. in 1637, was elected a Fellow in 1640 and proceeded M.A. in 1641. In or before 1657 he became Rector of Malden in Bedfordshire, and in 1659 he was Chaplain to Elizabeth, Countess of Peterborough. He was presented by Lord Salisbury to the Vicarage of Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, from which, and from his Fellowship at Trinity, he was expelled for persisting in reading the Book of Common Prayer. At the Restoration he was created D.D. by Cambridge University by Royal decree and was presented to the Rectory of Wath near Ripon by the Earl of Aylesbury. At the Revolution of 1688, he was a staunch supporter of William III. He died at Bedale in Yorkshire in April 1693. Papworth gives Sable on a fess between three crosses patty or three martlets or as the arms of Samwayes of Chilhampton in Wiltshire. The only similar arms are those of Canon, but that family mostly bears its fess engrailed.