Gray's Inn, p. 206). In 1641 he was engaged in carrying messages from the parliament to its committee in Scotland (Commons' Journals, ii. 315, 330). He commanded a regiment in the Earl of Manchester's army, fought at the battle of Marston Moor, and was one of Cromwell's witnesses against Manchester (Markham, Life of Lord Fairfax, p. 157; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1644–5, p. 151). On the formation of the new model army, Colonel Ayloffe's regiment was incorporated with Pickering's, and the command given to the latter (Commons' Journals, iv. 90, 123). He took part in the battle of Naseby, the siege of Bristol, and the captures of Laycock House, Wiltshire, and Winchester (Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 1854, pp. 116, 127, 135, 140). Pickering died in November 1645 at St. Mary Ottery, Devonshire; and Sprigge, who terms him ‘a little man, but of a great courage,’ inserts a short poem celebrating his virtues (p. 168). A prose character of him is contained in John Cooke's ‘Vindication of the Law’ (4to, 1646, p. 81). Pickering was a zealous puritan, and in 1645 caused a mutiny in his regiment by insisting on giving them a sermon (Gardiner, Great Civil War, ii. 192).
Edward Pickering, the third son of Sir John, is frequently mentioned by Pepys (Diary, ed. Wheatley, i. 104).
[Noble's House of Cromwell, ed. 1787, i. 379; and his Lives of the English Regicides, 1798, ii. 127.]
PICKERING, Sir JAMES (fl. 1383), speaker of the House of Commons, was son of Sir John Pickering of Killington, Westmoreland, by Eleanor, daughter of Sir Richard Harington of Harington, Cumberland, and grandson of Sir James Pickering of Killington. The family had been established at Killington since 1260. It was probably the future speaker who was one of the knights of the shire for Westmoreland in the parliament which met on 13 Oct. 1362, and was again returned in the parliament of 20 Jan. 1365. On 20 Dec. 1368 he was a commissioner of array in Westmoreland, to choose twenty archers to serve under Sir William de Windsor in Ireland. Afterwards he accompanied Windsor to Ireland, and was employed as a justiciar; in this capacity he was charged, in 1373, with being guilty of oppression, and of having given Windsor bad advice (Fœdera, iii. 854, 977–80, Record edit.) On 13 Oct. 1377 he was again one of the knights of the shire for Westmoreland, and in the parliament which met at Gloucester on 20 Oct. 1378 he occurs as speaker. The protestation which, as speaker, he made for freedom of speech, and declaring the loyalty of the commons, was, on this occasion, for the first time recorded in the rolls (Rolls of Parliament, iii. 34 b). Pickering sat for Westmoreland in the parliaments of 24 April 1379 and 6 Oct. 1382, but is not described as speaker in the rolls. In the rolls for the parliament of 23 Feb. 1383 he is referred to as ‘Monsr. Jacobus de Pikeryng Chivaler qu'avoit les paroles pur la comune’ (ib. iii. 145 b), and his speech is again recorded. In this parliament, as in those of November 1384, September 1388, November 1390, and September 1397, he was one of the knights of the shire for the county of York. Pickering was an executor for William de Windsor in Sept. 1384 (Duckett, Duchetiana, p. 286).
Pickering married, first, Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Lowther, by whom he had a son James; and, secondly, Margaret, daughter of Sir John Norwood, by whom he had a son Edward, who was a controller of the royal household. Through his elder son he was possibly ancestor of the Pickerings of Titchmarsh, Northamptonshire.
[Manning's Speakers, pp. 5–7; Nicolson and Burn's Westmoreland and Cumberland, i. 262–3; Return of Members of Parliament; authorities quoted.]
PICKERING, JOHN (d. 1537), leader in the pilgrimage of grace, was a Dominican, who proceeded B.D. at Cambridge in 1525. At that date he was prior of the Dominican house at Cambridge, but he was subsequently appointed prior of the Dominicans at York or Bridlington. He took part in organising the rebellion known as the pilgrimage of grace in 1536, and, after the failure of Sir Francis Bigod's insurrection, Henry VIII wrote that Dr. Pickering should be sent up to him. He had composed a song beginning ‘O faithful people of the Boreal Region,’ which seems, in spite of its first line, to have been very popular. It is often mentioned in the depositions. He was condemned and hanged at Tyburn on 25 May 1537.
Another contemporary Dr. Pickering was a priest and parson of Lythe, Yorkshire, whose father lived at Skelton; he also was suspected of complicity in the northern rebellion, and was sent to London, and confined in the Marshalsea in 1537. He probably gave information as to others, as he was pardoned 21 June 1537. A third John Pickering was a bachelor of decrees at Oxford, and became prebendary of Newington, 6 Jan. 1504–5.
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 62; Letters and Papers Hen. VIII, i. 1549, &c., XII. i. 479, 698, 786, 1019, 1021, 1199, ii. 12, 191; Froude's Hist. of Engl. vol. ix.; Le Neve's Fasti, ii. 418; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ii. 715.]
