him money, and one of them, the Marques Alquenezes, entertained him at his house. News of his exploits reached Madrid, and the king (Philip IV) summoned him to court, He was presented on Christmas day 1625 to the king, the queen, and Don Carlos, the infante. He declined the king's offer of a yearly pension to serve him by land or sea, but gratefully accepted one hundred pistolets and permission to return to England. Passing through France, he arrived at Foy, Cornwall, on 23 April 1626. On 18 May he came to London, and delivered a challenge to the Duke of Buckingham, with which he had been entrusted by a brother-in-law of the Conde d'Olivares (Court of Charles I, i. 104).
In July 1626 Pike published an account of his encounter with the three Spaniards in a tract (now rare) called ' Three to One.' It was dedicated to Charles I. Although Pike apologises at the outset for writing with 'fingers fitter for the pike than the pen,' he tells his story with admirable spirit. A friend (J. D.) contributed at the close some verses in Pike's praise. The tract (a copy of which is in the British Museum, catalogued under Peeke) was reprinted in Arber's English Garner (i. 621).
Pike's adventures were also dramatised in 'Dicke of Devonshire, a tragi-Comedy,' which was first printed from the Egerton MS. 1994 by Mr. A. H. Bullen in his 'Collection of Old English Plays,' 1883, ii. 1-99. The piece is assigned by Mr. Bullen to Thomas Heywood—a more intelligible suggestion than Mr. Fleay's proposal to assign it to Robert Davenport. Pike's courage was commemorated later in the century in a broadside ballad entitled 'A Panegyric Poem, or Tavestock's Encomium,' which is reprinted in Mrs. Bray's 'Tamar and the Tavy,' and contains the lines:
Search whether can be found again the like
For noble prowess to our Tav'stock Pike,
In whose renown'd never-dying name
Live England's honour and the Spaniard's shame.
[Bullen's Introduction to his Old Plays, ii. 1 sq.; Mrs. Bray's Tamar and Tavy.]
PIKE, RICHARD (1834–1893), master-mariner, born in 1834 at Carboniere in Conception Bay, Newfoundland, was brought up in the northern fisheries, in whaling and sealing, and in 1869 obtained command of a steamer engaged in that trade. In 1875 he was captain of the Proteus, a stout-built vessel of 467 tons and 110 horse-power, which in 1881 was chartered by the United States government to carry Lieutenant Greely and his party through Smith Sound to Lady Franklin Bay. This was safely effected; and, in 1883, the Proteus, still commanded by Pike, was again chartered to carry out relief to the expedition, the United States ship Yantic being ordered to accompany her as a depot, as far as was prudent, but not to venture into the ice, for which she was not fitted. On 23 July, off Cape Sabine, the Proteus was nipped in the pack and sank almost immediately; no lives were lost, but there was scant time to save some provisions and clothes. Sometimes in the boats, sometimes painfully dragging them over the rough ice-floes, Pike and his companions succeeded, after extreme hardship, in reaching Upernavik, where they were taken up by the Yantic. For that year there was no relief to Greely's party; but the survivors were rescued in the following year. In 1891 Pike, in the steamer Kite, was engaged to carry Mr. R. E. Peary and his party, which he put on shore in McCormick Bay in Murchison Sound (lat. 77 43' N.),and returned without misadventure. In the next year he brought the party back, and was to have taken Peary out again in the summer of 1893. The arrangement was cancelled by Pike's death, at St. John's, on 4 May. 'A typical Newfoundlander,' wrote his shipmates in the Kite, 'as active in mind and body as many men of half his years.' 'A quiet, unassuming man,' wrote a correspondent of the 'Times,' 'thoroughly capable and reliable, unequalled as an Arctic navigator, and in the front rank of our sealing captains.'
[Times, 20 May 1893; Greely's Three Years of Arctic Service, i. 37, ii. 163; Keely and Davis's In Arctic Seas (with what seems a good portrait), pp. 24–6; Mrs. Peary's Arctic Journal.]
PIKE, SAMUEL (1717?–1773), Sandemanian, was born about 1717 at ‘Ramsey, Wiltshire’ (Wilson), which may mean Ramsbury, Wiltshire, but more probably Romsey, Hampshire. He was educated for the independent ministry, receiving his general training from John Eames [q. v.] of the Fund academy, and his theology from John Hubbard at Stepney academy. His first settlement was at Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, about 1740. Thence he removed in 1747 to succeed John Hill (1711–1746) as pastor at the Three Cranes meeting-house in 'Fruiterers' Alley, Thames Street, London. Early in his London ministry he established, at his house in Hoxton Square, an academy for training students for the ministry. He adopted the principles of John Hutchinson
