Alice, Nicholas’ widow, was not long in winning a step-father for her fatherless children. On a late summer day in 1648, she was married at Ash to Reginald Peckham, who came of that ancient family who took their name from West Peckham and, incidentally, gave it to Peckham Wood in Ash. The Peckhams had been settled in Kent from time out of mind. One of them, John de Peckham, had gone crusading with Richard I, another John Peckham was Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Edward I. By the sixteen-forties, they had been seated for more than three centuries at Yaldham Manor in the vale of Holmesdale and parish of Wrotham.
   The marriage of Reginald and Alice was a happy interlude in what were for the Peckhams sad, if stirring, times. They were King’s men and, like the Clerkes and the Millers of their own parish, the Bathursts of

Horton Kirby, the Bosviles and the Giffords of Eynsford, the Harts of Lullingstone and the Gilbournes of Otford, like indeed almost all the gentry of the vales of Darent and Holmesdale, had staunchly opposed the King’s enemies. Notably, the Peckhams had. supported the Kentish rebellion of 1643, which had been sparked off very near at hand; the immediate cause had been the death of an Ightham man, when he and other parishioners had turned out to prevent the arrest of the rector of their parish for refusing to subscribe the Covenant to support the Parliamentary forces against tthe forces of the Crown. Now, in August 1648, the King’s cause was less than five months from its tragic denouement. It seems unlikely, however, that a Peckham would have