MR PEDDER

Throughout the years in which Norfolk's Peddars Way has been a particular interest of mine, the mystery surrounding its name has not been cleared up. (See also this blog: The Peddars Way, December 27, 2013). What seems clear is that this label is not Roman in origin and that it may have emerged several centuries later as one example of some sort of generic name for a footway, path, or even sheep walk. If the Roman did actually have a name for the road, then it has not been discovered or recognised.
One thing we can say about it, and with a tiny bit more certainty, is that the name Peddars Way was not, in times past, exclusive to the Roman road, which is merely the best-known surviving holder of the title. I have heard of over half a dozen other paths, tracks or roads, in other parts of the county which, at some point, have been given precisely the same name.
My own feeling over the years has been that the name may once have been applied fairly generally to any number of paths or tracks used by walkers, pedlars, or even sheep drovers. But there is no certainty in any of this. Uncertainties relating the name are simply more examples of the several mysteries which surround this famous old road.
Browsing through RW Ketton-Cremer's 1960s work on the Civil War in Norfolk recently, I have to say I came up with yet another possible explanation, or at least found another ingredient to toss into the pot for consideration. Perhaps the name of the Way does not commemorate drovers or pedlars but an actual person. Perhaps there was a Mr Peddar who deserved this epitaph. Or even a Mr Pedder. And indeed, and according to Mr Ketton-Cremer, there might have been. Meet Mr Toby Pedder.
In 1648 or 1649, a party of Royalist prisoners being conveyed across the Wash from King's Lynn to Boston apparently managed to overpower their guards and force the keelman to land them at Heacham. They made their way to Hunstanton and to the residence of Sir Hamon L'Estrange, a noted Royalist, who declined to see them and instead sent for the chief constable of the Smithdon Hundred, one Toby Pedder, advising him to report the affair.
The escaped prisoners were duly recaptured, and back at Hunstanton once more with their guards asked Sir Hamon's butler for a drink on what was a hot summer's day. The butler gave them a drink, an act which Sir Hamon later endorsed, but the ungrateful Mr Pedder - ungrateful, because he had received his office largely through the influences of Sir Hamon - reported this little act of kindness to a higher authority. Sir Hamon was said to be livid, but nothing more seems to have happened.
Toby Pedder, however, went from strength to strength, and during the Commonwealth years received more promotions, becoming infamous in north-west Norfolk 'as an exceptionally active and officious Justice of the Peace.'
Now, I know of no valid reason why the name of this man might have been linked to our Roman road - if indeed it was - save that of the still surviving practice of naming roads after local bigwigs, but it is an interesting coincidence that a powerful man named Pedder should be at the height of his fame at around the time the name Peddars Way seems to have emerged.
It makes you think.
(Norfolk in the Civil War, by RW Ketton-Cremer, Gliddon Books reprint, 1985. Page 354).