PETER

See also:

• PETER ANNET (1693–1769)

ANNET (1693–1769)  , English deist, is said to have been born at Liverpool . A schoolmaster by profession, he became prominent owing to his attacks on orthodox theologians, and his membership of a semi-theological debating society, the Robin Hood Society, which met at the "Robin Hood and Little John" in Butcher Row . To him has been attributed a work called A History of the Man after God's own Heart (1761), intended to show that George II. was insulted by a current comparison with David . The book is said to have inspired Voltaire's Saul . It is also attributed to one John Noorthouck (Noorthook) . In 1763 he was condemned for blasphemous libel in his paper called the Free Enquirer (nine numbers only) . After his release he kept a small school in Lambeth, one of his pupils being James Stephen (1758–1832), who became master in Chancery . Annet died on the 18th of January 1769 . He stands between the earlier philosophic deists and the later propagandists of Paine's school, and " seems to have been the first freethought lecturer" (J . M . Robertson); his essays (A Collection of the Tracts of a certain Free Enquirer, 1739–1745) are forcible but lack refinement . He invented a system of shorthand (2nd ed., with a copy of verses by Joseph Priestley) .