was admitted to Merchant Taylors' School on 11 Sept. 1695 (Register, ed. Robinson, i. 334). He was created M.D. at Cambridge (comitiis regiis) in 1717, and was admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians on 25 June 1723. At the request of Robert Romney, the then vicar, he gave an organ to St. Peter's Church, St. Albans, which was opened on 16 Jan. 1725–6 (Clutterbuck, Hertfordshire i. 120). About 1726 Packe settled at Canterbury, where he practised with much reputation for nearly a quarter of a century. He died on 15 Nov. 1749 (Gent. Mag. 1749, p. 524), and was buried in St. Mary Magdalene, Canterbury. He had married on 30 July 1726, at Canterbury Cathedral, Mary Randolph of the Precincts, Canterbury (Reg. Harl. Soc. p. 77). His son Christopher graduated M.B. in 1751 as a member of Peterhouse, Cambridge, practised as a physician at Canterbury, and published ‘An Explanation of … Boerhaave's Aphorisms … of Phthisis Pulmonalis,’ 1754. He died on 21 October 1800, aged 72, and was buried by the side of his father.
Packe had a heated controversy with Dr. John Gray of Canterbury respecting the treatment of Robert Worger of Hinxhill, Kent, who died of concussion of the brain, caused by a fall from his horse. The relatives, not satisfied with Packe's treatment, called in Gray and two surgeons, who, Packe alleged in letters in the ‘Canterbury News-Letter’ of 8 and 15 Oct. 1726, killed the patient by excessive bleeding and trepanning. He further defended himself in ‘A Reply to Dr. Gray's three Answers to a written Paper, entitled Mr. Worger's Case,’ 4to, Canterbury, 1727.
Packe wrote also: 1. ‘A Dissertation upon the Surface of the Earth, as delineated in a specimen of a Philosophico-Chorographical Chart of East Kent,’ 4to, London, 1737. The essay had been read before the Royal Society on 25 Nov. 1736, and the specimen chart submitted to them. 2. ‘Ankographia, sive Convallium Descriptio,’ an explanation of a new philosophico-chorographical chart of East Kent, 4to, Canterbury, 1743. The chart itself, containing a ‘graphical delineation of the country fifteen or sixteen miles round Canterbury,’ was published by a guinea subscription in 1743.
His letters to Sir Hans Sloane, extending from 1737 to 1741, are in the British Museum, Additional (Sloane) MS. 4055.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878; Smith's Bibl. Cantiana; Gough's British Topography.]
PACKE or PACK, CHRISTOPHER (fl. 1796), painter, born at Norwich in 1750, was son of a quaker merchant belonging to a family which claimed connection with that of Sir Christopher Packe [q. v.], lord mayor of London. Pack showed an early taste for painting, but at first was engaged in his father's business. On that, however, being seriously injured by pecuniary losses, Pack adopted painting as a profession, and came to London. He made friends with John Hamilton Mortimer [q. v.], and also obtained an introduction to Sir Joshua Reynolds, making some good copies of the latter's portraits. In 1786 he exhibited a portrait of himself at the Royal Academy, and in 1787 two more portraits. He then returned to Norwich to practise as a portrait-painter, and shortly after went to Liverpool. Having a recommendation from Reynolds to the Duke of Rutland, then viceroy in Dublin, he resided there for some years, and obtained success as a portrait-painter. About 1796 he returned to London, and exhibited at the Royal Academy two portraits, together with ‘Gougebarra, the Source of the River Lee, Ireland,’ and ‘Edward the First, when Prince of Wales, escaping from Salisbury, is rescued by Mortimer.’ He continued to practise after this, but did not again exhibit. The date of his death has not been ascertained.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Pasquin's Artists of Ireland; Royal Academy Cat.]
PACKER, JOHN (1570?–1649), clerk of the privy seal, born in 1570 or 1572 at Twickenham, Middlesex, studied for a while at Cambridge, but subsequently migrated to Oxford, where he matriculated as a member of Trinity College on 13 March 1589–90 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714, iii. 1104). He did not graduate. Under the patronage of Lord Burghley, Thomas and Richard, earls of Dorset, and the Duke of Buckingham, he became a great favourite at court. On 11 July 1604 he obtained a grant in reversion of a clerkship of the privy seal (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–10, p. 131). Writing to Sir Thomas Edmonds on 17 Jan. 1610, he states that Thomas, lord Dorset, had asked him to be his travelling companion in France (Court and Times of James I, 1848, i. 104; cf. Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 4176). In August 1610 he was sent as envoy to Denmark (Winwood, Memorials, iii. 213). With Francis Godolphin he had a grant on 23 March 1614 of the office of prothonotary of the chancery for life (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1611–1618, p. 228). In June 1615 he was acting as secretary to Lord-chamberlain Somerset (ib. p. 294), and in 1616 was filling a similar office for Buckingham. On 7 March 1617 he was granted an annual pension of 115l. from the court of wards on surrendering a
