Peace candidates fared relatively well yesterday as partial returns indicated that Massachusetts voters had returned a delegation of eight Democrats and four Republicans to the House of Representatives.

With about 50 per cent of the Third District vote counted, the Rev. Robert F. Drinan S.J., a Jesuit priest running as an antiwar Democrat, held a 5000-vote lead over his Republican opponent, John McGlennon, who has campaigned on a law and order platform. Drinan's opponent in the Democratic primary, hawkish incumbent Philip J. Philbin, trailed badly in his write-in campaign.

In the Tenth District, antiwar Democrat Gerry Studds clung to a precarious 3400-vote lead out of nearly 16,000 cast over six-term Republican incumbent Hastings Keith, while the antiwar campaign of Democrat Bertram A. Yaffe appeared headed for defeat at the hands of long-time Republican Twelfth District congresswoman Margaret Heckler, who led by more than 7000 votes out of 43,000 cast with one-fourth of the votes counted.

In the Ninth District, conservative Democrat Louise Day Hicks roundly defeated her two opponents, Republican Laurence Curtis and Independent Daniel Houton, by amassing nearly 60 per cent of the votes.

After encountering surprisingly strong opposition, antiwar Democrat Michael Harrington apparently defeated Howard Phillips, thus earning his first full term in the Sixth District Seat he won in a special election last year.

Other expected results were the victories of incumbents in the Fifth District, where F. Bradford Morse (R) easily defeated physicist Richard Williams (D), and the Seventh District, where Torbet MacDonald (D) routinely routed his perennial opponent, Gordon F. Hughes (R), for the fifth consecutive time.

But in the Fourth District, Howard A. Miller (R) apparently upset long-time incumbent Harold D. Donoghue (D).

Four incumbents-Silvio O. Conte (R), Edward P. Boland (D), Thomas P. O'Neill (D) of Cambridge, and James A. Burke (D)-gained reelection unopposed.