PETRE, William (1626-84)

The Petre family rose through service at the Tudor court but were not ennobled until 1603. Their surviving papers for the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries consist almost entirely of documents relating to the management of their estates and financial affairs; no personal or political archive is known to exist. The family’s major territorial base was in Essex, where they owned some 11,000 acres, mainly centred on Thorndon, Ingatestone and Writtle. They also held substantial tracts of property in Devon, with outlying properties in Dorset, Gloucestershire and East Anglia.

As Catholic peers, the Petres’ position in Essex society must have been somewhat difficult. The county was solidly protestant, with a substantial and vociferous Puritan minority. Petre had no electoral interest of his own, but his estates and position within the county made him a valuable ally for those who were seeking election, and he was on friendly terms with members of the county elite, including the Bramstons and Wisemans who had sent several family members to the Commons. However, his religion effectively barred him from the kind of office and influence that his extensive landholdings would otherwise have guaranteed. Petre’s principal country residence was at Thorndon Hall (assessed at 72 hearths in 1662); a smaller property at Ingatestone (assessed at 30 hearths in 1662) being occupied by his mother until her death in January 1685. Essex Hearth Tax ed. M. Spearman. Thorndon Hall had been remodelled in the late sixteenth century in traditional English style. In 1669, a visitor described it as:

an ancient structure, built after the same plan as all the others in England, with a tendency rather to the Gothic and Rustic than to any chaste style of architecture but, as far as convenience is concerned, sufficiently well contrived. It is in a good situation, surrounded by a wall which incloses a large and green meadow; and among other things which contribute to its pleasantness, the deer-park, which extends to a distance of five miles, or more, is a most important addition to it. Its noble owner lives there with a magnificence equal to that of other peers of the kingdom, and in a style commensurate with his fortune, which is estimated at ten thousand pounds per annum. Travels of Cosmo the Third … to which is Prefixed a Memoir of His Life (1821), 465-6.

That the 4th Baron Petre lived up to his rank is undeniable, but the extent to which his life style was genuinely ‘commensurate with his fortune’ is rather more questionable since it seems to have been based on extensive borrowing. Some of his misfortunes may have been of his own making, for he is known to have gambled for high stakes but the real threats were more difficult to control. Essex RO, D/DP/L50.

At his father’s death in 1638, Petre was unquestionably extremely wealthy. He had inherited personal estate estimated at some £30,000, of which £20,000 was held in liquid capital, and real estate producing a gross landed income of approximately £8,000 p.a. Between 1638 and 1660, his financial stability was threatened many times over. He was a minor in 1638, with the result that the estate had to bear the costs implicit in the processes associated with wardship. The wardship was bought for £10,000 by his father’s executors, who included his uncle, William Petre of Stanford Rivers, and another kinsman, Edward Somerset, then styled Lord Herbert, later 2nd marquess of Worcester. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 497. The executors, like his father, were committed Catholics, and although they assigned the wardship to Spencer Compton^†, the protestant 2nd earl of Northampton, Petre was actually brought up in Lord Herbert’s household. Essex RO, D/DP/L49; Add. 5494 f. 107; Recusant History, xi. 89. On 6 Aug. 1641 the Commons were anxious to have him removed to the custody of Robert Rich^†, 2nd earl of Warwick, but the order was not put into effect.

Petre’s father and grandfather had each successfully raised large families, with the result that the estate was burdened with a number of settlements and annuities to provide portions for their younger children. Then, just as the estate was beginning to emerge from these difficulties, the events of the Civil War and the Interregnum created fresh turmoil. At some point after 1642, it was reported that both Northampton and Herbert had been ‘in actual war against the Parliament’ but that Petre was now living in Oxford with Francis Cottington^†, Baron Cottington. Essex RO, D/DP/L49; Add. 5494, f. 107. Petre’s west country lands remained free of parliamentary control and provided him with a much needed stream of income; elsewhere, parliamentary demands posed a real threat. An attempt to sequestrate his lands in 1643 was met by his steward with the claim that he was a neither a papist nor a delinquent. HMC 6th Rep. 111. On 6 May 1645 the Commons began an investigation into the failure to transfer his wardship to Warwick and into obstructions to the sequestration of his estates. They also attacked Cottington’s lands, probably because his conversion to Catholicism was already known.

In 1649 Petre married Elizabeth Savage, who brought with her a portion of £5,000, paid in advance. They soon separated. C10/18/105; Essex RO, D/DP/L36/33. In 1652, Lady Petre’s suit for alimony led the chancery to order a reconciliation, which took place in January 1653. The attempt failed when Petre’s insistence on being ‘master in his own house’ provoked an armed confrontation between their respective servants during which Lady Petre accused her husband of intending to kill her. Essex RO, D/DP/L36/32; D/DP/L36/34. Later that year he suffered the indignity of being arrested for his wife’s debts. Unable to call on privilege of Parliament, he instead ‘desperately resisted and endeavoured violently to make an escape and uproar.’ When this failed, he commenced a vexatious suit in chancery during which he fulminated against ‘the encouragement that hath been given unto your orators said wife by such credit to continue in her disloyalty and disobedience contrary to the law of God and man and the very ill example to others in like kind disposed.’ C10/18/105. In 1654 the couple, who were childless, drew up a formal separation agreement; Lady Petre, who had demanded an allowance of £550 a year plus the payment of all her debts, had to be satisfied with £500 a year to cover both her maintenance and the liquidation of her debts. Essex RO, D/DP/F52. Her debts were still unpaid when in 1672 her creditors offered to compound for them. Ibid. D/DP/L36/47.

Elizabeth Savage’s dower was not enough to rescue Petre’s finances. In May 1652, desperate to preserve his estates and creditworthiness, he took the oath of abjuration, thus securing the return, without compounding, of his sequestered estates. CJ, vii. 146-7. His problems were far from over. In 1652 he entered into a debt trust, albeit temporarily, listing debts amounting to well over £15,000. Recusant History, xi. 107-9. In 1662-3 he valued the rental of his lands in Essex at £2,000 a year. HMC 14th Rep. IX, 281. The sale of lands, including his London house in Aldersgate (1663), the premature death of two of his younger brothers and the successful renegotiation of the annuities due to his remaining brothers and to his mother helped bring about a gradual improvement in his situation. His determined deferral of payments to his other creditors and his equally determined pursuit of those who owed money to him, including debts contracted at the card table, also helped. Essex RO, D/DP/L50. Whether his tenantry were forced to contribute to the improvement through the payment of higher rents is not known, but prosecutions for offences against the game and for minor disturbances in Thorndon Park during the 1660s suggest a certain amount of local antipathy. Ibid. Q/SR/388/14, 17, 22, 58; Q/SR/392/17; Q/SR/395/54; Q/SR/397/23; Q/SR/399/25; Q/SR/420/106. In addition to his financial difficulties, Petre was twice arrested on suspicion of involvement in royalist plots.

It was perhaps only to be expected that a peer who had suffered so much at the hands of the parliamentarians should be determined to take his place in the newly restored House of Lords. To the consternation of those who had hoped to reserve the House for the peers of 1648, Petre, along with Thomas Savage, 3rd Earl Rivers, Lionel Cranfield, 3rd earl of Middlesex and Richard Sackville, earl of Dorset, ‘got into the House’ on the afternoon of 26 Apr. 1660. CCSP, iv. 675. Petre was doubly suspect: he was both a ‘young’ lord (i.e. had not sat in the House before its abolition in 1648) and had been imprisoned, albeit briefly, for his part in royalist plots in 1655 and 1658. Although listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, in 1660 as a papist, it seems likely that between taking the oath of abjuration in 1652 and the Restoration of 1660, Petre had passed as a protestant. He had declared himself to be a member of the Church of England in 1653 in the course of defending his first wife’s action for alimony. Essex RO, D/DP/L36/32. In the late 1640s Petre had been caught out lying to the sequestrators in an attempt to secure favourable terms for the return of his lands; it is unlikely that he would risk his lands again by allowing himself to be openly identified with Catholicism. Recusant History, xi. 96. The discussions in the House in early 1660 on the subject of admitting Catholics suggest that the peers did not realise that they already had one amongst them. It was not until 1673 that Petre was again accused of recusancy, but his Catholicism was probably well known long before that. LJ, xii. 621.

Petre attended the first (1660) session of the Convention for just over 56 per cent of sitting days. He was named to the committee for privileges and on 9 May was added to the committee for the reception of the king. He was present on 22 May and presumably therefore responsible for presenting a petition from his mother, the dowager Lady Petre, against the damage caused to her estate by sequestration and denying that she had ever been indicted or convicted as a popish recusant. The House held that as the widow of a peer she was entitled to privilege of Parliament and suspended proceedings against her ‘until the merits of her cause be fully heard and determined by the law.’ During a meeting of the committee for privileges held on 14 June and reported to the House on 16 June 1660, he testified that he had been present at the trial of Charles I and had heard Robert Danvers, described in the records of the House as Viscount Purbeck, describe the regicide John Bradshaw^‡ as ‘a gallant man, the preserver of our liberties; and that he the said Lord Viscount Purbeck hoped that Bradshaw would do justice upon that tyrant (speaking of the late king).’ PA, HL/PO/DC/CP/1/1, 14 June 1660. In July privilege of peerage allowed him to stave off a judgment in chancery that would have forced him to pay the £6,000 that he owed for his older sister’s marriage portion, even though the plaintiff was a fellow peer and Catholic, William Stourton, 11th Baron Stourton. HMC 7th Rep. 149. On 1 Sept. he was named to the committee to consider Worcester’s patent to be duke of Somerset and on 3 Dec. to the committee to consider Sir Edward Powell’s fines. Then on 13 Dec. he signed the protest at the decision to vacate Powell’s fines. He was also named to three other committees.

The first (1661-2) session of the Cavalier Parliament saw his attendance drop to just under 24 per cent, partly explained by patchy attendance during November and December 1661 followed by a long absence after 20 Dec. 1661 before his return to the House on 19 Mar. 1662. Such a prolonged absence may have been caused by illness as he was excused attendance at a call of the House on 25 Nov. by reason of sickness. In January 1661 he received a general pardon, although quite why he should have needed one is unclear. Essex RO, D/DP/F173. He was listed as present on 11 May when the committee for privileges was named but was not appointed to it; during the course of the session he was named to a further 12 committees. On 17 July 1661 he protested again at the passage of the bill to vacate the fines of Sir Edward Powell.

The 1663 session saw him present for two-thirds of sitting days. He was absent on the first day of the session and so was not named to the committee for privileges until he was belatedly added on 9 April. He was, however, present and named to the committee for petitions when it was appointed on 25 February. He was named to a further five committees including the bill to settle differences between John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester, and his son Charles, then styled Lord St John (later duke of Bolton) on 1 June and (somewhat ironically given his own leisure pursuits) the bill against gaming on 26 June. Despite his earlier support for Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, in the matter of the Powell fines, in July Wharton predicted that would support the attempt of George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Clarendon. The session ended on 27 July, but during the recess members of the House continued to be involved as mediators in the Winchester dispute, and in September Petre was one of the committee members who tried to mediate the quarrel. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, 7 Sept. 1663.

Petre’s attendance over the short 1664 session rose to just over 83 per cent. He was named to the committee for petitions but not to that for privileges as he was absent when that committee was nominated. He was not in the House on 31 Mar. when his estranged wife claimed privilege against arrest for debt. Her petition sparked a debate about rights to privilege. Warwick Mohun, 2nd Baron Mohun, argued that her petition was defective since, as a married woman, she could not sue in her own name. Charles Howard, later 2nd earl of Berkshire but then styled Lord Andover and who sat in his father’s barony as Howard of Charleton, carried the House when he insisted that ‘their lordships ought not to take notice of anything but the breach of privilege, which he thought was manifest, for if their privileges extended to the protection of their servants a fortiori to that of their wives.’ Verney ms mic. M636/19, Sir N. Hobart to Sir R. Verney, 3 Apr. 1664. Petre himself was embarrassed by his wife’s action and accused her of disgracing him, probably because of her determination to blacken Petre’s reputation by implicating his own steward in the affair. Pepys Diary, v. 110-11; PA, HL/PO/DC/CP/1/1, 18 Apr. 1664. He was named to four committees including the bill for gaming (21 Apr.) and the Cottington estate bill (11 May).

Petre’s attendance for the 1664-5 session dropped to 58 per cent. Again absent for the opening of the session he was not named to the committee for privileges. He was named to only three committees. Between sessions he was present on 21 June 1665 when Parliament was again prorogued. He was then absent for the whole of the brief autumn 1665 session. Petre returned to Parliament on 21 Sept. 1666, the second day of the 1666-7 session. His attendance over the session reached nearly 79 per cent. He was named to the committee for privileges and to four other committees, including that for the bill to render illegitimate Lady Roos’ children on 14 Nov. 1666. On 23 Jan. 1667 he protested against the decision not to add a right of appeal to the king and House of Lords to the bill creating a court to resolve disputes arising from the Fire of London.

He was present on both the prorogation days but missed the first two weeks of the 1667-9 session, nevertheless recording an attendance of just over 75 per cent. His name was added to that of the committee for petitions on 20 Nov. 1667, and he was named to a further ten committees. Despite his high level of attendance there is no information about his voting intentions in the major issue of the day, the attempt to impeach Clarendon.

The next, 1669, session saw his attendance fall to just under 53 per cent. He missed the first two weeks of the session and was excused at a call of the House on 26 Oct. as being ill. Having missed appointment to the committee for privileges he was added to it on 10 Nov. and was named to one further committee. On 22 Nov. he was one of five peers who protested at the passage of the bill to restrict privilege and limit trials of peers, arguing that ‘the judiciary and other privileges of Parliament and peerage [are] … so fundamental, as we ought not to part therewith’.

Petre’s attendance recovered to nearly 65 per cent in the 1670-1 session. Present from the opening of the session he was named to the committees for privileges and petitions. He was named to a further 18 committees during the session including that preventing the growth of popery which was effectively a committee of the whole House. In February he was one of nine peers who voted against the decision to agree to the king’s request that proceedings relating to Skinner v. the East India Company be razed from the Journal. Mapperton, Sandwich mss journal x. 196-204. He was absent for several weeks in October and November 1670, being excused by the House on 14 November. He held the proxy of his cousin and fellow Catholic, Francis Browne, 3rd Viscount Montagu, from 4 Mar. to 4 Apr. 1670, almost certainly for use in the Roos divorce. Despite his own history of marital problems Petre opposed the divorce and entered a protest against it on 28 March. The following spring he held the proxy of Lionel Cranfield, 3rd earl of Middlesex, from 13 Mar. to 17 Apr. 1671, perhaps for use in connection with proceedings on the bill to prevent the growth of popery. Middlesex would later become one of Petre’s debt trustees so despite his protestantism was presumably sympathetic to the plight of loyal Catholic peers. Essex RO, D/DP/F68.

Petre’s estranged wife had died in 1665; late in 1672 he remarried. His second wife, Bridget Pincheon, was some 25 years his junior, but it was not her age that caused a stir, rather that she was ‘of ordinary birth’ and either had no portion at all or an inconsiderable one. Add. 21948, ff. 446-7, Verney ms mic. M636/25, Sir R. to E. Verney, 12 Dec. 1672.

Petre’s attendance reached just over 79 per cent during the brief session of 1673. Present from the opening of the session he was again named to the committees for privileges and petitions. On 5 Mar. he was named with almost everyone listed as present to the committee to provide a bill of advice to the king and in the course of the session to four other committees.

Early in January 1674 it was reported that, presumably as a result of the recent Test Act, Petre and other ‘popelings’ were planning to leave the country. The rumour proved to be unfounded. Petre took his seat at the opening of the 1674 session on 7 Jan. 1674 and was then present for nearly 53 per cent of sitting days. On 27 Jan. he was one of a number of Catholic peers who benefited from the ruling of the House that prosecutions for recusancy were covered by privilege of Parliament. Anti-Catholic agitation and the need to reassure his many creditors may well have been behind his decision in April 1674 to enter into another debt trust. Petre’s standard of living was maintained by continual borrowing. He owed over £11,000, slightly more than he had owed at the time of the debt trust of 1652. Essex RO, D/DP/F65. Four years later (and a mere ten days after his arrest in connection with the Popish Plot) a second schedule of debts that had somehow been overlooked added more than £3,000 to the total.

Presumably in response to the deteriorating political situation Petre missed only four days of the first 1675 session. He was as usual named to the committees for privileges and petitions, as well as to a further three committees. Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds) believed that Petre would support the non-resisting test, but on 21 Apr. together with Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, and other opponents of the court he was one of the leading speakers against the proposition and entered a protest at the refusal of the House to throw it out. Timberland, i, 137-52. On 29 Apr. it was noted that he was one of several peers (and bishops) who had not taken the Jacobean oath of allegiance; he took it the following day. Although the Jacobean oath was carefully written to enable Catholics to take it, it was reported that Petre’s decision and his insistence that it was not sinful to do so upset his Jesuit confessor so much that he refused absolution. Bulstrode Pprs. i. 291. More personal matters were also a matter of concern. On 3 May he reported the arrest of one of his mother’s servants as a breach of privilege of Parliament, adding that the creditor concerned had ‘uttered very contemptuous words against the said Lady and Lord Petre’. The offender was arrested and spent ten days in custody before Petre showed false magnanimity on 1 June by permitting his release after he was forced to beg the pardon of the House and had paid the requisite fees.

The short autumn 1675 session saw Petre present on nearly 91 per cent of sitting days and named to the committees for privileges and petitions as well as three other committees. On 20 Nov. he again joined with Shaftesbury in seeking a dissolution in the aftermath of the dispute occasioned by the case of Sherley v. Fagg, entering a protest when the House resolved to reject the motion.

Continuing concern about Catholics and Catholicism kept Petre’s attendance high, nearly 89 per cent, throughout the 1677-8 session. Perhaps surprisingly, he remained on good terms with Shaftesbury, being listed by him as a doubly worthy papist. He was named to 25 other committees including, on 16 Feb., that for discovering the author and printer of the pamphlet Some Considerations upon the Question, whether the Parliament is dissolved by Prorogation for Fifteene Monthes. He held the proxy of Charles Howard, now 2nd earl of Berkshire, from 20 Feb. to 11 March. On 15 Mar. 1677 he entered a dissent to the passage of the act for further securing the protestant religion which also mandated the protestant education of the children of the royal family.

Petre was present at the opening of the first session of 1678 on 23 May. His attendance dropped back to 65 percent. He was named to the committees for privileges and petitions as well as that for the Journal and five other committees.

Petre’s catholicism and his association with known Jesuits made him particularly vulnerable when, during the recess over the summer of 1678, Titus Oates revealed a Jesuit plot to assassinate the king and to overthrow the English government. Oates testified on oath that he had seen Petre ‘receive a commission as lieutenant general of the popish army destined for the invasion of England…’ Art. lxxi. of Oates’s Narrative 1679; CJ, 23-28 Oct. 1678. His allegations gained credence when they were apparently validated by the disappearance of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey on 12 Oct. and the discovery of his body five days later. Petre’s ability to rebut the allegations may have been undermined by memories of his willingness to trifle with the oath of abjuration during the Interregnum. Determined to carry on as normal, he attended the opening of the second session of 1678 on 21 Oct. and was again named to the committees for privileges, petitions and the Journal. On 23 Oct. he was even named (as were all those present) to the committee to examine papers about the plot and witnesses about Godfrey’s murder. On 25 Oct. the Privy Council issued a warrant for Petre’s arrest. He attended the House the next day, effectively surrendering himself into custody and taking the opportunity to protest his innocence. Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection Group 1/C, newsletter, 26 Oct. 1678. Petre and the other popish lords were imprisoned first in the Gatehouse and then in the Tower of London. On 31 Oct. the House ordered that he be kept a close prisoner without access to pen, ink or paper but this order was relaxed on 8 November. A month later, on 5 Dec. he was impeached of high treason; he was also indicted for high treason by a Middlesex grand jury but this was removed to the House of Lords by certiorari and abandoned in favour of proceeding by impeachment. Articles of impeachment were formally exhibited on 7 Apr. 1679. Petre’s only child, his daughter Mary, was born shortly afterwards.

Inter House wrangling over the proper procedures for impeachments, whether the popish lords should be tried before or after Danby and the proper role of the bishops meant that Petre was never tried. In December 1683 although seriously ill he was refused permission to leave the Tower for a change of air. CSP Dom. 1683-4, pp. 145-6; Bodl. Carte ms 216, f. 391. He made his will on 20 Dec. and died, still a prisoner in the Tower, the following month. Shortly before his death he drew up a letter to the king lamenting that he was ‘by the disposition of God’s providence called into another world before I could by a public trial make my innocence appear.’ The Declaration of the Lord Petre … in a Letter to his Most Sacred Majestie (1683). The publication of what was in effect a carefully crafted dying statement provided a powerful piece of propaganda that transformed public perceptions of Petre, turning him from a duplicitous Jesuit fellow traveller into a symbol of wronged Catholic innocence. As a state prisoner Petre lived in considerable comfort, but his imprisonment was nevertheless widely believed to have shortened his life. His death evoked a wave of sympathy for his family and for the remaining papist lords, who were released by order of the judges of king’s bench a month later.

At his death the title passed to his younger brother John, but the estates were seriously depleted by the handsome provision (£10,000 secured against his unencumbered western estates and protected from his creditors) that Petre made for his only daughter, Mary, who later married George Heneage of Hampton, Lincolnshire. Essex RO, D/DP F75, F89.