PETRE, Thomas (1633-1707)

When he succeeded to the title, Thomas Petre was a 52-year-old bachelor, but the need for an heir soon pushed him into marriage. Before the year was out he had arranged to marry Mary Clifton, daughter of the future Jacobite Sir Thomas Clifton, who brought with her a dowry of £5,000. Along with the title, he also inherited the Petre estates, together with the debt trust created by his brother, William Petre, 4th Baron Petre. The debt trust was still in existence in 1697 when the 5th baron composed a will, but by 1712 the estate was said to be free of encumbrances. Essex RO, D/DP/F90; Add. 28251, ff. 344–7. Certainly his ability to finance the marriage portion of his niece, Mary Petre (daughter of the 4th baron and his second wife, Bridget), suggests that the debts were coming under control. Three quarters of the portion (£7,500) was paid in cash. The remaining £2,500 was borrowed on mortgage, from his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Clifton, rather than from more distant acquaintances or moneylenders. He was also able to provide well (£5,000) for his own daughter (also named Mary). Essex RO, D/DP/F/89, F/96A. Petre appears to have treated Ingatestone Hall, which was extensively refurnished in 1685, as his main residence. It seems to have been more comfortably equipped than his other house, Thorndon Hall, and it was from Ingatestone that Petre wrote his few surviving letters. Essex RO, D/DP/A164A, F231A.

A committed Catholic who not only maintained his own chaplains but also provided a base for missionary Jesuit priests and held land on behalf of a Catholic monastery in France, Petre was disabled from sitting in the House of Lords by the provisions of the 1678 Test Act. TNA, C 205/19/13. However, the accession to the throne of the Catholic James Stuart, duke of York, as James II just two weeks after Petre had inherited his own title promised to transform the situation. Not only did James signal his intention to repeal the Test Acts and to restore the Catholic peers to their seats in the Lords but Petre’s cousin, the Jesuit Edward Petre, was one of James’s most trusted advisors. Petre was summoned to the 1685 Parliament and was summoned again in September 1688 to the Parliament promised but never convened by James II. Essex RO, D/DP/O68. Whether these writs were issued as a matter of course or as part of a threat to ignore the Test Acts is unknown. Petre’s pleasure at James’s succession must have been shared by his household, for even the family provision book carries a faded inscription inside its front cover: ‘Ja[mes] Duke York Ja[mes] the second God preserve.’ Essex RO, D/DP/A48.

At the Essex election of 1685, Sir John Bramston^‡ described how Petre joined the cavalcade of court supporters near Chelmsford with about 300 ‘gentlemen, his kinsmen, his tenants, and other freeholders, his neighbours …’. Bramston Autobiog. 176. Petre’s commitment to the court soon brought rewards. In March 1686 his name was among the list of Catholics exempted from the travel restrictions imposed at the height of the hysteria of the Popish Plot and who were specifically authorized ‘to remain in the presence of the king, queen consort, queen dowager or the court or household without taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy … notwithstanding former statutes’. CSP Dom. 1686–7, p. 27. He was added to the commissions of the peace for Middlesex, Kent, and Essex, though it was undoubtedly in Essex where his real value to the court lay. Ibid. pp. 344–5; Duckett, Penal Laws, i. 348. In February 1688, Petre replaced Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, as lord lieutenant there. This was a post from which he should have been barred by the requirements of the Test Act so his commission (dated 8 Feb. 1688) was carefully and specifically worded to ‘dispense, pardon, remit and exonerate’ him from the need to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance. CSP Dom. 1687–9, p. 142; Essex RO, D/DP/O69.

James II expected Petre to play a key role in the forthcoming parliamentary elections and he did his best to live up to expectation: ‘The Lord Petre, as lord lieutenant, by the king’s command visited the country, as well as the corporations. He carried divers gentlemen, papists, with him in his circuit …’. Bramston Autobiog. 386–7. One of his objectives in conducting this ‘circuit’ was to explore the attitudes of the local gentry to the proposed abolition of the Test. Petre’s local influence was seemingly strengthened when he replaced Oxford as high steward of Colchester and when he was appointed recorder the following August under Colchester’s new charter. HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 232. He also helped remodel the commission of the peace for Essex.

In September 1688, Robert Spencer, 2^nd earl of Sunderland sent him ‘a list of gentlemen intending to stand with his majesty’s approbation for Members of Parliament within your lieutenancy’ and directed him ‘to give them all the assistance and countenance you can’. CSP Dom. 1687–9, p. 273. The political situation was now deteriorating swiftly and the threat of invasion exposed the inherent weakness of Petre’s position within the county. On 7 Oct. he was ordered to raise the militia, but in Essex (as in other counties where Protestant lord lieutenants had been displaced by Catholics) the gentry had refused to take commissions because of doubts about the legality of Petre’s appointment, ‘for that he was not qualified’ and the militia was ‘very much out of order, the officers dead, or unwilling to act’. Bramston Autobiog. 325–6. Within days, those who had been purged from the commission of the peace for their opposition to James were restored to office. Ibid. 321–2; Essex RO, D/DAc/2. Petre himself must have been becoming worried for on 2 Oct. 1688 he obtained a general pardon. Essex RO, D/DP/F181A. On 18 Oct. Sunderland informed Petre that Oxford had resumed the lord lieutenancy, though he was at pains to explain that ‘[the king] is induced to it because his service at this time seems absolutely to require this change and not upon the least dissatisfaction with your proceedings. On the contrary he directs me to tell you that he continues to depend much upon you.’ CSP Dom. 1687–9, p. 322.

The Revolution of 1688 marked the end of Petre’s political career, though his devotion to James did not extend to following him into exile. There are some indications that in the aftermath of the accession of William and Mary he became a target for those who resented his earlier support for James II, although the reference in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic to his imprisonment in the Tower in 1689 appears to be erroneous. It is probably a mistranscription for Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough. CSP Dom. 1689–90, p. 337. In 1691 Petre was convicted of recusancy and, perhaps more significantly, also found it necessary to obtain an exemplification of the general pardon that had been issued to him in 1688. Essex RO, D/DP/L41/22. In the early 1690s he was also the target of a number of criminal offences. Essex RO, Q/SR/472/10, 482/49, 500/85. Suspicions about his loyalty and the perceived importance of horse transport for the mobilization of forces for an internal uprising underlie an informer’s report in 1690 that Lady Petre’s servants ‘buy up all the oats at Romford, Grays, Barking and all the markets around about and her servant John being asked what the Lady did with all those oats he said they had some hundreds of horses to provide for’. Add. 61690, f. 126. After 1689 Catholics were banned from owning horses worth more than £5 and periodic attempts to enforce the ban did lead to the seizure of Petre’s horses (fewer than 30 in 1696, half of which were working farm horses) on at least two occasions. Essex RO, D/DP/Z19/2; TNA, PC 1/3026. However, he was on good terms with the county elite and had no difficulty in enlisting the support of successive lords lieutenant in obtaining licences and securing the return of his horses. PC 2/76/447; PC 2/80/287. ‘The Lord Petre’ wrote Francis North, 2nd Baron Guilford, in 1705, ‘hath always been and is very peaceable and submissive to her majesty and government.’ PC 1/14/72 (incorrectly catalogued as 1715, but clearly datable to March/April 1705).

At his death on 5 Jan. 1707 Petre was succeeded by his son, Robert Petre, 7th Baron Petre. His second son, Thomas, had died an infant in 1691. He made provision for a portion of £5,000 for his daughter, Mary, but she died unmarried in April 1713, probably (like her brother) of smallpox. Essex RO, D/P 31/1/1.