PETRE, John (1549-1613)

Petre’s father trained as a civil lawyer, but made his fortune as secretary of state under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary. Even after his resignation in 1557, he remained active in government, deputizing for William Cecil^† (later 1st Lord Burghley) for some months in 1560. He invested the profits of office in land, some in his native Devon, but chiefly in Essex and Cambridgeshire: in 1615 the family’s annual estate revenues were reckoned at £5,800.15 HP Commons 1558-1603, iii. 211; C142/160/40; Essex RO, D/DP Z30/10. After Petre succeeded to his patrimony in 1572, he played an active role in local administration, serving as sheriff of Essex in 1575-6, knight of the shire in 1584 and 1586, a militia captain in the 1580s, and a deputy lieutenant from 1589; he was nominated to the last of these posts by Lord Burghley, then newly appointed lord lieutenant of Essex. Burghley was godfather to Petre’s eldest son, William Petre^* (later 2nd Lord Petre) and in 1588, seeking to reinforce the House of Lords in the forthcoming Parliament, Burghley identified Petre as a suitable candidate for a peerage. The queen chose to ignore this recommendation, but in 1603 King James, keen to establish a personal following among the English aristocracy, ennobled Petre on the eve of his coronation.16 J.E. Kelly, ‘Petre Fam. and the Formation of Catholic Communities’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2008), 60-1; Lansd. 104, f. 52v.

If Petre’s wealth and social standing made him a natural candidate for ennoblement, his religious affiliations discouraged any such preferment. Like his father, Petre was a life-long conformist, but many of his family were Catholic, including his wife, a recusant who harboured Catholic priests and collected funds for imprisoned recusants during the 1580s. Publicly at least Petre sought to gloss over this fact, for in 1587 he assured John Aylmer^†, bishop of London, that no Essex magistrate was married to a recusant. Petre himself played an active role in promoting Catholicism at Exeter College, Oxford (generously endowed by his father) where, in 1583, one of the fellows complained that he frequently nominated Catholics to scholarships.17 Kelly, 62-5, 77-81; CSP Dom. 1581-90, p. 110; Hist. Oxf. Univ. ed. J. McConica, iii. 411-12. But the most palpable evidence of Petre’s sympathies is provided by the aid and encouragement given to Catholic missionary priests on his estates. One of the first missioners, John Payne, arrived at Ingatestone in 1576, serving as the Petre family chaplain and ministering to their relations across England until his arrest in Oxfordshire in 1581; he was tried and executed at Chelmsford in the following spring. At the same time, Lady Petre was presented for recusancy, although Thomas Radcliffe^†, 3rd earl of Sussex, persuaded the queen to halt proceedings because she was pregnant. The Petres attended court in 1580 and 1581, the period which saw the final stages of the negotiations over the Anjou Match, during which time a number of Jesuits arrived at Ingatestone; it was a former Petre servant, George Eliot, who provided the intelligence which led to the arrest of the Jesuit Edmund Campion in 1581.18 Kelly, 66-8, 82-121.

How did Petre strike a balance between a Catholic family life, and a public persona as a conformist magistrate? Socially, he declined to acknowledge that any problem existed. An analysis of guests who dined at Ingatestone Hall between 1606 and 1618 shows that Petre and his Catholic relatives broke bread not only with crypto-Catholics such as his wife’s cousin Richard Weston^* (later 1st earl of Portland), but also with the assize judge Sir John Croke^‡, the Chancery official Sir Robert Rich, the lawyer Sir John Bramston and the country gentleman Sir Alexander Temple^‡, the last three of whom were among the godly Protestant elite of Jacobean Essex.19 A. Schmitt, ‘Guess who’s coming to dinner?’, Recusant Hist. xxix. 341-54. Administratively, Petre was expected to discharge tasks he must have found uncongenial, such as serving on the Essex recusancy commission of 1591-2. On the other hand, the fact that he was named to this commission suggests that it was not expected to achieve much, and his role as one of four active commissioners in central Essex doubtless helped to ensure that none of the prominent local recusants – such as those at Ingatestone – were reported.20 Essex RO, D/DP O60; Kelly, 57-8. More generally, Petre’s status, particularly after his ennoblement, enabled him to rise above much of the anti-Catholic rhetoric of the times: in 1605, a Devonshire gentleman who called him a Catholic to his face was forced to make a public apology.21 Essex RO, D/DP Z30/7-7A.

Membership of the House of Lords was, for Petre, a confirmation of the normalization of relations between his family and the Jacobean regime. During the five parliamentary sessions in which he sat, Petre never attended less than 70 per cent of the daily sittings, and while the Lords’ debates are poorly covered in the surviving records, he was regularly included on committees for bills and conferences. During the 1604 session, he was ordered to attend two conferences at which King James’s project for Union was discussed, and others at which the Commons protested about the attack on their handling of the Union published by John Thornborough^*, bishop of Bristol. On 3 May he attended a conference about purveyance, and two days later he was one of a subcommittee of both Houses ordered to hold further talks, which advocated a national composition of £50,000, a figure far higher than the Commons were prepared to entertain.22 LJ, ii. 278a, 284a, 290b, 292a, 294b-5a, 309a, 332b. Legislative committees to which he was named included a naturalization bill for four Scots courtiers, another for relief of plague victims, and a third to require academics who married to relinquish their university fellowships.23 Ibid. 272a-b, 325b, 332a.

Petre missed the opening day of the second session, perhaps a wise move, given the shocking news of the day, although he was later included on the committee for the bill to attaint the Gunpowder Plotters. Petre steered clear of involvement in recusancy legislation during the session, except for a nomination to the committee for the bill requiring emigrants to take the oath of allegiance before going overseas. Nor did he have much to do with purveyance, the other issue which dominated the session: he was named to attend a conference on this subject.24 Ibid. 413a, 427a; Bowyer Diary, 116-17. Other committee nominations reflect personal interests: the bill to settle the debts of the recently deceased Thomas Windsor^*, 5th Lord Windsor concerned a kinsman by marriage; while bills for the endowments of Oxford University and Corpus Christi College, Oxford were perhaps of some interest to him as a patron at Exeter College. The bill allowing Robert Cecil^*, 1st earl of Salisbury, to enlarge the grounds of his Strand mansion reflected longstanding ties with the Cecil family; while the estate bill for Sir Michael Hickes^‡ concerned a Cecil client who was also an Essex landowner. Petre may have had some personal connection with the Roger v. Taylor bill, as he was appointed one of the arbitrators of this dispute, and may have had a hand in drafting the new bill which resulted.25 LJ, ii. 367a, 371b, 376b, 380b, 386b, 391b, 400a, 401a, 404b, 420b.

In 1606-7, Parliament was dominated by the Union, but Petre was little involved in these debates. He attended the conference of 24 Nov. 1606 at which the Lords encouraged the Commons to begin debating the Instrument of Union, and, towards the end of the session, was named to the committee for the bill to abolish hostile laws, the only part of the Union project which reached the statute book.26 Ibid. 453a, 520a. At the end of the session he was one of the supporters who introduced the newly ennobled Thomas Knyvett^*, Lord Knyvett to the Lords. Again, some of the committees to which he was nominated reflect his own interests: a bill to confirm a decree involving All Souls’ College, Oxford; a bill to endow a preacher in Devon, where he was a major landowner; and Salisbury’s bill to exchange his house at Theobalds for the crown manor of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, a bill of local interest to an Essex magnate.27 Ibid. 468a, 489a, 511a, 538b.

The spring session of 1610 was dominated by negotiations for the financial reforms which came to be known as the Great Contract. On 14 Feb., Petre attended the conference at which Salisbury urged action to resolve the king’s urgent needs, and he was later one of a delegation which asked James whether he approved of the Commons’ offer of composition for wardship. On 19 July, having just agreed with the Commons to offer the king an annual revenue of £200,000, Salisbury asked the Lords how this might be raised: as most of the crown revenues to be surrendered came from land, he suggested they be replaced by a land tax. Petre supported this plan, and moved for a committee ‘to devise how to make a levy’, which was seconded by Edmund Sheffield^*, 3rd Lord Sheffield (later 1st earl of Mulgrave); but the debate ended inconclusively.28 Ibid. 551a, 579b, 651a; Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 152-3. Catholicism remained a staple of business; a papal ban on Catholics taking the oath of allegiance and the assassination of Henri IV of France led to fresh legislation imposing the oath upon all adults; Petre duly took it, with the rest of the Lords, on 7 June. Petre was named to the committee for another bill imposing the same oath on those seeking naturalization or restitution in blood, but he presumably disapproved of this, as at its third reading he and several other crypto-Catholic peers voted against it. A task he may have found more congenial was the attempt to punish the projector Sir Stephen Proctor, whose patent to collect unpaid fines (including recusancy fines) had been attacked in the Commons.29 M.C. Questier, Catholicism and Community, 342-4; LJ, ii. 608b, 631a, 647b, 657a; Procs. 1610 ed. Foster, i. 121-2.

Once again, some of Petre’s activity within the House reflected his personal interests. At the roll-call on 1 May, he excused Thomas Arundell^*, 1st Lord Arundell, his son's kinsman by marriage; he was named to a committee for the estate bill of his wife’s relative, Charles Waldegrave, and another for the Cornish branch of the Arundell family; and he was appointed to committees for two land exchange bills, one promoted by Salisbury, and another on the Essex estates of Henry de Vere^*, 18th earl of Oxford.30 LJ, ii. 553b, 585a, 611a, 616a, 619a. The Great Contract swiftly unravelled during brief autumn sitting of 1610. Petre was ordered to attend a conference at which the Commons were asked whether they intended to proceed with the bargain; and on 13 Nov., after MPs had finally answered in the negative, Petre attended another conference which explored other ways of raising money for the crown. It was presumably after the Contract was dashed that he purchased a wardship himself, for £140.31 WARD 9/162, f. 73. He was present at the dissolution of the Parliament on 9 Feb. 1611, despite not being included on the dissolution commission.32 LJ ii. 671a, 678a; HMC Hastings, iv. 222-6.

Petre spent much of his final years in securing the foundation of a new college at Oxford, funded by a bequest from his late his brother-in-law Nicholas Wadham, which was said to have comprised £8,000 in cash and £400 a year in lands. Supported by Wadham’s Somerset neighbours, James Montagu^*, bishop of Bath and Wells, Sir Edward Hext^‡ and Speaker Sir Edward Phelips^‡, the project was inaugurated during the spring of 1610, when a site was purchased from the Oxford corporation. As the freehold was not held in mortmain, Hext observed, there was no need for a private act of Parliament to secure its title. Salisbury offered 1,000 trees from the royal forests, and once a legal challenge to Wadham’s will from Sir John Davies had been overcome, the work of building could begin. At the wish of Nicholas Wadham’s widow, various college scholarships were earmarked for students from Somerset and Essex; the king intervened to ensure that the remainder were generally available to British, not merely English, students. The college admitted its first students in April 1613.33 Essex RO, D/DP Q13/3/1-40, some printed in N. Briggs, ‘Foundation of Wadham Coll.’, Oxoniensia, xxi. 61-81; C142/334/56; Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xii), 63; Hist. Oxf. Univ. ed. N. Tyacke, iv. 155-8, 195; Oxford DNB lvi. 672-3.

Petre just lived to see Wadham open its doors, dying ‘of a long, languishing consumption’ on 11 Oct. 1613. No will or administration has been found, but he may not have needed either, as he had made detailed provision for his family well before his death. His main estates descended to his heir, William, but his younger sons, John and Thomas, were given outlying manors, while part of his income was assigned to trustees who were ordered to raise the vast sum of £34,000 to be divided among his grandchildren.34 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 479; C142/340/185.