PETRE, William (1575-1637)

Petre was heir both to a barony, acquired by his father in 1603, and vast estates in Essex, Cambridgeshire and Devon, valued at £5,800 a year in his own accounts in 1615. He was educated at first by private tutors, who may also have served his family as Catholic chaplains, and then at Exeter College, Oxford, which had been re-endowed by his grandfather, before finally attending the Middle Temple. His marriage, to a daughter of Edward Somerset^*, 4th earl of Worcester, united two of the leading pro-Jesuit families of late Elizabeth England, and was celebrated in verse by Edmund Spenser.14 Essex RO, D/DP Z30/10; Kelly, 129.

Ever since the Campion-Persons mission of 1580-1, Petre’s conformist father had quietly supported the Jesuits, who regularly sojourned at his houses in Essex and London. Petre, however, evolved into a more outspoken champion of Tridentine Catholicism. There is no evidence he attended Anglican services, but neither did he pay recusancy fines; and at the start of the 1614 Parliament he, like all new peers, took the oath of allegiance. This had been forbidden by the pope several years earlier, and was deplored by Catholic theologians, but missionary priests usually made allowances for those who wished to demonstrate their loyalty to the Stuart dynasty. Petre quickly underscored his loyalism by getting himself named to a conference with the Commons over the bill explaining the claims of Princess Elizabeth’s children to the succession.15 LJ, ii. 691a, 692b; M.C. Questier, Catholicism and Community, 342-4.

Outside the House of Lords, Petre’s Catholicism made it difficult for him to pursue a public career. Prior to his father’s ennoblement he was, most surprisingly, elected knight of the shire for Essex in 1597, but otherwise served only on local sewer commissions until 1616, when he was appointed to the commission of the peace for Essex. Yet at the same time as he rubbed shoulders with the county’s godly magistrates, he dispatched to the Continent his younger son Edward, who was later joined by his brother Thomas and his cousin Henry Guildford (a future Jesuit); by 1624 the brothers were reported to be living in Florence.16 Cal. Assize Recs. Essex Indictments Jas. I, 169; Stuart Dynastic Policy ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxxiv), 307; Kelly, 154-5.

In 1621, despite rising religious tensions following the outbreak of war in Germany, Petre attended the Lords regularly. However, his only significant absence, between 1 and 8 Dec., may have been prompted by anti-Catholic feeling, whipped up by the prospect of war with Spain. At the start of the session, he was named to a committee to scrutinize bills banning the export of iron ordnance and update the militia’s arms, but he eschewed any involvement in contentious debates about foreign policy and domestic corruption. His committee nominations included: a bill to confirm the endowments of Wadham College, Oxford, founded by his father and great aunt; an estate bill for his cousin Charles Waldegrave; and bills concerning the lands of two fellow Catholics, Sir Richard Lumley and Anthony Browne^*, 2nd Viscount Montagu. His Devon estates may explain his nomination to the committee for the bill confirming Prince Charles’s lease to duchy of Cornwall tenants.17 LJ, iii. 13a, 16a, 26b, 126b, 128b, 139b.

The 1624 Parliament met in a highly charged atmosphere, amid expectations of a breach with Spain and strict enforcement of the recusancy laws. Petre clearly took the oath of allegiance early in the session, as he was not one of the Catholic peers who withdrew from the Lords in protest against this requirement. He attended two-thirds of the Lords’ sittings in 1624, including most of the debates about war and peace, but provocatively voted against the recusancy bill at its third reading on 24 March.18 LD 1624 and 1626, p. 48. SP14/161/36 says that only Lord St. John of Basing voted against. His committee nominations were, once again, largely concerned with private measures, including the revived Wadham College bill, and another for urban improvements at Colchester. Meanwhile, the Commons, tired of lax enforcement of the recusancy laws, collated a list of officeholders who were either recusant themselves, or had recusant wives. As an Essex magistrate, Petre appeared on this list: ‘he cometh not to the church, nor receiveth the communion; and … his wife and family are generally suspected to be popish recusants’.19 LJ, iii. 275a, 386a, 394b.

Little happened immediately after the recusant officeholders’ petition was presented to the king; but by the end of the following year, Petre had been removed from the bench and as a commissioner of oyer and terminer, retaining only his seat on the Essex sewer commission. The outbreak of war with Spain in the autumn of 1625 brought with it searches for arms at the houses of known and suspected Catholics, including Petre, whose armoury was taken away to Leez Priory, the seat of the county’s lord lieutenant, Robert Rich^*, 2nd earl of Warwick.20 APC, 1625-6, pp. 226-9; SP16/12/16.

Petre appeared at Westminster for the Parliament which was scheduled to start on 17 May 1625, but which was then prorogued for two weeks. Before the session began he fell from his horse, which accident kept him away for the entire session. Consequently he nominated as his proxy his father-in-law, the earl of Worcester – even though his wife had recently died.21 Procs. 1625, pp. 45, 47, 593; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 542. He issued another proxy at the start of the 1626 Parliament, which he assigned not to Worcester but to the crypto-Catholic Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel, having pledged his vote to the earl shortly before the session began.22 Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters 278. He nevertheless attended the House six times, and was also present at King Charles’s coronation on 2 February. Having received notice of the Lords’ order of 25 Feb. that no peer would be allowed to hold more than two proxies thereafter, he may have been concerned about losing his vote, especially after Arundel was committed to the Tower on 5 Mar.; it was presumably at this point that he transferred his proxy to Dudley North^*, 3rd Lord North. The days on which he turned up – 31 Mar., 21 and 22 Apr., 1, 2 and 11 May – were all moments of considerable political tension, when a single vote might have swayed the House.23 Procs. 1626, i. 11, 49; iv. 21, 25; Essex RO, D/DP Z30/14.

The angry dissolution of June 1626 led to the collection of a Forced Loan equivalent in size to the subsidies Parliament had approved in principle. In such straitened times, the king was prepared to use the services of anyone willing to serve his cause, recusants included, and thus Petre served as a Loan commissioner in Essex.24 C193/12/2; APC, 1627, pp. 197-8. However, any favourable impression his efforts may have created was quickly dissipated in July 1627, when his son George, and one the latter’s Somerset cousins, tried to leave the country from Dover on forged passports in the company of the Jesuit Robert Stanford. This created immediate suspicion, not least because the fleet and army had sailed for La Rochelle, leaving England militarily vulnerable. Rumours circulated that they had been carrying ‘two barrels of treasure’, and that ‘divers great papists’ had been plotting at Ingatestone. A few weeks later, George’s brothers Edward and Thomas, newly returned from their Continental travels, also landed at Dover, where they were promptly arrested. It took Petre three months to satisfy the Privy Council that nothing particularly untoward had taken place.25 Diary of Thomas Crosfield ed. F.S. Boas, 15; SP16/70/65, 96; 16/71/26; T. Birch, Ct. and Times Chas. I, i. 251-2; APC, 1627, pp. 439, 510; 1627-8, pp. 7, 22, 77; CSP Ven. 1626-8, p. 307; Kelly, 154-61. Perhaps as a result of this incident, Petre was frustrated in his attempt to buy the wardship of his grandson Christopher Roper^†, 4th Lord Teynham in the following year. The standing orders of the Court of Wards barred recusants from acquiring wardships, but as Petre had not been convicted his application should have been allowed.26 SP16/124/4.

Petre missed almost all of the 1628 session of Parliament. He attended for two days during the first week (17 and 20 Mar.), but at the call of the House on 22 Mar. he gave his proxy to Edward Sackville^*, 4th earl of Dorset, and appeared only two or three times thereafter.27 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 26, 87. The attendance records are ambiguous. He was not seen in the House at all during the 1629 session, but instead appointed as his proxy the crypto-Catholic lord treasurer, Richard Weston^*, Lord Weston (later 1st earl of Portland), his cousin’s husband.28 LJ, iv. 3a. While Parliament was sitting he was indicted for recusancy at the Essex quarter sessions. However, like many other prosecutions at the time, this one was suspended by royal order.29 Essex RO, Q/SR 266/117. His lack of interest in Parliament may have been occasioned, in part, by his becoming embroiled in the approbation controversy, a quarrel between Catholics occasioned by the attempt of the Catholic Bishop Richard Smith to impose his pastoral authority upon the Jesuits. The Protestant authorities ultimately hounded Smith into exile in France, whereupon Petre and other Jesuit supporters contacted Lord Weston with an offer to make common cause against Smith and the secular clergy. In 1632, 18 pro-Jesuit peers signed a petition to the pope asking for the revocation of Smith’s jurisdiction, but nothing came of this, and the initiative faded away.30 Questier, 433-98; Newsletters from the Caroline Court ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxvi), 65-6, 70-1, 78-9, 121-2; Kelly, 161-9.

Petre drafted his will in 1633, over four years before his death. He bequeathed his soul to God ‘with full trust in his infinite mercy whereby … I hope to be saved’, language which was perhaps intended to emulate Protestant usage. He made bequests to the poor, prisoners and hospitals, left legacies to his children and grandchildren, augmented his daughter-in-law’s jointure, and urged his heir not to take advantage of his tenants if any of his leases were found to be defective. Under the terms of his father’s entail, his main estates descended to his eldest son, Robert Petre^* (subsequently 3rd Lord Petre), but each of his younger sons was given other lands. Petre died at Thorndon, just south of Ingatestone, on 5 May 1637, and was subsequently buried in the family’s vault.31 PROB 11/174, ff. 267v-9; C142/560/165; Coll. of Arms, I.8, f. 54v. Shortly after his death, a secular priest claimed Petre had left £15,000 to the Jesuits and £500 to the seculars, but conceded, ‘I see nothing given as yet’.32 Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 310.