Essex, 28 July 1602. His mother, who died in 1624, was Catherine, second daughter of Edward Somerset, fourth earl of Worcester. His family, who remained Roman catholic, had been steady benefactors of Exeter College, Oxford, whither he was sent as gentleman commoner, matriculating on 5 Feb. 1612, at the early age of ten. In the following year, however, when Wadham College was completed by his great-aunt, Dame Dorothy Wadham, he migrated thither, and ‘became the first nobleman thereof’ (Wood). In October 1613 his eldest brother John died, and the society of Exeter dedicated a threnody to the family (Madan, Early Oxford Press, p. 92). About the same time he was joined at Wadham by his elder brother Robert, and the two brothers, both of whom left without taking degrees, presented to the college two fine silver tankards, which were sacrificed to the royal cause on 26 Jan. 1643. After leaving Oxford he was entered of the Inner Temple. Subsequently he travelled in the south of Europe, and, according to Wood, ‘became a gent. of many accomplishments.’ In 1669 he issued from St. Omer a translation of the then popular ‘Flos Sanctorum’ of the jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneira, originally published at Barcelona in 1643, fol. The translation, which was entitled ‘Lives of the Saints, with other Feasts of the Year according to the Roman Calendar,’ is continued down to 1669. The first edition soon became scarce, and a second, corrected and amended, was issued at London in 1730, folio. Petre's rendering has been commended by Southey and Isaac Disraeli. Petre died on the estate at Stanford Rivers in Essex which had been given him by his father, and he was buried in the chancel of Stanford Rivers church. His wife Lucy, daughter of Sir Richard Fermor of Somerton, Oxfordshire—by whom he had three sons and two daughters—was buried by his side in March 1679.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 1144; Gardiner's Register of Wadham, i. 21; Collins's Peerage, vii. 36; Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 278; Morant's Hist. of Essex, ‘Hundred of Ongar,’ p. 152; Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature; Howard's Roman Catholic Families of England, pt. i. p. 44.]
PETRE, WILLIAM, fourth Baron Petre (1622–1684), was the eldest son of Robert, third lord Petre (1599–1638), who was the great-great-grandson of Sir William Petre [q. v.] His mother, who was married in 1620 and died two years after her son, in 1685, was Mary, daughter of Anthony Browne, second viscount Montagu. William Petre [q. v.], the translator of Ribadeneira, was his uncle. He was one of the ‘cavaliers’ imprisoned in 1655, but until well advanced in life did nothing to attract public notice. In 1678, however, he, as a devout Roman catholic, involuntarily drew upon himself the attentions of the perjurer Titus Oates, who charged him with being privy to the alleged popish plot. Oates swore in his deposition before Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey [q. v.] that he had seen ‘Lord Peters receive a commission as lieutenant-general of the popish army destined for the invasion of England from the hands of Joannes Paulus de Oliva, the general of the jesuits’ (cf. art. lxxi. of Oates's Narrative, 1679). He repeated these statements, with embellishments, before the House of Commons in October 1678, and the house promptly sent for Lord-chief-justice Scroggs, and instructed him to issue warrants for the apprehension of all the persons mentioned in Oates's information (Commons' Journals, 23–28 Oct. 1678). Together with four other Roman catholic lords—Powis, Belasyse, Arundel, and Stafford—who were similarly accused of being destined for high office under the jesuitical régime, Petre was committed to the Tower on 28 Oct. 1678. Articles were exhibited against him by the commons in April 1679, yet, in spite of repeated demands for a trial by the prisoners' friends, and of the clamour of the partisans of Oates on the other hand, no further steps were taken until 23 June 1680, when Lord Castlemaine, who had subsequently been committed, was tried and acquitted. A few months later Viscount Stafford was tried, condemned, and executed; but the patrons of the plot derived no benefit from his death, and nothing was said of the trial of the other ‘popish lords,’ though the government took no step to release them. Their confinement does not appear to have been very rigorous. Nevertheless Petre, who was already an old man, suffered greatly in health; and when, in the autumn of 1683, he felt that he had not long to live, he drew up a pathetic letter to the king. In this he says: ‘I have been five yeares in prison, and, what is more grievous to me, lain so long under a false and injurious calumny of a horrid plot and design against your majestie's person and government, and am now by the disposition of God's providence call'd into another world before I could by a public trial make my innocence appear.’ This letter was printed, and provoked some protestant ‘Observations,’ which were in turn severely criticised in ‘A Pair of Spectacles for Mr. Observer; or Remarks upon the phanatical Observations on my Lord Petre's Letter,’ possibly from the prolific pen of Roger L'Estrange. When, however, Petre actually died in the Tower, on 5 Jan. 1683–4, a certain
