was spent on charitable objects; he founded almshouses at Ingatestone, and designed scholarships for All Souls' College, Oxford, but his chief benefactions were to Exeter College, Oxford, and entitle him to be considered its second founder (for full details see Boase, Registrum Coll. Exon. pp. lxxxv et seq.) In other ways Petre was a patron of learning; his correspondence with English envoys abroad contains frequent requests for rare books. He was himself governor of Chelmsford grammar school, and Ascham benefited by his favour, which he is said to have requited by dedicating to Petre his ‘Osorius de Nobilitate Christiana.’ A mass of Petre's correspondence has been summarised in the ‘Calendars of State Papers,’ and many of the originals are in the Cottonian, Harleian, and Additional MSS. in the British Museum; his transcript of the notes for Edward VI's will is in the Inner Temple Library. Two undoubted portraits of Petre, with one of doubtful authenticity, all belonging to the Right Rev. Monsignor Lord Petre, were exhibited in the Tudor exhibition; of these, one (No. 159), by Sir Antonio More, was painted ‘ætatis suæ xl;’ the third portrait (No. 149) is by Holbein, but bears the inscription on the background ‘ætatis suæ 74 An.o 1545,’ which does not agree with the facts of Petre's life (cf. Notes and Queries, 7th ser. ix. 247, 334, 415). Another portrait is in the hall of Exeter College, Oxford.
Petre married, first, about 1533, Gertrude, youngest child of Sir John Tyrrell, knt., of Warley, and his wife Anne, daughter of Edward Norris; she died on 28 May 1541, leaving two daughters, one of whom, Dorothy (1534–1618), married Nicholas Wadham [q. v.], founder of Wadham College, Oxford; and the other, Elizabeth, married John Gostwick. Petre married, secondly, Anne, daughter of Sir William Browne, lord mayor of London, and relict of John Tyrrell (d. 1540) of Heron, Essex, a distant cousin of Sir John Tyrrell, father of Petre's first wife (see pedigree in the Visitation of Essex, 1558). Anthony Tyrrell [q. v.] was the second Lady Petre's nephew. She died on 10 March 1581–1582, and was buried by her husband's side in Ingatestone church. By her Petre had two daughters, Thomasine and Katherine, and three sons, of whom two died young; the other, John (1549–1613), was knighted in 1576, sat in parliament for Essex in 1585–6, was created Baron Petre of Writtle, Essex, by James I on 21 July 1603, and died at West Horndon, Essex, on 11 Oct. 1613, being buried in Ingatestone church. He augmented his father's benefactions to Exeter College, contributed 95l. to the Virginia Company (Brown, Genesis U.S.A.), and became a Roman catholic. Exeter College published in his honour a thin quarto entitled ‘Threni Exoniensium in obitum … D. Johannis Petrei, Baronis de Writtle,’ Oxford, 1613 (Brit. Mus.) He married Mary, daughter of Sir Edward Walgrave, or Waldegrave, and left four sons, of whom the eldest, William, second Lord Petre, was father of William Petre (1602–1677) [q. v.], and grandfather of William, fourth baron Petre [q. v.]
[Cal. State Papers, Dom., For., and Venetian series; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Gairdner; Burghley State Papers, passim; Proceedings of the Privy Council; Rymer's Fœdera, original edition; Cotton. MSS. Cal. B. x. 101, Galba B. x. 210, 225; Harl. MS. 283, f. 187; Addit. MSS. 25114 ff. 333, 344, 346, 32654 ff. 80, 123, 32655 ff. 95, 152, 247–8, 32656 ff. 28, 185, 226; Ashmole MSS. 1121 f. 231, 1137 f. 142, 1729 f. 192; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Burrows's Worthies of All Souls'; Boase's Registrum Coll. Exon., Stapleton's Three Oxford Parishes, and Plummer's Elizabethan Oxford (all published by Oxford Hist. Soc.); Wood's Fasti, i. 73, 74, 93, 158, and City of Oxford, i. 597; Lit. Remains of Edward VI (Roxburghe Club), passim; Chron. of Queen Jane, pp. 82, 88, 90, 109, Narr. of Reformation, pp. 282, 284, Annals of Queen Elizabeth, p. 11, Machyn's Diary, passim, and Wriothesley's Chron. ii. 31 (all published by Camden Soc.); Camden's Britannia and Elizabeth; Stow's Annals; Holinshed's Chronicles; Sir John Hayward's Life and Raigne of Edward the Sixt, 1630; Lloyd's State Worthies, pp. 430–4; Prince's Worthies of Devon, ed. 1701, pp. 496, 500; Moore's Devon, pp. 87–91; Strype's Works, Index; Dodd's Church Hist.; Fuller's Church Hist.; Dixon's Hist. of the Church of England; Burnet's Reformation; Foxe's Actes and Mon.; Oliver's Collections, pp. 197–8; Morris's Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 2nd ser. pp. 292–3, &c.; Coote's Civilians, p. 31; Burgon's Gresham, i. 36, 228, &c.; Newcourt's Repertorium, ii. 347; Hasted's Kent, i. 267; Morant's Essex, i. 115, 209; Ashmole and Beltz's Order of the Garter; Archæologia, xxi. 39, xxx. 465, xxxviii. 106; Segar's Baronagium Geneal.; Collins's Peerage, vii. 28, 33; G. E. C.'s Complete Peerage; Visitation of Devonshire, 1564 (Harl. Soc.), passim; Berry's Essex Genealogies; Genealogical Collections illustrating the Hist. of Roman Catholic Families in England, ed. J. J. Howard, pt. i.; Miscell. Geneal. et Heraldica, new ser. ii. 152; Tytler's Edward VI, i. 76, 228, 427; Lingard's and Froude's Histories; Gent. Mag. 1792, ii. 998; English Hist. Rev. July 1894; Notes and Queries, 7th ser. ix. 247, 334, 415.]
PETRE, WILLIAM (1602–1677), translator, the third son of William, second lord Petre (1575–1637) of Writtle in Essex, and great-grandson of Sir William Petre [q. v.], was born in his father's house at Ingatestone,
