Robert Petre, 9th Baron Petre

Early life

Lord Petre was born in Ingatestone Hall, about five months prior to the death of his father, who succumbed to smallpox at the age of 29. He was the son of Robert James Petre, 8th Baron Petre (1713–1742), a renowned horticulturist, and Lady Henrietta Anna Mary Barbara Radclyffe. His mother was his guardian until she died in 1760.

His maternal grandfather was James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, who was the grandson of King Charles II through his mistress Moll Davis.

Lord Petre inherited an exceptional amount of wealth and influence. Although claims of being one of the twelve richest men in the Kingdom may be exaggerated, his estates were undeniably extensive. His ancestor, Sir William Petre, had acquired approximately 45,000 acres (180 km2), primarily in Essex and the West Country. This land was further expanded by Sir William's son, John, who added a further 14,500 acres (59 km2). Lord Petre's grandmother, Catherine Walmesley, inherited her family's large estates in Lancashire and Surrey, which were reputed to be worth £7,000 per annum at the time of her marriage.

There is a lack of personal writings and correspondence in the Petre family archive and so it is difficult to form a rounded impression of the man; legend has it that, in later life, he himself destroyed many of his personal papers. They bore witness to the acrimonious disputes which he was to have with the Roman Catholic hierarchy and which, in retrospect, he came to deeply regret. It is clear he was no great intellect; one now anonymous commentator is particularly unkind.

His literary equipment fell short even of the moderate standard then expected of a nobleman and his generous patronage of men of letters and art seems to have been dictated by other considerations than intellectual sympathy.

On the other hand, as Charles Butler, lawyer and Secretary of the Catholic Committee of which Robert was chairman, wrote in his obituary, "All his actions were distinguished by rectitude, openness and dignity". Indeed, from the events of his life emerges a picture of a man of great energy, determination and perseverance with a keen sense of patriotism and duty.

Robert's dogged resolve may well have sprung from a stoicism in face of adversity learnt from those under whose tutelage he was brought up, if it is not too extravagant so to characterize an environment as privileged as his. Not only did his mother lose her husband only months after Robert's birth but both her father and her uncle, executed for their parts in the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745 respectively, and also her brother, killed in a riding accident, had died prematurely. Robert's grandmother, the redoubtable Catherine Walmsley, was also no stranger to tragedy. Both her parents had died by the time she was four and, during the following nine years, her brother and her two sisters succumbed. She had married the 7th Lord Petre but, a year later, he too died of small-Pox, and she was left, at the age of barely 15, a widow with an infant son. She subsequently married Charles, Lord Storton but, when he died in 1753, she became a widow for the second time.

As mentioned above within a few months of Robert's birth, his father died of smallpox at the age of 29 and so Robert succeeded as the 9th Lord Petre. As a minor, he remained, of course, under the guardianship of his mother and it was only as a result of her death in 1760 that he was permitted to take over his estates at the age of eighteen.

Some additions were made to the original Ginge Petre Charity endowment: for example, a further £48 was settled in 1778 from various properties in the area. Chapman and Andre's Atlas of Essex (1777) shows the almshouses as "the Workhouse", and this seems to have been one of their functions, at least until the 1830s.

Robert also devoted himself to a number of other enterprises. He made annual charitable donations of £500, chiefly to Roman Catholic priests and religious orders both in England and on the Continent. He was the first Chairman of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation, which was responsible for building the canal connecting Chelmsford to the sea near Maldon. He was a loyal and patriotic man, for at the end of the century, when Britain was at war with France, he raised a company of volunteers from the districts of Ingatestone, Brentwood, and Billericay; the banners of these volunteers were still hanging in Ingatestone Church in 1848.

Catholic emancipation

Robert was a leading figure in the movement for Catholic emancipation, for example, Dr. Alexander Geddes (1737–1802) protégé of Robert, was a Catholic theologian, writer and scholar who was an honorary graduate of the University of Aberdeen and an early Roman Catholic pioneer of biblical criticism and originator of the "fragment hypothesis" of the composition of the Pentateuch.

Between the accession of Elizabeth I and the early years of the reign of George I, thirty separate statutes that either forbade Roman Catholics the practice of their religion or deprived them of their rights and freedoms had been enacted. It is true that, by this time, the emphasis had changed; Roman Catholics could at least adhere to their beliefs and even worship discreetly without undue risk to their life or liberty but the legislation, particularly to exclude them from any public office or profession, was still in place and Roman Catholics remained effectively second-class citizens. How it was that at least some 'treacherous' Roman Catholics were left relatively unmolested by the draconian legislation laid against them cannot be considered in detail here, but the Petre family was not unique in this respect. In fact, Mark Bence-Jones, in his recent book The Catholic Families, even goes so far as to suggest that the effects of the Penal Laws were not entirely disadvantageous to the Roman Catholic gentry. Barred as they were from all public office, they were at least spared the risks associated with such ambitions – the heavy cost of 'electioneering expenses' (or, bluntly, bribes) and the dire consequences of a fall from favour – and could concentrate their energies on the management of their estates, which accordingly prospered.

The principal factor, however, which, over the years, helped to protect some Roman Catholic families from the worst effects of the legislation was the simple matter of the personal loyalty and support extended to them by their local community, even by those who might particularly have been expected to point an accusing finger. Indeed, in some places under the patronage of Roman Catholic gentry, there had been an increase in the number of their co-religionists; in the 27 parishes between Brentwood and Chelmsford that were under the aegis of the Petre and the Roman Catholic Wrights of Kelvedon Hall, the population of Roman Catholics rose from 106 in 1625 to 202 in 1706. Even among the common people, loyalty to Rome was not entirely extinct; a national census of 1767 identifies, out of a total population of seven to eight million, 67,916 Roman Catholics, and there is good reason to suppose that this was a considerable underestimate.

Residences and renovations

Robert Petre's other great enterprise was the building of the new Thorndon Hall. His father, who was a distinguished plant collector, had embarked on an ambitious scheme to reconstruct the old 15th-century house and its park but his premature death in 1742 brought the unfinished work to a halt. During Robert's long minority, the house and park fell into neglect. In 1757, the house had been badly damaged by fire as a newspaper report of 16 August 1757 bears witness:

"Great Part of Lady Petre's House near Brentwood in Essex was burnt by the Lightning on Monday Night, which did a great deal of other damage in that neighbourhood, and was so violent that it greatly terrified several persons on the road."

The nurseries established by Robert's father contained, at his death, 219,925 plants. When the botanist, Peter Collinson, visited in 1762, he found a scene of desolation: the house was falling down, the nurseries overgrown and the stoves empty, apart from two date palms, a cactus and a few sickly shrubs. Fashion too had moved on apace since the 8th Lord had drawn up his plans; Horace Walpole, on a visit in 1754, found it "The Brobdingnag of bad taste". By the time Robert reached his majority, desperate measures were called for. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that it was 'folie de grandeur' as much as practical common sense that prompted Robert to commission James Paine, a favourite architect of the Roman Catholic community who had designed Wardour Castle for Lord Arundell and Worksop Manor for the 9th Duke of Norfolk, which, had it been finished, would have been one of the largest private houses in the land, to design a completely new house and Lancelot 'Capability' Brown to re-design the park. He demolished the old Thorndon Hall and built, in its stead, the grandiose Palladian mansion that we see today.

In 1764, with the family temporarily ensconced at their other principal residence, Ingatestone Hall, work began on the vast Palladian mansion, using materials salvaged from the old house. A central block, dominated by a hall, 42 feet (13 m) square and lined by 18 columns, leading, via a grand staircase, to a lofty salon measuring 60 feet (18 m) by 30 feet (9.1 m), contained most of the reception rooms and, bedrooms including the 'State Rooms' and 'Cardinal's Room', His Lordship's study, Her Ladyship's boudoir, two drawing-rooms, the dining-room, the ballroom, the billiard room, the nurseries, the library, the strong room, the armoury and a theatre (a programme for a performance of The Rivals, given in 1792, survives). At each end of this main block stood an outlying wing, connected thereto by a quadrant gallery. The East wing contained the kitchens, laundry, and chapel while the West wing accommodated the extensive coach-houses and stables.

Personal life

Robert also brought an energetic enthusiasm to his family life and married well. His first wife, whom he married on 19 April 1762, was Anne Howard (29 August 1742 – 15 January 1787), a daughter and co-heiress of Philip Howard of Buckenham Tofts in Norfolk, younger brother of Edward Howard, 9th Duke of Norfolk (1686–1777). When the 9th Duke died without issue, his niece, Anne Howard, became co-heir with her sister Winifred Howard to various baronies, but not to the dukedom, which went to a distant male cousin.

The couple were both minors when they were married at the house of Hon. Thomas Howard in Golden Square, Soho, by Samuel Nicolls, the then Rector of St James's Church, Westminster. Robert and Anne had four children;

Robert Edward Petre, 10th Baron Petre (1763–1809), of Buckenham Tofts who married Mary Bridget Howard, sister of her husband's future stepmother and of Bernard Howard, 12th Duke of Norfolk, in 1786.

George William Petre (1766–1797), who married Maria Howard, third daughter of Philip Howard of Corby Castle, in 1786. After his death in 1797, she married Col. Henry William Espinasse in 1802.

Anne Catherine Petre (c. 1768–1798), who married General Denzil Onslow of Staughton House, son of Middleton Onslow MP.

Philip Howard (b. 1773)

Robert and Anne evidently held themselves aloof from politics and the Court, for at the time of the War of American Independence, when France was threatening to aid the Americans by invading Ireland, Horace Walpole noted that the Roman Catholics professed much loyalty, both in Ireland and England, and Lord and Lady Petre went to Court for the first time. Horace Walpole especially remarks on the visit of George III and Queen Charlotte to Lord Petre at Thorndon Hall, after a review of the troops on Warley Common on 19 October 1779.

Anne died in 1787, and Robert married again a year later, on 16 January 1788 in London. His second wife was Juliana Barbara Howard (25 June 1769 – 16 April 1833, London), sister of the future Bernard Howard, 12th Duke of Norfolk. Juliana was 19 years old, 27 years younger than Robert, and, indeed, Robert's son had himself married her older sister two years previously. Juliana and Lord Petre had three children:

Death and funeral

Robert died on 2 July 1801. He departed this life as he had lived, in grand style. Accompanying the hearse were three divisions of the Ingatestone & Brentwood Volunteers, two companies of Pioneers, two Artillery field pieces and the band of the Royal Buckinghamshire Regiment together with thirty mutes and cloak men, Robert's tenants, two by two, the post-chaise and two carriages from the Thorndon stables, seven mourning coaches, each drawn by six horses, carrying members of the family, clergy and household and a host of outriders, grooms and other mourners. The Chelmsford Chronicle reported the funeral procession on Friday 10 July 1801 thus;

On Thursday Evening the 2d Inst died the Right Honble Lord Petre, Baron of Writtle, in the County of Essex in the 60th year of his age – and yesterday his remains were conveyed to the Family vault, at Ingatestone, for interment attended by his numerous relatives, friends, and tenants, and accompanied by the Corps of Volunteers and Pioneers, which he had raised and patronised in the most zealous and liberal manner for the defence of his Country when threatened by a foreign Invasion. The procession began from Thorndon Hall, between 11 & 12 o'clock in the following order: the two field pieces firing minute guns until the procession was through the park.

Two mutes as Conductors. Four Cloak men. State lid of Black Feathers. Tenants two by two. Two mutes as Conductors to Banner. Four cloak men. Great Banner. Two Cloak men. Two Banner Rolls. Two Cloak men. Two Banner Rolls. Two Cloak men. Two mutes as Conductors to the Military. Four Cloak men. Captain Forbes, on Horseback. First Company of Pioneers in File at double open order. Captain Mason on Horseback. Second Company of Pioneers, in file at double open order. Captain Vassar of the Artillery on Horseback.

Artillerymen in file at double open order with. Field piece. Field piece. Ammunition Wagon. Frugal Man. Major Havers on horseback. Third Division of Volunteers, in file at double open order. Lieutenant Woodgate in the Centre of the Rear file Second Division of Volunteers in file at double open order. Lieutenant Newman in the centre of the rear file. Lieutenant Manby in the centre of the 2nd Division supported by two Sergeants. First Division of Volunteers, in file in double open order. Captain Sidney in the centre of the rear file. Quarter Master Wright, on Horseback. Band of the Royal Bucks, in file, double open order. Two mutes as Conductors to State Horse. Four Horsemen with Cloaks. Mr Stewart, on the State Horse, covered with velvet, with coronet & Cushion. Hearse & Six Horses.