Thomas Petre, 6th Baron Petre

Thomas Petre, 6th Baron Petre. (1633 – 1706).

Unlike his elder brother, Thomas held the title for 21 years with the Romanist James II upon the throne found favour and all went well with him for a time and families who had so long been in the shade, now basked openly in the sunshine of Court favour. In 1685 however, Charles II’s illegitimate son the duke of Monmouth stirred West Country Protestant Whigs (mainly yeoman labourers) into revolt against James II who openly attempted to restore Catholicism and create an almost absolute state.

After defeating and executing Monmouth and purging opponents in Judge Jeffries trials, James II appointed Catholic gentry to high office for example during the year 1688 Thomas was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Essex and ‘Custos Rotulorum’.

This pleasant change quickly passed. The king was feared and hated by a mainly Protestant nation, and James, having more zeal than discretion, forced the pace too much, he finally fled to France, leaving the crown to his daughter Mary and his nephew William of Orange. When James’s supporters found themselves in little favour at the Court, with this wave of anti-Catholic feeling after 1688, Thomas was forced to resign when the militia refused to serve a Catholic. His second cousin, Father Edward Petre, became advisor and confidant to James II Edward was universally hated and reviled by the populace. Scurrilous rumours about him abounded, not least that he was the father of the Queen’s son, and, for years after his fall in 1688, it was his effigy rather than that of Guy Fawkes that crowned the London bonfires on 5th November. Edward died on 4th June 1707.

In the printed transcript of State Papers, Domestic, is the following letter.

However there is no other record of Thomas being at that time in the Tower. The original manuscript read ‘Ld Pet:’ which probably should be transcribed Peterborough, for the Earl of Peterborough was undoubtedly a prisoner in the Tower at that time. However, a great many people were arrested about that time for plots and supposed plots, but it is difficult to find their names.

Much of the vast revenues from the Petre estates was sent abroad to help maintain those institutions in the Low Countries, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and elsewhere where the lists of alumni in the various colleges, convents and institutions, of whom there were to be nearly a hundred and fifty, are studded with the names of this family. An extract from a Government Enquiry Commission that sat at the Angel and Crown Inn at Ilford on 25th September 1699, to draw up an account of “lands given over to superstitious uses in the County of Essex”.

It was deposed that in 1687, “Thomas Lord Petre had appeared before a Catholic Synod in London producing a deed in which was settled to the use of the English Jesuits of St. Omer’s and Douai an estate called West Honidon or Hordon Hall, a farm called Dunton Hill and an estate called East or Little Horndon, at total annual value of £1,020”.

Thomas married Mary ( – 04/06/1706), daughter of Sir Thomas Clifton, Bt of Lytham, Lancashire; and when he died on 10th January 1706 his only son Robert succeeded him, by which time the family had fully recovered in financial terms. He also had a daughter Mary Petre, (1693 – 1713). There is evidence that the black pearls were the subject of litigation between the 6th Lord Petre and his sister but their ultimate fate is unknown.