William Petre, 2nd Baron Petre

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William Petre, 2nd Baron Petre (24 June 1575 – 5 May 1637), was undoubtedly a supporter of the Romish party, and from that time the family have been, in the main, adherents of Rome. He was educated at Oxford, and became M.P. for Essex and was knighted in 1603. He acceded to the title in 1613 but due to his uncompromising loyalty to the Old Faith, he was dismissed from the county Magistracy and he lost all other public offices.

From its position on the Harwich road, and proximity to London, Ingatestone Hall was a constant rendezvous and refuge for those disaffected to the Protestant religion or to the reigning sovereign, and secret guests must often have used the hiding place discovered at the Hall in 1855. It is very probable that some of the inns had similar places of concealment for these visitors, whom it would not always be safe to hide the Hall, for example the attic in the White Hart, the huge chimney block of the Eagle, behind the present billiard room, the present great cupboards of the Crown. Many of the houses about Fryerning Hall by the old chimneystacks, and for example Furze Hall might reveal similar ones if thoroughly explored. In any case we read:

13th July 1627. My Lord Petre’s son going over sea to Flanders with many letters, and two barrels of treasure, gold and silver, in a pink, is brought back and committed, and here it is said, that at his father’s house at Ingatestone in Essex divers great Papists had been in consultation about a fortnight and departed thence but on Saturday last.

It does not appear that the 2nd Baron got in to any trouble about the Papists who frequented Ingatestone. Possibly, by this time the Hall was used as a dower house, or a residence for the sons, as the 3rd Baron is described in 1638 by William Riley, Blue Mantle, as dying at West Thorndon, and being buried in an old vault appropriated to his family in the chancel of the Parish Church of Ingatestone.

He married Katherine Somerset ( – 1624) second daughter of Edward Somerset the 4th Earl of Worcester in a double ceremony with her sister Elizabeth who married Sir Henry Guilford. It is this event that is celebrated in Edmund Spenser’s poem, Prothalamion.

William, 2nd Baron, died in May 1637, and is buried in the same vault. The tomb, which he erected in the north chapel in memory of his parents, bears also, his own effigy and that of his wife and children, but the tablet over his head is still waiting for an inscription.

His daughter Elizabeth Petre (1597 – 1656) married William Sheldon of Beoley.

[edit] References

Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page

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