Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/100

 by Sunderland. Until he took his seat at the council board his elevation was kept a profound secret from every one save Sunderland, whose efforts to remove Rochester from the council he henceforth powerfully seconded. With Sunderland he also took an active part in ‘regulating’ the municipal corporations and revising the commission of the peace. In December he was appointed chief almoner, and he had an important voice in filling up the vacant fellowships at Magdalen College. During these proceedings the pope's nuncio D'Adda frequently had occasion to write to Rome of Petre's rashness and indiscretion, while he said, with perfect truth, that his appointment gave a very powerful handle against the king (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. App. p. 225, 10th Rep. App. v. p. 119). The proclamation which the king caused to be made in the ‘Gazette’ of 2 Jan. 1687–8, to the effect that the queen was with child, was the signal for a crop of the most scurrilous broadsides against the king's confessor; and when the young prince was born, on Trinity Sunday, it was plainly insinuated that Petre was the father. Many versions, however, represented him as merely being the medium of the transference of the child from the ‘miller's wife’ to the queen's bed. When the crisis came in November 1688, Petre resolutely adjured the king not to leave Westminster (, 9, 18, 22, 25 Nov.;, Lettres Historiques, November 1688). This was probably the best advice that Petre had ever tendered to his sovereign, but he was thought to speak from interested motives—it being well known that he was most obnoxious to the rabble, and that his life would not be worth a day's purchase if he were left behind at Whitehall. Petre took ample precautions to avert this contingency. The night before the king's departure he slept at St. James's, whence, making his exit next day by a secret passage, he escaped to Dover in disguise, and succeeded in reaching France before his master. He never saw James again. His rooms at Whitehall were occupied by Jeffreys for a short time after his flight; when Jeffreys himself decamped to Wapping, they were broken into by a protestant mob (cf. Twelve Bad Men, ed. Seccombe, p. 92). Petre spent the next year quietly at St. Omer, unheeding the torrent of abusive pamphlets and broadsides with which he was assailed. In December 1689 he was at Rome, but ‘not much lookt on there’ (, i. 616). In 1693 he was appointed rector of the college at St. Omer, where the enlightened attention that he paid to the health and cleanliness of the community made him highly valued (, Collections). In 1697 he was sent to Watten, where he died on 15 May 1699. His voluminous correspondence was transferred from St. Omer to Bruges, where it was unfortunately lost during the suppression of the jesuits by the Austrian government in October 1773. A few of his letters, however, are preserved among Lord Braye's papers at Stamford Hall, Rugby (Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. App. vi. p. 124). The abiding hatred with which he was regarded by the London mob was shown by the burning in effigy to which he was submitted on Guy Fawkes day and Queen Elizabeth's birthday until the close of Anne's reign.

There is no contemporary likeness of Petre (excepting caricatures); an imaginary portrait is given a conspicuous position in E. M. Ward's well-known picture in the National Gallery, ‘James II receiving the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange.’ Satirical portraits are affixed to numerous broadsides. Of those in the British Museum the following are characteristic: 1. Petre as man-midwife, 10 June 1688 (, Cat. i. No. 1156). 2. Petre sitting by a cradle explaining to the miller's wife that the Society of Jesus must have an heir (ib. No. 1158). 3. Petre nursing the infant on board the yacht upon which the queen and her child embarked in their flight. 4. Petre as a conjuror with a satchel of ‘Hokus Pokus’ slung round his neck (ib. No. 1235). In an elaborate caricature entitled ‘England's Memorial’ (1689) the jesuit is depicted as ‘Lassciveous Peters.’ His flight from Whitehall is also illustrated by numerous medals. The portrait prefixed to the scandalous ‘History of Petre's Amorous Intrigues’ is of course unauthentic.

Petre's younger brother Charles (1644–1712) was also educated as a jesuit at St. Omer, and was attached to the English mission; he was included among Oates's intended victims, but succeeded in evading arrest. He was favoured by James II, and fled from Whitehall shortly after his brother in November 1688. He was arrested at Dover, but was soon liberated, and subsequently held various offices at St. Omer, where he died on 18 Jan. 1712.

[Foley's Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, v. 372, vii. 590; Oliver's Collections, 1848, p. 164; Dodd's Church Hist.; D'Orleans's Revolutions in England, p. 304; Quadriennium Jacobi, 1689; Higgons's Short View of English History, p. 329; Macpherson's Original Papers, 1775; Burnet's Own Time; Eachard's Hist. of England, vol. ii.; Rapin's Hist. of England, vol. ii.; Ranke's Hist. of England, vol. v.; Macaulay's Hist. 1858, ii. 319; Lingard's Hist. of England, x. 61, 98, 128, 170;