Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/105

 amount of public compassion was awakened. The remaining papist lords were brought before the court of king's bench by writ of habeas corpus on 12 Feb. 1683–4, when the judges asserted that the prisoners ought long ago to have been admitted to bail. Petre was buried among his ancestors at Ingatestone on 10 Jan. 1683–4. There is a portrait at Thorndon Hall, Essex.

By his first wife, Elizabeth (d. 1665), daughter of John Savage, second earl Rivers, Petre had no issue; by his second wife, Bridget (d. 1695), daughter of John Pincheon of Writtle, he had an only daughter, Mary, who was born in Covent Garden on 25 March 1679, married, on 14 April 1696, George Heneage of Hainton in Lincolnshire, and died on 4 June 1704. The first lady was probably the ‘Lady Peters’ slightingly referred to by Pepys (April 1664) as ‘impudent,’ ‘lewd,’ and a ‘drunken jade.’ The peerage descended in succession to his brothers John (1629–1684) and Thomas, and the latter, who died on 10 Jan. 1706, left by his wife Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Clifton of Lytham, Lancashire, an only son, Robert, seventh lord Petre. It was this baron who in 1711, being then only twenty, and very ‘little’ for his age, in a freak of gallantry cut off a lock of hair from the head of a celebrated beauty, his distant kinswoman, Arabella Fermor. It was to compose the feud that sprang from this sacrilegious act that Pope wrote his ‘Rape of the Lock,’ first published in ‘Lintot's Miscellany’ in May 1712. Lord Petre married, on 1 March 1712, not Miss Fermor—who about 1716 became the wife of Francis Perkins of Ufton Court, near Reading, and died in 1738—but a great Lancashire heiress named Catherine Walmesley, by whom, upon his premature death on 22 March 1713, he left a posthumous son, Robert James, eighth lord Petre. The eighth lord married, on 2 May 1732, Anne, only daughter of James Radcliffe, the unfortunate earl of Derwentwater [q. v.] (Pope's Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, v. 96;, Anecdotes).

[The Declaration of the Lord Petre upon his death, touching the Popish Plot, in a letter to his Most Sacred Majestie, 1683 (this letter is reprinted in Somers Tracts, viii. 121); Observations on a Paper entitled The Declaration of Lord Petre; Howard's Roman Catholic Families of England, pt. i. p. 8; G. E. C[okayne]'s Peerage, vi. 247; Collins's Peerage, vii. 36; Lingard's Hist. ix. 181, x. 47; Morant's Essex; Evelyn's Diary; Luttrell's Relation, vol. i.] 

PETRIE, ALEXANDER (1594?–1662), Scottish divine, born about 1594, was third son of Alexander Petrie, merchant and burgess of Montrose. He studied at the university of St. Andrews, and graduated M.A. in 1615. From 1620 to 1630 he was master of the grammar school of Montrose. Having received a presentation to the parish of Rhynd, Perthshire, from Charles I, he was ordained by Archbishop Spotiswood in July 1632, and inducted to the charge by the presbytery of Perth. Petrie joined heartily in the covenanting movement, and was in 1638 a member of the general assembly held at Glasgow which overthrew episcopacy. In several subsequent assemblies he took an active part as a member of committees.

In 1642 a Scottish church was founded in Rotterdam for Scottish merchants, soldiers, and sailors, and Petrie was selected as the first minister by the presbytery of Edinburgh. He was approved by the general assembly, and was inducted by the classis or presbytery of Rotterdam on 30 Aug. 1643. The salary was provided by the States-General and the city authorities, and the church formed part of the Dutch ecclesiastical establishment; but it was exempt from the use of the Dutch liturgical formularies, and was allowed to retain the Scottish usages. The introduction of puritan innovations in the church at Rotterdam soon afterwards caused much discord, as many of the members were warmly attached to the old forms prescribed in Knox's Liturgy. These difficulties were eventually overcome, mainly owing to Petrie's influence.

In 1644 Petrie published at Rotterdam a pamphlet entitled ‘Chiliasto Mastix, or the Prophecies in the Old and New Testament concerning the Kingdom of our Saviour Jesus Christ vindicated from the Misinterpretations of the Millenaries, and specially of Mr. [Robert] Maton [q. v.], in his book called “Israel's Redemption.”’ Maton's book had been taken up by the independents and baptists, and had been widely circulated among Petrie's flock, and this pamphlet was written as an antidote. In 1649 Petrie was employed in some of the negotiations with Charles II, who was then in Holland. During the later years of his life he devoted much time to the preparation of his great work, ‘A Compendious History of the Catholic Church from the year 600 until the year 1600, showing her Deformation and Reformation,’ &c., a folio volume published at the Hague by Adrian Black in 1662. The chief interest of the work, which displays considerable learning and research, lies in the fact that it contains copious extracts from the records of the early general assemblies of the church of Scotland, which were destroyed by fire in Edinburgh in 1701. Petrie died in September 1662. He was highly esteemed by his fellow-citizens and by the Dutch clergy, and the congregation largely increased during his ministry. There