More about the Petres of Stanford Rivers

In the June 2015 edition of the High Country Journal, Martyn Lockwood wrote a summary of the Petre family’s association with Stanford Rivers. One paragraph refers to a dispute – which ended up in the Chancery court – between Lady Mary Petre and a farmer called William Keep over the custody of the young heir, John Petre. This article looks at the human story behind the legal facts.

The Petres were a well-known Essex landowning family based at Writtle Park and Ingatestone Hall. They remained staunch Roman Catholics throughout the religious turmoils of the 16th and 17th centuries. When William Petre – a younger son of the main branch – was given the manor of Stanford Rivers in 1628, he chose to live there with his wife Lucy in a mansion called Bellhouse. It appears on a map of 1777 about halfway between Murrells and the Old Rectory, approached by two avenues of trees, one leading to Murrells and the other down to the main road opposite the Woodman.
Sir William’s son, also William Petre (1666-1728), and his wife Penelope were so keen to support the Catholic cause that six of their daughters became nuns in France and Belgium, and two of their sons became Catholic priests, leaving the eldest, yet another William, as the heir, and the youngest, Edward, as the ‘spare’. The story of these two sons and both their families is one of romance, religion, kidnap and tragedy.

The Keeps and the Petres

In 1725, a yeoman farmer called William Keep leased the 211-acre farm and farmhouse of Stanford [Rivers] Hall from the old Lord Petre (the one with all the nuns and priests as children), at an annual rent of £130. Several of the farm buildings, it was later alleged, were 'out of repair' due to neglect. The main barn in particular was said to have been 'ruinous and…ought to be pulled down'. Lord Petre had promised to rebuild it but never actually did. It wasn't that the estate was short of money, because three years earlier Lord Petre's eldest son William had married a wealthy heiress, Lady Mary Tudor Radcliffe, daughter of the Earl of Derwentwater. She had brought with her a dowry of no less than £4,000. In 1728, the old Lord Petre died and William inherited, but for some reason his much younger brother Edward, though only 23, was appointed as their father's executor. Sir William and Lady Mary had two children, a girl and a boy, but both died young and there seem to have been no further pregnancies. This was always worrying for landowning families, who wanted to ensure the succession. Hopes were resting on Edward, the only brother who wasn't a celibate priest, to marry a good Catholic girl and produce at least one healthy son.

Edward and Sarah

In November 1735 Edward married Sarah Keep. This ought to have been a cause for family celebration, but it probably wasn't – the young bride was one of the three daughters of their grumbling tenant farmer William Keep of Stanford Hall. Not only was she just a farmer's daughter, socially far below Edward, she was also a Protestant, not a Catholic – her father and grandfather had both been churchwardens of St Margaret’s. There was something of an age gap between Edward and Sarah. He was 30 and she had only just turned 19, but this was not necessarily unusual. The wedding took place in London by licence, at St Andrew's-by-the-Wardrobe, rather than locally. This would have avoided the need to call the banns in St Margaret’s. Did they secretly elope like Romeo and Juliet in a romantic love-match? Was it a shotgun wedding? Or both?

At some time in 1736 (the Petre records are uniquely silent on the exact date), Sarah gave birth to a son Edward, but he died as a baby. In July 1737 a healthy son John, the longed-for heir, was born, followed a year later by a daughter Sarah. The couple also had a fourth child Penelope, who died as a baby in 1742. That same year of 1742, more shockingly, their father Edward Petre died. He was only 37 and had made a very brief last-minute will: 'To my wife Sarah Petre all my estate whatsoever, except my silver watch which I give to William Keep of Stanford Hall, gent, and 3 guineas to my friend Frederick Hartcup.' He was described as 'Edward Petre of Chipping Ongar, gent'. They had evidently lived in Ongar during their brief time together, and Edward seems to have had some affection and respect for his father-in-law. He didn’t even mention any of his Bellhouse relations.

Sarah was supposed to execute his will but never actually did so and she died herself in January 1745, at just 28. The orphaned children, John and Sarah, were placed in the guardianship of their grandfather William Keep. Later that same year their childless uncle, Sir William Petre of Bellhouse, also died, leaving the eight-year-old John as heir to the title and the Bellhouse estates. John thus became his own grandfather's landlord.

Lady Mary v William Keep

The widowed Lady Mary was definitely not a woman to allow the next Lord Petre and his sister to be brought up in a mere farmhouse by Protestants whom she despised. So she 'got into possession and secreted' young John, 'with intent to breed him up a Roman Catholic' according to the court case which followed. She was ordered by the court to disclose his whereabouts. She refused, saying that the Petre family was Roman Catholic and that William Keep was unable to keep John 'in the manner accustomed'. It emerged later that she had secretly sent John to the Catholic college in Douai. Sarah, however, had not been sent to France and was still with Lady Mary at Bellhouse. She was ordered to return Sarah to William Keep and receivers were appointed to administer the estate.

Nearly ten years later, when John would have been 18 or 19, William Keep pursued Lady Mary in Chancery again. He described himself as 'only a Farmer in the Country [who] rents part of…John Petre's estate', who paid his rent regularly and had been 'very much Incumbered by keeping his Granddaughter Sarah'. He had never been able to find out where John was, 'so as to get at the Custody of him, or to have any allowances' for his maintenance which he believed would have included an allowance for his sister's maintenance too. He complained at the cost of the hearing, the legal fees for passing the receiver's accounts, and ended by stating that it 'can't be discovered where John is concealed' and that he was 'supposed to be in some of the Popish Countrys'.

Obviously thoroughly disgruntled, William also complained about the cost of his farm buildings at Stanford Hall. He produced an affidavit from John Archer, a prosperous landowner from Coopersale, who confirmed the former ruinous state of the barn through neglect and the late Lord Petre's broken promise to rebuild it. He stated in 1755 that the barn had recently been wholly taken down and rebuilt, using the old materials. (The barn survives, converted to a house, and has the date 1752 carved on one of the main posts, confirming Mr Archer’s statement. Many of the timbers are visibly re-used.) Other buildings and fences had also been repaired where 'absolutely necessary', the total cost to Keep being £211 15s 2d, which Archer considered reasonable. The hard-pressed William Keep was evidently trying to recoup some of his costs from the Petre estate. The outcome of the case, though, is not known.

John and Frances

The following March Lady Mary died, leaving 'all the family pictures' at Bellhouse to her young nephew John. He must have returned from France around this time or soon after, because in early 1760 he married Frances Manby, daughter of a good Catholic family from South Weald and Pilgrims Hatch. Lady Mary’s scheme to ‘breed him up a Roman Catholic’ had worked. By then he was 22, so his grandfather's guardianship (with potential allowances) had lapsed. Poor old William Keep, by now 77 and a widower, died a few months later and was buried in Stanford Rivers churchyard. The parish register described him as a yeoman rather than a gentleman, as he was called by his son-in-law.

John and Frances had less than three years of married life together at Bellhouse, because at the age of 25 John also died, leaving a daughter Catherine but no male heir. The Bellhouse estate had to be administered by a steward or agent. John’s widow, Frances, his sister Sarah and his daughter Catherine were all entitled to draw generous sums from the estate, which often didn’t generate enough income to cover its costs. By 1819, mounting debts forced the later Petres to sell the Bellhouse estate to the Smiths of Suttons in Stapleford Tawney, and the mansion was pulled down in about 1840.

For nearly 200 years the Petre family and the Bellhouse estate had dominated Stanford Rivers, but falling in love with the ‘wrong’ girl and a series of early deaths eventually led this branch of the Petres, and its link with Stanford Rivers, to die out.