William Petre, 13th Baron Petre
William Joseph Petre, 13th Baron Petre (26 February 1847 – 8 May 1893) was an English nobleman and priest (Monsignor) of the Roman Catholic Church.
He was the eldest son of William Bernard Petre, 12th Baron Petre and Mary Theresa Clifford (1823–1895).
His maternal grandparents were Charles Thomas Clifford and Theresa Constable-Maxwell. Theresa was a daughter of Charles Clifford, 6th Baron Clifford of Chudleigh and Eleanor Mary Arundell. Eleanor was a daughter of Henry Arundell, 8th Baron Arundell of Wardour and his wife Mary Christina Conquest.
Petre began studying for the priesthood in 1872, was ordained in 1874 and taught for a few years at Downside Abbey where he endowed a library (from which the works of Charles Dickens were banned) a cloister and a swimming pool. However he found the conventional Catholic education narrow and stultifying and resolved to open his own school.
William was in Holy Orders and Domestic Prelate to the Court of the Vatican. He was the author of several polemical pamphlets on the problem of Catholic Liberal Education, in which he appears to have taken a great interest; one pamphlet is highly critical of Jacques Offenbach whose music he claimed was intended "merely to satisfy the cravings of sensibilities fuddled by brandy and soda water”.
Largely from the sale of the family library, in the summer of 1877 he purchased Woburn Park, home of the wealthy Southcote family, 100–120 acres (0.40–0.49 km2) of mostly deer park-style landscape fronting briefly the River Thames, in Addlestone, Surrey, England and containing a commanding knoll above the end of the combined Bourne, a deep stream and its confluence. The wide knoll is Woburn Hill where Philip Southcote turned its farmhouse into a mansion in the early 18th century.
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