William Henry Francis, 11th Baron Petre (22 January 1793 – 3 July 1850) was an English nobleman, based in Essex. He was the first Baron Petre to take his seat in the House of Lords after the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.

Family

He was a son of Robert Edward Petre, 10th Baron Petre of Ingatestone Hall and Mary Bridget Howard. His mother was a sister of Bernard Howard, 12th Duke of Norfolk.

Horseman and hunter

Petre was a passionate horseman and maintained, and was master of, his own pack of foxhounds (1822–1839) known as the "Thorndon Hunt", from which the Essex Union Hunt subsequently developed. He also constructed a racecourse at Oxney Green, near Writtle. It is said that following the Battle of Waterloo, Petre acquired Marengo, the grey Arabian horse of Napoleon I of France

Keen on hunting he also created, at Thorndon Park, a mixed herd of up to 2,000 fallow deer and red deer which subsequently formed the basis not only of the present Brentwood, Essex herd but also the entire deer population of New Zealand.

Marriage and children

On 2 June 1815, Petre married his first wife Frances Charlotte Bedingfeld (19 April 1796 – 29 January 1822 Thorndon Hall), daughter of Sir Richard Bedingfeld, 5th Baronet and his wife Charlotte Georgiana Jerningham. Her maternal grandparents were Sir William Jerningham, 6th Baronet and Frances Dillon. The senior Frances was a daughter of Henry Dillon, 11th Viscount Dillon and Lady Charlotte Lee. The senior Charlotte was a daughter of George Lee, 2nd Earl of Lichfield and Frances Hales. The eldest Frances was a daughter of Sir John Hales, 4th Baronet.

Frances, nicknamed "Fanny", became a letter writer of brilliant vividness. They had four children. Frances died in childbirth.

William Bernard Petre, 12th Baron Petre (20 December 1817 – 4 July 1884).
Mary Agness Petre (1818 – 22 August 1886). Married James Alexander Douglas.
Henry William Petre (23 January 1820 – 3 December 1889). Member of the New Zealand Legislative Council and father of Francis Petre.
Charlotte Elizabeth Petre (29 January 1822 – 31 October 1903). Married her first cousin, Captain Charles Edward Petre. He was a son of Charles Berney Petre, a younger brother of the 11th Baron.

On 14 April 1823, Petre married his second wife Emma Agnes Howard (5 November 1803 – 10 February 1861 London). She was a daughter of Henry Howard of Corby Castle and his second wife Catherine Mary Neave. Her paternal grandparents were Philip Howard and Ann Witham. Philip was a son of Thomas Howard and Barbara Musgrave. Thomas was a son of William Howard and Jane Dalston. William was a son of Sir Francis Howard and Margeret Preston.

Sir Francis was a son of Lord William Howard and Elizabeth Dacre. His paternal grandparents were Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk and his second wife Margaret Audley. His maternal grandparents were Thomas Dacre, 4th Baron Dacre and Elizabeth Leyburne.

Petre and Emma had eight children, including;

Frederick Charles Edmund Petre (22 December 1824 – 18 June 1906).
Agnes Catherine Louisa Petre (29 January 1826 – 25 May 1891). Married Charles Clifford, 8th Baron Clifford of Chudleigh.
Arthur Charles Augustus Petre (29 March 1827 – 4 November 1882). Married Lady Katherine Howard, a daughter of William Howard, 4th Earl of Wicklow.
Edmund George Petre (23 June 1829 – 1 September 1889), father of Francis Loraine Petre, the military historian.
Albert Henry Petre (15 March 1832 – 5 April 1917). Married Katherine Elsie Clark, a daughter of William Robinson Clark.

Ginge Petre Charity

Restoration

On 29 September 1832, George Edward Last arrived at Ingatestone Hall in a post-chaise from St. Edmund's College, Ware to replace John Law, who had contracted cholera whilst visiting London earlier in the month. He took charge of the Ingatestone Mission, at that time one of seven in Essex, and one of his initial concerns was to restore the Ginge Petre Charity to its original Roman Catholic purpose.

Last achieved this in 1835, just six years after Catholic Emancipation, and was supported by William. A stern but benevolent figure, Lord Petre devoted much of his time to the welfare of his tenants in Essex, and was a generous benefactor of the Church in the county. With his encouragement, Last recovered the administration and became the priest-treasurer and governor of the restored charity. E. E. Wilde recalled his efforts in her Ingatestone and the Great Essex Road (1913):

Relocation

During the 1830s, whilst Last was working for the restoration of the charity, the construction of the railway began. As the railway neared Ingatestone, in 1838, the charity ground in Stock Lane was endangered. The railway company would require part of the property for the excavation of a cutting and some of the buildings would have to be pulled down.

A new site for the newly restored charity almshouses was thus required. The buildings in Stock Lane were sold to the railway company, although two cottages remain to this day next to the railway bridge in Stock Lane. Land was acquired adjoining the High Road in the village for new almshouses, and Lord Petre and Last also proposed to build a new public church nearby. However, because Last was engaged in raising funds for the new church at Brentwood, Essex, the Ingatestone church did not materialise until a century later.

The new almshouses in the village were built along three sides of a square, with a small chapel in the centre, facing the road. Twelve single-storey dwellings were constructed in Tudorbethan style of red and white brick, each with a living room, bedroom and scullery.

Administration

New sets of rules, founded upon the original ones of Sir William Petre, were drawn up. The 11th Lord Petre sealed them on 2 November 1840, witnessed by George Shaw and Joseph Coverdale, Lord Petre's land agent and the coroner for the district of Writtle, resident at Ingatestone Hall.

There were to be two male and five female residents provided for out of the restored charity, each in receipt of a small pension. In addition, there were to be two female and one male supernumeraries. However, the male pensioners were to lose their Freeholder status. The ten pensions from the Ginge Petre endowment were subsequently supplemented by a further two from the Thorndon estate, drawn from a sum bequeathed for that purpose by Lady Emma Petre (1803–1861), the second wife of the 11th Baron. Another endowment, £50 from Miss Hannah Raynor (died 1806) was paid from Thorndon too.

Lord Petre financed his own contribution to the reconstruction and maintenance of the restored almshouses from private sources and from the sum received in compensation from the railway company. The latter body also contributed £965 towards the new almshouses, with £360 of the principal compensatory sum added thereto.

The Ginge Petre Charity was registered with the Charity Commission as a body corporate, comprising Lord Petre, the Priest-Treasurer and Governor (viz. Last) and the seven statutory pensioners. The beneficiaries of the charity were to be baptised and practising Catholics. Lord Petre was to appoint the pensioners himself, on the recommendation of the Priest-Governor. Preference was given to applicants residing in parishes upon the Petre estates, if suitable. They were to be either unmarried or widowed, above the age of 40, and content to live chaste lives. Pensioners were liable to dismissal for bad behaviour. Moreover, religious observance was required: the pensioners were to attend all the services held in their own chapel.

Last’s notebooks from the 1850s and 1860s indicate that he celebrated Mass there once each week. The pensioners (or "inmates" as they were often referred to) were also required to say their prayers upon rising and retiring, and to care for each other when sick –a duty that a future incumbent of Ingatestone, Roderick Grant (1860–1934), feared was "sometimes more honoured in the breach than the observance".

The pensioners were forbidden visitors overnight except in the case of illness. The able-bodied pensioners were to recite prayers after each Mass for the repose of the soul of deceased benefactors. The priest-treasurer and governor, in addition to being expected to celebrate Mass in the Alms Row chapel at least once monthly, was also required to supervise the keeping of the charity rules by the pensioners. He was also to pay the latter their monthly allowance of 5s (later raised to the original sum of 6s 8d), their annual wood allowance of 24s, and a sum of 12s for their livery. Last's account books are now kept amongst the Petre archives in the Essex Record Office. They provide a detailed insight into the administration of the charity.

Together with the appointed pensioners, the governor was to be the absolute owner of the charity land and property, with Lord Petre as patron, reserving to himself and his heirs the right to make new rules for the government of the foundation, or to alter or amend existing regulations. For administrative purposes, there was also to be an annual meeting of the charity, which all the pensioners were to attend. At this meeting leases were to be taken out or renewed, the rules were to be read, and the accounts were to be produced for examination, endorsement and sealing.

Railways

It was during William's lifetime that the railways developed and he proved a stubborn negotiator in his dealings with the Eastern Counties Railway over the Brentwood to Chelmsford stretch of line. During the 1830s, plans were drawn up for the construction of a railway line eastwards from London through Essex. The new railway proposals required Parliamentary approval, but encountered strong objections, and claims for compensation, from Lord Petre, a major landowner along the projected route.

In the House of Lords, he resisted the Act of Parliament the Company needed to precede until they agreed to pay him six times the compensation originally offered. Lord Petre feared that the railway would divide his estates, passing as it would through Ingatestone itself. He suggested that the line should pass further northwards, nearer to Writtle. He also expressed concern with regard to the effects of the inevitable influx of railway navvies: the latter, many of them from Ireland, had a fearsome reputation, and Essex, as yet, without a modern police force. A legal dispute ensued, but Lord Petre eventually withdrew his opposition to the planned route. Royal Assent was granted to the Eastern Counties Railway Company's bill.

However, a fresh dispute began as Lord Petre protested at the inadequate sum awarded to him as compensation for the loss of agricultural land. Construction workers were ordered from his estates. Lord Petre sought a sum of £20,000 for the land required by the railway company, and a payment of a further £100,000 in compensation. The Eastern Counties Railway Company protested at the latter claim, insisting that a panel of surveyors had considered £20,000 a fair total (over £1 million today). The dispute persisted, but after a period of deadlock, Lord Petre won his case and the railway company paid him six times the compensation originally offered. The money was invested in an agricultural estate in the Dengie Peninsula but with the onset of the agricultural depression of the 1880s, the investment proved disastrous.

The construction from London eastwards began in 1838, but it became apparent the Charity ground in Stock Lane was endangered, as the railway company would require part of the property for the excavation of a cutting. Some of the buildings would have to be pulled down, the original almshouses were then moved and it was here that the first station at Ingatestone was situated, approached from the road by a flight of steps. The Brentwood to Chelmsford section of the railway was completed by 1841. The line eventually reached Colchester in 1843.

Colonization

William had 12 children and 56 grandchildren. His two eldest sons alone (William and Henry) had 29 children between them. He was a strong supporter of overseas colonisation – he was wont to say that, with so many children, he could not be otherwise. Frederick and three of his brothers went to the United States while their elder brother, Henry, joined the first expedition of settlers to New Zealand. Henry's son, Francis Petre, was a leading architect who designed the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament (Christchurch, New Zealand).

Frederick Charles Edmund Petre (1824–1906) was William's 3rd son and Agnes Louisa Catherine Petre (1826–1891) who later became Lady Clifford was his third daughter. In addition, by his second wife, he had Edmund George Petre, (1829–1889). In 1845, Mary Agnes Petre (1816 – ) later married to Mr Douglas, took an inventory of the pictures at Thorndon Hall, the book is divided into a number of sections, each executed in a different style of illumination.

His tenth son, Edmund, was a stockbroker and the father of Francis Loraine Petre, an Indian Civil Servant. Upon retirement, F. Loraine Petre wrote several regimental histories, and five books on the Napoleonic Wars.

References

External links
His profile in Peerage.com

1793 births
1850 deaths
William
Fellows of the Royal Society
English Roman Catholics
11


Robert Edward Petre, 10th Baron Petre (3 September 1763 – 29 March 1809) was a British peer, the son of Robert Edward Petre, 9th Baron Petre (1742–1801) and his first wife, Anne Howard (1742–1787).

On 14 February 1786, in London, Lord Petre married Mary Bridget Howard (29 September 1767 – 30 May 1843), sister of the 12th Duke of Norfolk. They were the parents of seven children;

Maria Juliana Petre (c. 1787-27 January 1824)
Juliana Anne Petre (c. 1791-5 June 1862)
William Henry Francis Petre, 11th Baron Petre (22 January 1793 – 3 July 1850)
Charles Berney Petre (17 December 1794 – 18 June 1854)
Elizabeth Anne Mary Petre (c. 1797-4 March 1848)
Anna Maria Petre (c. 1800 - 14 October 1864)
Arabella Petre (c. 1802-24 June 1886); became a nun

By the beginning of the 19th century, the Rector was paying the pensioners of the almshouses 6s 8d each month (about £13 today), £1 annually for the purchase of firewood, and 12s each year for the stipulated livery of the Charity. At Christmas, the 20 deserving souls each received 6s 8d, and the 40 at Easter, 13s 4d.

Philip Southcott Esq. had purchased Woburn Farm, alias Cocks lands, consisting of about , in 1735 from a Mrs. Hornby. He was the first person to develop the idea of a combined ornamented farm and garden. The property lies on the two sides of a hill, and on a flat at the foot of it. The brow of the hill commands two prospects; the one over a fertile plain watered by the Thames and broken by St. Ann's Hill and Windsor Castle, a large mead below spreading to the banks of the river. The other view is more wooded, and from this, the bold arch of Walton Bridge is a conspicuous object equally singular and noble. When Mr. Southcote died in 1758, without issue, he gave this place to his lady. By her will, dated 25 April 1771, she devised her seat, consisting of a 'capital messuage', large garden, and an ornamented farm used therewith, then in her own occupation, to Thomas Berney Bramston and John Maire Esq., on trust to settle the same on her esteemed friend and kinsman Robert Edward lord Petre for life, and thence to heirs male. She died in 1783 and the trustees made the settlement as directed.

References

1763 births
1809 deaths
Robert
10


The TUM Institute for Advanced Study (TUM-IAS) is a scientific institution of the Technische Universität München, conducting research in science, engineering and humanities. Its building is located on its Garching campus.

Projects
The projects are from various fields of research ranging from science and engineering to the humanities. The institute is also supporting the International Expert Group on Earth System Preservation (IESP).

History
In June 2005, the German federal and state governments agreed on an initiative to promote top-level research in Germany. As a result of extensive evaluation the Technische Universität München was awarded the "elite-status". The TUM Institute for Advanced Study was the core for the concept of this competition. It includes engineering, sciences, industry research and reaches out to the humanities.

External links

Technical University of Munich
Research institutes in Germany


Robert Edward Petre, 9th Baron Petre (March 1742 – July 1801) was a British peer and prominent member of the English Roman Catholic nobility. He hailed from an extraordinarily affluent family and devoted himself to philanthropic endeavors. Lord Petre played a crucial role in commissioning James Paine to design a new Thorndon Hall as well as a house in Mayfair.

Early life
Lord Petre was born in Ingatestone Hall, about five months prior to the death of his father, who succumbed to smallpox at the age of 29. He was the son of Robert James Petre, 8th Baron Petre (1713–1742), a renowned horticulturist, and Lady Henrietta Anna Mary Barbara Radclyffe. His mother was his guardian until she died in 1760.

His maternal grandfather was James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, who was the grandson of King Charles II through his mistress Moll Davis.

Lord Petre inherited an exceptional amount of wealth and influence. Although claims of being one of the twelve richest men in the Kingdom may be exaggerated, his estates were undeniably extensive. His ancestor, Sir William Petre, had acquired approximately , primarily in Essex and the West Country. This land was further expanded by Sir William's son, John, who added a further . Lord Petre's grandmother, Catherine Walmesley, inherited her family's large estates in Lancashire and Surrey, which were reputed to be worth £7,000 per annum at the time of her marriage.

There is a lack of personal writings and correspondence in the Petre family archive and so it is difficult to form a rounded impression of the man; legend has it that, in later life, he himself destroyed many of his personal papers. They bore witness to the acrimonious disputes which he was to have with the Roman Catholic hierarchy and which, in retrospect, he came to deeply regret. It is clear he was no great intellect; one now anonymous commentator is particularly unkind.

His literary equipment fell short even of the moderate standard then expected of a nobleman and his generous patronage of men of letters and art seems to have been dictated by other considerations than intellectual sympathy.

On the other hand, as Charles Butler, lawyer and Secretary of the Catholic Committee of which Robert was chairman, wrote in his obituary, "All his actions were distinguished by rectitude, openness and dignity". Indeed, from the events of his life emerges a picture of a man of great energy, determination and perseverance with a keen sense of patriotism and duty.

Robert's dogged resolve may well have sprung from a stoicism in face of adversity learnt from those under whose tutelage he was brought up, if it is not too extravagant so to characterize an environment as privileged as his. Not only did his mother lose her husband only months after Robert's birth but both her father and her uncle, executed for their parts in the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745 respectively, and also her brother, killed in a riding accident, had died prematurely. Robert's grandmother, the redoubtable Catherine Walmsley, was also no stranger to tragedy. Both her parents had died by the time she was four and, during the following nine years, her brother and her two sisters succumbed. She had married the 7th Lord Petre but, a year later, he too died of small-Pox, and she was left, at the age of barely 15, a widow with an infant son. She subsequently married Charles, Lord Storton but, when he died in 1753, she became a widow for the second time.

As mentioned above within a few months of Robert's birth, his father died of smallpox at the age of 29 and so Robert succeeded as the 9th Lord Petre. As a minor, he remained, of course, under the guardianship of his mother and it was only as a result of her death in 1760 that he was permitted to take over his estates at the age of eighteen.

Some additions were made to the original Ginge Petre Charity endowment: for example, a further £48 was settled in 1778 from various properties in the area. Chapman and Andre's Atlas of Essex (1777) shows the almshouses as "the Workhouse", and this seems to have been one of their functions, at least until the 1830s.

Robert also devoted himself to a number of other enterprises. He made annual charitable donations of £500, chiefly to Roman Catholic priests and religious orders both in England and on the Continent. He was the first Chairman of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation, which was responsible for building the canal connecting Chelmsford to the sea near Maldon. He was a loyal and patriotic man, for at the end of the century, when we were at war with France, he raised a company of volunteers from the districts of Ingatestone, Brentwood, and Billericay; the banners of these volunteers were still hanging in Ingatestone Church in 1848.

Catholic emancipation

Robert was a leading figure in the movement for Catholic emancipation, for example, Dr. Alexander Geddes (1737–1802) protégé of Robert, was a Catholic theologian, writer and scholar who was an honorary graduate of the University of Aberdeen and an early Roman Catholic pioneer of biblical criticism and originator of the "fragment hypothesis" of the composition of the Pentateuch.
Between the accession of Elizabeth I and the early years of the reign of George I, thirty separate statutes that either forbade Roman Catholics the practice of their religion or deprived them of their rights and freedoms had been enacted. It is true that, by this time, the emphasis had changed; Roman Catholics could at least adhere to their beliefs and even worship discreetly without undue risk to their life or liberty but the legislation, particularly to exclude them from any public office or profession, was still in place and Roman Catholics remained effectively second-class citizens. How it was that at least some 'treacherous' Roman Catholics were left relatively unmolested by the draconian legislation laid against them cannot be considered in detail here, but the Petre family was not unique in this respect. In fact, Mark Bence-Jones, in his recent book The Catholic Families, even goes so far as to suggest that the effects of the Penal Laws were not entirely disadvantageous to the Roman Catholic gentry. Barred as they were from all public office, they were at least spared the risks associated with such ambitions – the heavy cost of 'electioneering expenses' (or, bluntly, bribes) and the dire consequences of a fall from favour – and could concentrate their energies on the management of their estates, which accordingly prospered.

The principal factor, however, which, over the years, helped to protect some Roman Catholic families from the worst effects of the legislation was the simple matter of the personal loyalty and support extended to them by their local community, even by those who might particularly have been expected to point an accusing finger. Indeed, in some places under the patronage of Roman Catholic gentry, there had been an increase in the number of their co-religionists; in the 27 parishes between Brentwood and Chelmsford that were under the aegis of the Petre and the Roman Catholic Wrights of Kelvedon Hall, the population of Roman Catholics rose from 106 in 1625 to 202 in 1706. Even among the common people, loyalty to Rome was not entirely extinct; a national census of 1767 identifies, out of a total population of seven to eight million, 67,916 Roman Catholics, and there is good reason to suppose that this was a considerable underestimate.

Many did defect, of course, but, at the time of the first Relief Act (1778), there were still eight peers, nineteen baronets and 150 gentlemen of substantial property who remained Roman Catholics. In 1766, Thomas Newman, the Vicar of West Horndon, in whose parish Thorndon Hall lay, was required by the Bishop of London to respond to a questionnaire on the number of Roman Catholics in his parish. He reported:

The truth of the matter was that Thorndon Hall contained a private chapel consecrated by Robert's cousin, Bishop Benjamin Petre in 1739, and the Visitation of Essex conducted by the Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Challoner in 1754 discovered a congregation of 260 there: indeed, in that year alone, 41 had received the sacrament of Confirmation.

Accordingly, restoring to Roman Catholics their rights and liberties, as citizens became Robert's mission. There were very real obstacles to overcome. The continued existence of the Penal Laws was not just a result of bigotry and intolerance. It was years since any supposed heresy or blasphemy in Roman Catholic dogma or liturgy had been an issue but the question of the nature and extent of the allegiance that Roman Catholics owed to the Pope and his temporal ‘power over princes’ was another matter. There were a number of venerable constitutional precedents to suggest that the English throne did indeed lie within the gift of the Pope – King John had ‘ransomed’ his crown from the Holy See for one thousand marks – and, even if that were not the case, it was widely perceived that, such was the moral authority of the Pope over his flock, that, if he was to command them to dethrone a heretic ruler, they would be obliged to obey. Moreover, any promise a Roman Catholic might make to the contrary would be null and void since it was no sin to break faith with a heretic. Such a perception was perfectly justified for it was in those very terms that Pius V had issued his Bull of Excommunication against Elizabeth I, declaring that she was.

The Vatican had slightly modified but never withdrawn this Bull. The task of Robert and his fellow Roman Catholics was, therefore, to find a way of persuading his sceptical compatriots that they did not recognise the authority of the Pope in temporal matters and that, whatever Rome might say, their allegiance to King George was unequivocal. As late as 1771, Bishop James Talbot appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey charged with "exercising the functions of a Popish bishop", albeit the authorities regarded the trial with some embarrassment. Even if, in practice, the laws were no more than an inconvenience, they were a source of great distress and frustration to one with Robert's sense of patriotic duty. It was for that reason that, in 1771, Robert became a Freemason. Not only did this give him access to many influential figures in the Protestant Establishment but it was, in itself, a snub to the authority of Rome. As recently as 1738, Pope Clement XII had issued a Bull excommunicating Catholics who took part in Freemasonry, a judgment reiterated by his successor, Benedict XIV, in 1751. By a quirk of Canon Law, Robert's apparent defiance of these rulings was only a gesture. Since there was then no official Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, the Bulls could not be formally proclaimed and were not therefore binding. Nevertheless, it was a gesture that was evidently much appreciated; only a year after joining the brotherhood, in 1776, he was elected Grand Master, a position that he held until 1777.

The most practical contribution that Robert made to the cause of Catholic Emancipation was his chairmanship of the two successive committees of Roman Catholic laymen formed to lobby the government and negotiate means by which the disabilities enshrined in the Penal Laws might be swept away. It fell to Robert to take the role as senior Roman Catholic layman in this way since, of the two Roman Catholic noblemen who outranked him, Charles Howard, 10th Duke of Norfolk was a scholarly recluse who rarely left his garden at Greystoke Castle in Cumberland and the 14th Earl of Shrewsbury also had no taste for public life – even though two of the four Apostolic Vicars who administered the Church in England were his brothers.

The Committee had also to overcome considerable opposition and obstruction from their own clergy. Some, like the mild and gentle Bishop Charles Walmesley, Vicar Apostolic of the Western District, had been so horrified by the ferocity of the Gordon riots that they wanted their fellow Catholics to give up their demands rather than risk more violent persecution. Many other senior clergy, however, were opposed to the overtures that the Committee were making simply because they would brook no compromise as far as the Pope's authority in all matters including affairs of state. No doubt this 'Ultramontane' faction (so-called because they saw authority residing exclusively in Rome, 'beyond the mountains') accounted themselves sincere in this belief but it is hard to avoid the suspicion that it was equally their own authority to govern the lives of their flock which they saw at risk. At any rate, their quarrelsome and often inconsistent opposition came close to sabotaging the progress the Committee was making and exchanges between the two factions became increasingly acrimonious. The Bishops condemned the Committee for their "unwillingness to abandon any one of their own fond deceits"; the Committee responded that the Bishops' statements were 'impudent, arbitrary & unjust'.

It is not possible here to recount in detail the twists and turns of this debate. The Committee never won the argument conclusively – even as recently as 1955, the Roman Catholic historian, David Mathew, condemns the Committee as 'a closed corporation of the polite unenthusiastic Catholicism of the Thames Valley' but they were able to reassure Parliament sufficiently to permit the process of dismantling the Penal Laws to get under way.

In promoting the abolition of the Penal Laws, Robert's committee was in large part pushing at an open door as far as Parliament was concerned. The Whig opposition was very much in favour of Catholic Emancipation – Burke vociferously so – but the Tory administrations of Lord North and, later, Pitt were also guardedly sympathetic, albeit for entirely pragmatic reasons; they saw measures favouring the Roman Catholics both as means of stemming massive emigration from Ireland and also as an encouragement to the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Scottish Highlanders to enlist in the Army. The Press also largely supported the Committee's objectives and, indeed, when, eventually, legislation came before both Houses of Parliament, it was passed speedily and without opposition.

It is a convincing token of the acceptance that the State was now beginning to extend to Roman Catholics that, in 1778, George III chose to lodge at Thorndon for two days to carry out a review of the troops at Warley Barracks. This was an event of considerable significance since it was the first occasion on which the monarch had visited a Roman Catholic household since the Reformation. Robert had a set of Gilt wood Louis XV chairs specially made for this occasion, it is said that his daughters Julia Maria and Anna Catherine embroidered the upholstery. This visit culmination of his work for emancipation.

Robert and his Committee may have had little difficulty in enlisting the sympathy and support of the Government in their cause but there were two very real obstacles to overcome. In the first place, mistrust and intolerance of Roman Catholics was still widespread among at least some sections of the populace at large. In 1778, the First Relief Act passed through both Houses of Parliament without a Division. It was a modest measure that essentially only reversed the 1700 'Act for Further Preventing the Growth of Popery', but it did put an end to the prosecution of Roman Catholic clergy and removed the restrictions on Roman Catholics holding land. Some commentators have claimed that the frenzy of unrest that was fomented by Lord George Gordon in response to this Act was the most serious episode of public disorder ever seen in this country. To what extent it was a manifestation of genuine opposition to Roman Catholicism rather than an expression of general dissent is open to question – as Daniel Defoe wrote: ‘There are 40,000 stout fellows ready to fight to the death popery without knowing whether popery is a man or a horse’ – but it was undoubtedly serious. The rioters burnt down Robert's new house in Park Lane and a mob of three thousand marching on Thorndon were only diverted by the military at the last moment. The Government was understandably nervous granting concessions to the Roman Catholics that might further inflame the mob.

The Second Relief Act (1791) was more substantial; Roman Catholic chapels (as long as they had neither steeple nor bell) and schools were permitted but Roman Catholics continued to be barred from Parliament, the Bench or a Commission in the Army or Navy. In the early 1790s, with the French Wars looming, he raised and equipped the Ingatestone & Brentwood Volunteers, a militia of 250. It was his dearest wish that his son should take command of the company, but the King refused to waive the ban on Roman Catholics receiving commissions and so young Robert was obliged to enlist as a private.

It would nevertheless have been a disappointment to Robert that he did not live to see more far-reaching emancipation for Roman Catholics. The trend towards it had become irreversible but it was still a long time coming. It was over a quarter of a century later that the Emancipation Act of 1829 removed the bulk of the restrictions that continued to beset Roman Catholics. Even then, some survived. It was only in 1974 that it was formally enacted that a Roman Catholic may hold the office of Lord Chancellor and, to this day, it is only Roman Catholics who are barred, on religious grounds, from ascending the Throne.

Residences and renovations
Robert Petre's other great enterprise was the building of the new Thorndon Hall. His father, who was a distinguished plant collector, had embarked on an ambitious scheme to reconstruct the old 15th-century house and its park but his premature death in 1742 brought the unfinished work to a halt. During Robert's long minority, the house and park fell into neglect. In 1757, the house had been badly damaged by fire as a newspaper report of 16 August 1757 bears witness:

"Great Part of Lady Petre's House near Brentwood in Essex was burnt by the Lightning on Monday Night, which did a great deal of other damage in that neighbourhood, and was so violent that it greatly terrified several persons on the road."

The nurseries established by Robert's father contained, at his death, 219,925 plants. When the botanist, Peter Collinson, visited in 1762, he found a scene of desolation: the house was falling down, the nurseries overgrown and the stoves empty, apart from two date palms, a cactus and a few sickly shrubs. Fashion too had moved on apace since the 8th Lord had drawn up his plans; Horace Walpole, on a visit in 1754, found it "The Brobdingnag of bad taste". By the time Robert reached his majority, desperate measures were called for. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that it was 'folie de grandeur' as much as practical common sense that prompted Robert to commission James Paine, a favourite architect of the Roman Catholic community who had designed Wardour Castle for Lord Arundell and Worksop Manor for the 9th Duke of Norfolk, which, had it been finished, would have been one of the largest private houses in the land, to design a completely new house and Lancelot 'Capability' Brown to re-design the park. He demolished the old Thorndon Hall and built, in its stead, the grandiose Palladian mansion that we see today.

In 1764, with the family temporarily ensconced at their other principal residence, Ingatestone Hall, work began on the vast Palladian mansion, using materials salvaged from the old house. A central block, dominated by a hall,  square and lined by 18 columns, leading, via a grand staircase, to a lofty salon measuring  by , contained most of the reception rooms and, bedrooms including the 'State Rooms' and 'Cardinal's Room', His Lordship's study, Her Ladyship's boudoir, two drawing-rooms, the dining-room, the ballroom, the billiard room, the nurseries, the library, the strong room, the armoury and a theatre (a programme for a performance of The Rivals, given in 1792, survives). At each end of this main block stood an outlying wing, connected thereto by a quadrant gallery. The East wing contained the kitchens, laundry, and chapel while the West wing accommodated the extensive coach-houses and stables.

Building continued for six years at a cost that has been estimated at £250,000 (almost £22 million today) but, as the house was nearing completion, Robert further commissioned James Paine to design a house in Park Lane to replace the family's existing London residence in Curzon Street. This house was subsequently burnt down by the Gordon Rioters. Its design is included in James Paine's publication, Plans, Elevations & Sections of Noblemen's & Gentlemen's Houses 1767–1783.

The bare cost of building these houses was, of course, only part of the story. The expense of running such large establishments in a manner appropriate to their opulence was stupendous. Unfortunately, the only detailed household accounts which have survived date from the period just before the new houses were completed but a detailed study of these accounts made by Bishop Brian C. Foley reveals that, in 1760, Robert employed, in the Thorndon Hall household alone, 35 servants. In spite of the modest salaries involved (which ranged from £2 per annum for Elizabeth Summers, the under-nursery maid, to £40 per annum for Mr. Montier, the chef), the wage bill for the year amounted to the tidy sum of £473 18s. Moreover, it is likely that, once the new Thorndon Hall was complete, the roster of household staff would have been significantly increased; there are but three housemaids on the 1760 list, not enough for a house the size of the new Hall.

Although any attempt to translate olden-day sums of money into modern values is always a perilous game, it may be instructive, given the host of figures quoted above, to refer to a study by Robert Twigger of the House of Commons Library which, drawing on a number of sources, constructs an index of the purchasing power of the pound between 1750 and 1993. This suggests that, in 1773, one pound had the purchasing power of something over £72 today.

Personal life

Robert also brought an energetic enthusiasm to his family life and married well. His first wife, whom he married on 19 April 1762, was Anne Howard (29 August 1742 – 15 January 1787), a daughter and co-heiress of Philip Howard of Buckenham Tofts in Norfolk, younger brother of Edward Howard, 9th Duke of Norfolk (1686-1777). When the 9th Duke died without issue, his niece, Anne Howard, became co-heir with her sister Winifred Howard to various baronies, but not to the dukedom, which went to a distant male cousin.

The couple were both minors when they were married at the house of Hon. Thomas Howard in Golden Square, Soho, by Samuel Nicolls, the then Rector of St James's Church, Westminster.  Robert and Anne had four children;

 Robert Edward Petre, 10th Baron Petre (1763–1809), of Buckenham Tofts who married Mary Bridget Howard, sister of her husband's future stepmother and of Bernard Howard, 12th Duke of Norfolk, in 1786.
 George William Petre (1766–1797), who married Maria Howard, third daughter of Philip Howard of Corby Castle, in 1786. After his death in 1797, she married Col. Henry William Espinasse in 1802.
 Anne Catherine Petre (–1798), who married General Denzil Onslow of Staughton House, son of Middleton Onslow MP.
 Philip Howard (b. 1773)

Robert and Anne evidently held themselves aloof from politics and the Court, for at the time of the War of American Independence, when France was threatening to aid the Americans by invading Ireland, Horace Walpole noted that the Roman Catholics professed much loyalty, both in Ireland and England, and Lord and Lady Petre went to Court for the first time. Horace Walpole especially remarks on the visit of George III and Queen Charlotte to Lord Petre at Thorndon Hall, after a review of the troops on Warley Common on 19 October 1779.

Anne died in 1787, and Robert married again a year later, on 16 January 1788 in London. His second wife was Juliana Barbara Howard (25 June 1769 – 16 April 1833, London), sister of the future Bernard Howard, 12th Duke of Norfolk. Juliana was 19 years old, 27 years younger than Robert, and, indeed, Robert's son had himself married her older sister two years previously. Juliana and Lord Petre had three children:

 Julia Maria Petre (–1844), who married Sir Samuel Brooke-Pechell, 3rd Baronet.
 Catherine Anne Petre (–1830), who died unmarried.
 Edward Robert Petre (1794–1848), who served as a Member of Parliament for Ilchester and York and who married the Hon. Laura Maria Stafford-Jerningham (1811–1886), a daughter of George Stafford-Jerningham, 8th Baron Stafford.

There is also a suggestion of an extramarital affair. An American family who go by the name of Rumball-Petre claims to be descendants of an illegitimate liaison between Robert and an unnamed lady of quality. Thomas, the offspring of this union, was fostered, so the story goes, with George Rumball, one of Robert's tenants, and his descendants subsequently emigrated to America. There is some circumstantial evidence to substantiate the tale. A family called Rumball did indeed occupy Begrum's Farm, at Mountnessing, on the Petre estate of Ingatestone Hall in the 18th century and the supposed portrait of Thomas as a boy, which is in the possession of the Rumball-Petres, shows him far too richly costumed to be the son of a humble tenant farmer. Their prize exhibit is, however, a journal allegedly kept by the boy's mother. Unfortunately, this now survives only as a printed and obviously heavily edited version and so it is impossible to determine its authenticity; in particular, for reasons of supposed delicacy, all names referred to in the text have been excised. As a result, although the father of the lady's child is referred to as 'the Baron', there is little to identify him with Robert Petre, apart from the fact that one of the philosophical reflections in the journal is entitled 'Sans Dieu Rien', the Petre family motto. Indeed, it is only too likely that the whole thing is a flight of Victorian fancy; the lady herself is described as lodging in the household of 'the Old Earl' somewhere near Epping. As far as can be ascertained, there were no old Earls anywhere near Epping in the 18th century.
Examination of the Land Tax records for Begrum's shows that the Samuel family were in residence from at least 1792 until William Samuel's death in 1818. The MI of his tombstone in St. Giles, Mountnessing reads: Sacred to the memory of Mr William Samuel, late of Begrums Farm in this parish. His Will allowed two of his sons, James Samuel and Charles Samuel jointly to carry on work and manage his said two farms. These records show James in occupation of Charity lands until 1830. This was the description of his father's home from 1813 until he died. The first mention of Rumball living here was not until 1838 	Begrum's	Lord Petre Thos	Rumball	118.3.2	, confirmed by the 1841 census, Thomas was born about 1790, not in Essex, but if it is him still living in Mountnessing in 1851, then he was born in Oxburgh, Norfolk. By 1851 another family were in residence and the Rumballs never worked there again.

Death and funeral

Robert died on 2 July 1801. He departed this life as he had lived, in grand style. Accompanying the hearse were three divisions of the Ingatestone & Brentwood Volunteers, two companies of Pioneers, two Artillery field pieces and the band of the Royal Buckinghamshire Regiment together with thirty mutes and cloak men, Robert's tenants, two by two, the post-chaise and two carriages from the Thorndon stables, seven mourning coaches, each drawn by six horses, carrying members of the family, clergy and household and a host of outriders, grooms and other mourners. The Chelmsford Chronicle reported the funeral procession on Friday 10 July 1801 thus;

On Thursday Evening the 2d Inst died the Right Honble Lord Petre, Baron of Writtle, in the County of Essex in the 60th year of his age – and yesterday his remains were conveyed to the Family vault, at Ingatestone, for interment attended by his numerous relatives, friends, and tenants, and accompanied by the Corps of Volunteers and Pioneers, which he had raised and patronised in the most zealous and liberal manner for the defence of his Country when threatened by a foreign Invasion. The procession began from Thorndon Hall, between 11 & 12 o'clock in the following order: the two field pieces firing minute guns until the procession was through the park.

Two mutes as Conductors. Four Cloak men. State lid of Black Feathers. Tenants two by two. Two mutes as Conductors to Banner. Four cloak men. Great Banner. Two Cloak men. Two Banner Rolls. Two Cloak men. Two Banner Rolls. Two Cloak men. Two mutes as Conductors to the Military. Four Cloak men. Captain Forbes, on Horseback. First Company of Pioneers in File at double open order. Captain Mason on Horseback. Second Company of Pioneers, in file at double open order. Captain Vassar of the Artillery on Horseback.

Artillerymen in file at double open order with. Field piece. Field piece. Ammunition Wagon. Frugal Man. Major Havers on horseback. Third Division of Volunteers, in file at double open order. Lieutenant Woodgate in the Centre of the Rear file Second Division of Volunteers in file at double open order. Lieutenant Newman in the centre of the rear file. Lieutenant Manby in the centre of the 2nd Division supported by two Sergeants. First Division of Volunteers, in file in double open order. Captain Sidney in the centre of the rear file. Quarter Master Wright, on Horseback. Band of the Royal Bucks, in file, double open order. Two mutes as Conductors to State Horse. Four Horsemen with Cloaks. Mr Stewart, on the State Horse, covered with velvet, with coronet & Cushion. Hearse & Six Horses.

First mourning coach & six Supporter Containing Supporter. B. Havard Esq. LORD PETRE chief mourner G. Petre Esq.

Second mourning coach & six Containing Col. Howard – Col. Onslow and Thos. Heneage Esq.

Third mourning coach & six Containing Sir Francis Molyneux, Sir John Throckmorton, Captain Burch & Mr. Baker

Fourth mourning coach & six Supporter	Containing Supporter Revd J Newman Rev. J. Lewis Officiating minister and Rev. Mr. Newman senior. Revd T Newman

Fifth mourning coach & six Containing Revd. Mr. Julian, Revd. Mr. Crosby, Revd. Mr. Cole Revd. Mr. Maton, Revd. Mr. Fleury

Sixth mourning coach & six Containing Mr Tappin, House Steward, Mr. Fletcher Gentleman, Mr. Grey Butler, Mr. Smith Gardener

Late Lord Petre's coach & six horses & three footmen.Four grooms outriders.Lord Petre's post chaise & Four Horses.Two grooms outriders.Two carriages of the family.Mr Haver's carriage.Assistant Chief Steward, to his Lordship.Right Honourable Countess of Waldegrave.Thomas Wright Esq. John Manby Esq.- Gillum Esq. – Selby Esq.Miss Nightingale.Doctor Kirkland. Captain Forbes.John Lodge Esq. – Baker Esq.Brand Hollis Esq.

When within a mile of the place of interment, the field pieces being moved continued firing minute guns till the procession arrived at the church, where the Burial Service was performed in the most impressive and solemn manner, by the Rev. John Lewis, in the midst of the largest concourse of all classes of people, probably ever assembled on a like occasion, vying with each other in paying him the last tribute of respect and veneration. On the signal given that the body was deposited, three volleys were immediately fired by the field pieces of volunteers, over the grave of their much-valued and lamented founder & patron. The whole was conducted with the utmost precision and regularity & without the smallest interruption although the procession considerably exceeded a mile in length.

On 21 July, a solemn requiem high mass was offered in the chapel of the Elector of Bavaria in Warwick Street.

For the Petre family, at any rate, Robert's death marked the end of an era. His lifetime had been the apogee of the family fortunes and they were never again to aspire to such affluence. In a more general sense, too, his death was a watershed. The gathering pace of the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of an enfranchised middle class signalled the end of the comfortable paternalism of the squirearchy as focus, patron and protector of the community. This was particularly the case for Roman Catholics; it had been a feature of the Penal Times that ordinary Roman Catholics had clustered in communities where they could enjoy the patronage and protection of the Roman Catholic gentry but, now that the process of emancipation had begun, such patronage and protection was of less consequence and the Roman Catholic gentry lost much of their influence.

References

Further reading
Petre, M. D. (1928) The Ninth Lord Petre: or pioneers of Roman Catholic emancipation. London: S.P.C.K.

1742 births
1801 deaths
Robert
Fellows of the Royal Society
Grand Masters of the Premier Grand Lodge of England
Freemasons of the Premier Grand Lodge of England
9


Robert James Petre, 8th Baron Petre (3 June 1713 – 2 July 1742) was a renowned horticulturist and a British peer. Petre was responsible in the late 1730s for the layout of the gardens at Worksop Manor in Nottinghamshire. He was also responsible for the first extensive planting of North American trees in Great Britain. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A Caribbean genus of the verbena family was named for him.

Life
Lord Petre was the son of Robert Petre, 7th Baron Petre (1689–1713) and his wife Catherine Walmesley (1697 – 31 January 1785), heiress of the Walmesley family of Lancashire. Petre was born three months after his father's death and spent his childhood at Ingatestone Hall, instead of at Thorndon Hall, the family seat, as his grandmother was still in residence there. As a young man Petre went on a continental tour, returning in 1730.

Botany and horticulture

He developed an interest in botany and horticulture as a child, and by his teenage years was friends with some of the most eminent botanists, horticulturists and landscapers of the day, including; Philip Miller, keeper of the Chelsea Physic Garden, Philip Southcote, a leading pioneer of landscape design, and Peter Collinson, the Quaker haberdasher turned horticulturist who was to remain a lifelong friend and colleague. In 1727, when he was 14, he received, as a Christmas gift from Ralph Howard, one of his mother's suitors, a specially made pruning knife and saw, which, it is recorded, was "well taken".

Robert's interest in botany and horticulture was practical as well as academic. By 1729, it seems that, at least in part, he had taken over the management of his grandmother's gardens at Thorndon. The old lady herself evidently had a keen interest in horticulture, growing orange trees, 'jesamines' and myrtles in her greenhouses. In 1732 released from guardianship, his mother handed over to him by special permission the family estates. Now in complete control of Ingatestone and Thorndon halls, Robert was able to give full expression to his enthusiasms and immediately embarked on an ambitious plan to remodel both the house and the park, which had been held in trust for him since his father's death.

John Martin, visiting in 1729, was amazed by what he saw; he confessed he had never witnessed the like of the 'stoves' or hothouses and found in them some species that he, a professional botanist, had never seen before. The raising of exotic species from seed was a particular passion of the time, encouraged by the work of Philip Miller in developing the technique of using beds of tanner's bark to achieve safely and efficiently the high soil temperatures required and Robert had adopted the technique to spectacular effect. Writing to Carl Linnaeus some years later, Peter Collinson exclaims, "Such stoves the world never saw, nor may ever again".

The Great Stove, reputed to be the largest hothouse in the world, was fully  high and contained trees and shrubs 10 to  tall including specimens of guava, papaw, plantain, hibiscus, Hernandia (jack-in-a-box), ceroid cacti, sago palm, annatto (a red berry used for edible dye) and bamboo cane. The walls were hung with trellises covered with passion flowers, a wide variety of clematis and creeping cereus.

There were also two other stoves maintained at a slightly lower temperature for more temperate plants, a house  long exclusively for the cultivation of bananas and pineapples and another the same size for storing apples. From these stoves came the first camellia to flower in England and, in 1739, a gift of bananas sent to Sir Hans Sloane (along with "2 uncommon fowls of the widgeon kind").

Nonetheless, there were failures too; Robert was particularly fond of the white lilac and, on one occasion, culled sufficient seed to raise in his nursery 5,000 new plants. Unfortunately, the principles of plant genetics and cross-pollination were then little understood; all but twenty of them bore purple blossom.

Between 1740 and 1742, some 60,000 trees of at least 50 species were planted at Thorndon Hall. For the most part, these were arranged in mixed thickets, with dark green foliage contrasting with light green and blue-green with yellow-green, the whole set off by highlights of white bark or leaves with white undersides. This style of planting was not in itself a new idea but was made, in this case, particularly striking by the variety of effects achieved by the wide range of species including: acacias, Acer (Virginia), camphor tree, cedar (Lebanon), red cedar, cherry (Pennsylvanian), oak (Carolina), and tulip trees.

By 1762, however, Collinson, on a visit to Thorndon, found a scene of desolation: the house was falling down, the nurseries overgrown and the stoves empty, apart from two date palms, a cactus and a few sickly shrubs.

The redesign of the estate by his son swept away much of Lord Petre's work, only traces of the plantings, the two mounts adjacent to the present house and the ruins of the ziggurat by the old mill pond can be found today. The menagerie only survives in the name of Menagerie Plantation. Furthermore, Robert's impressive botanic library, including 17 folio volumes of dried specimens, were sold, together with the rest of the family library by the unworldly 13th lord and his mahogany cabinet with 20 drawers stuffed with botanic curiosities was turned into a wardrobe and the contents thrown away.

Marriage and issue
On 2 May 1732 at St Paul's Cathedral, Robert married Lady Henrietta Anna Mary Barbara Radcliffe (1716–1760), only daughter of the James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater and the former Anna Maria Webb. She was a great-granddaughter of Charles II and, his royal mistress, Moll Davis. The couple had four children;

 Lady Katherine Anne Petre (1736–1783), who married George Fieschi Heneage.
 Lady Barbara Petre (b. 1738), who married Thomas Giffard, 22nd of Chillington
 Lady Juliana Petre (1739–1772), who married Edward Weld of Lulworth Castle
 Robert Edward Petre, 9th Baron Petre (1742–1801), who married Anne Howard and, secondly, to Barbara Howard.

As a young couple, the parents took up residence at Thorndon Hall. Mary had her father's remains put in the mausoleum at Thorndon. There is no entry about the funeral in the register; Rector Ewer was then an old man, and there are only four burials entered for that year. Perhaps the burial was secret.

The sympathies of the Petre family may well have been with the old and young Pretenders, but it does not appear that they took any active part in the risings.

He had the bells of Ingrave Church cast at Ingatestone, and maintain four missions, at Thorndon, Ingatestone Hall, Writtle Park and Crondon Hall.

Death

Like his father, Lord Petre succumbed at an early age to smallpox. He died on 2 July 1742 at Ingatestone Hall, soon after his 29th birthday, and was buried in the family vault at Ingatestone. His son being but an infant, there was no one else to carry forward his plans for the estates, and his widow then resided at Ingatestone Hall, where she died in 1760. She is the last Dowager Lady Petre who has lived in the old family mansion. At his death, Robert's nurseries contained some 219,925 plants and his personal catalogue, now in the Passmore Edwards Museum, lists 696 species.

Accolades

When Robert was 18, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society – not in itself an exceptional honour since peers of the realm had an automatic right to membership but it is a mark of the esteem in which he was already held that his sponsor was John Martin, future professor of botany at Cambridge. Furthermore, less than two years later, a Caribbean genus of the verbena family, which the plant collector, Dr. William Houston had identified, was named Petrea in Robert's honour.

On his death, the following poem, signed by Janus the Younger (probably a pseudonym for Philip Southcote), appeared in the Daily Advertiser:

Less sentimentally, his friend, Peter Collinson wrote of Petre in 1744;

And on the fly leaf of his catalogue of the plants in Thorndon Garden is inscribed this tribute;

Lord Petre was commemorated in a stucco monument by the French sculptor Louis-Francois Roubiliac which was housed in the Temple of Death in the country garden of Jonathan Tyers, the proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens. The garden was at Denbies, near Dorking. The monument represented an angel blowing the last trump causing a stone pyramid to crumble to pieces and the corpse within it to throw aside the grave clothes and prepare to arise "with a mixture of joy and astonishment". The epitaph was written by Mr. Robson, tutor to Petre's children:

Over the door of the temple, were further verses written by Robson, warning the reader to prepare for death. Robson was Lord Petre's chaplain and tutor to his sons.

Notable accomplishments

 With the help of the American plant collector John Bartram (described by Linnaeus as "The greatest natural botanist in the world"), Lord Petre was responsible for the first extensive planting of North American trees in Great Britain. Robert engaged Bartram to send him regular consignments of seed from the New World at five guineas per box. He also used the Dutch botanist Jan Frederik Gronovius. The sixteen-volume florilegium compiled by Lord Petre – in large measure from the pressed examples sent by John Bartram starting in 1740 – can today be found in the Rare Book Collection at the California State Library/Sutro located on the sixth floor of the newly constructed (2012) San Francisco State University Library, San Francisco, CA (home of Sutro Library). The collection is in a remarkable state of conservation, having been restored (possibly under the direction of Lord Petre), and subsequently by the Sutro staff which has had the collection under its supervision for over 100 years.
 Lord Petre was responsible in the late 1730s for the layout of the gardens at Worksop Manor in Nottinghamshire for his kinsman Edward, 9th Duke of Norfolk (1686–1773). The plans extended over  and included some garden buildings, an obelisk, a hemicycle and a Palladian bridge. Robert, who had travelled extensively on the Continent, must have been acutely aware that the appearance of the house was quite out of tune with the classical influence of the day. Although the Renaissance was late coming to England, he must have taken to heart Count Lorenzo Magalotti's remarks about the house's "tendency rather to the gothic and the rustic than to any chaste style of architecture". Accordingly, in 1732, he engaged a Venetian architect, Giacomo Leoni, who worked in the style of Palladio and had done much to establish the classical style, and a French surveyor, Sieur Bourginion, to assist him with the design of the garden. The links between the Petre and Norfolk families endured. In 1763, the Duke of Norfolk stood as sponsor at the baptism of Hon Robert Edward Petre, eldest son of 9th Lord Petre. Joseph Spence wrote Petre "understood the colour of every tree, and always considered how he placed them one by another".

Notes

References
Douglas D. C. Chambers, "Painting with living pencils: Lord Petre," Garden History, vol. 19, no. 1 (1991).
Mark Laird, The Flowering of the Landscape Garden: English Pleasure Grounds 1720–1800. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1999. Especially, Chapter 1: "The Origins of Theatrical Planting" and Chapter 2: "The North American Influx: A Mania for Pines and Magnolias."

Bibliography
Elizabeth P. McLean, "A Preliminary Report on the 18th Century Herbarium of Robert James, Eighth Baron Petre," Bartonia, no. 50 (1984), p. 36–39.
Alfred E. Schuyler, and Ann Newbold, "Vascular Plants in Lord Petre's Herbarium Collected by John Bartram," Bartonia, no. 53 (1987), p. 41–43.
William R. Buck and Elizabeth P. McLean, "'Mosses' in Lord Petre's Herbarium Collected by John Bartram," Bartonia, no. 51 (1985), p. 17–33.

1713 births
1742 deaths
Robert
English horticulturists
Deaths from smallpox
Fellows of the Royal Society
8


Sun Air may refer to:

 Sun Air (South Africa), a defunct South African airline
 Sun Air (Sudan), an airline based in Khartoum, Sudan
 Sun Air Express, an American commuter airline
 Sun-Air of Scandinavia, a British Airways franchisee
 Sunair, a New Zealand airline
 Sun Air, former name of Pacific Sun (airline), an airline based in Nadi, Fiji


Robert Petre, 7th Baron Petre (1689 – 22 March 1713) was a British peer, the son of Thomas Petre, 6th Baron Petre (1633–1706) and his wife Mary Clifton, daughter of Sir Thomas Clifton. He succeeded to his title, at the age of 17, upon the death of his father.

Robert is said to have spurned wearing a wig in the conventional way, spending instead six hours every day dressing his own hair. He caused an uproar of indignation and outrage in the family when, in 1711, out of reckless mischief, the twenty-year-old cut off a lock of hair from the head of a celebrated beauty, his distant cousin, the sixteen-year-old Arabella Fermor, daughter of Henry Fermor of Tusmore, Oxfordshire.

The Rape of the Lock
Alexander Pope, a friend of the family, was prevailed upon to write one of his humorous heroic verses about the incident in the hope that laughter would defuse the situation. The result was The Rape of the Lock (first published in Lintot's Miscellany in May 1712), which was an enormous public success, selling 3,000 copies in four days. The first version of the poem, however, so lampooned all those involved that it upset the Petres even more and Arabella, flattered to be cast as a heroine by the distinguished Mr. Pope, is said to have become "very troublesome and conceited". She became the wife of Francis Perkins of Ufton Court, near Reading, Berkshire in about 1716 and died in 1738.

Personal life
It is known that Petre lived at Ingatestone Hall, but on the strength of his marriage on 1 March 1712, to Catherine Walmesley (1697 – 31 January 1785), an extremely rich Lancastrian heiress. Not long after, they acquired the manor of Dunkenhalgh.

Lord Petre intended to move back to Thorndon Hall, the family seat, but died of smallpox, at the age of 23, before doing so. His 16-year-old bride was 6 months pregnant. His son, Robert James Petre, 8th Baron Petre, was born three months after his death.

Notes

1689 births
1713 deaths
Robert
Deaths from smallpox
People from Ingatestone
Place of birth missing
7


Thomas Petre, 6th Baron Petre (1633–1706) was an English Catholic peer, the third son of Robert Petre, 3rd Baron Petre and Mary Brown. Inheriting the title from his elder brother, Petre held the title for 21 years.

Soon after Petre inherited his title, James II came to the throne. As both men were Catholics in a Protestant country, Petre soon found favour with the new King. His second cousin, Father Edward Petre, S.J., became advisor and confidant to James II. Edward was universally hated and reviled by the populace. In 1688, Thomas was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Essex and custos rotulorum for Essex. After James's flight in the Glorious Revolution, Petre was forced to resign when the militia refused to serve a Catholic.

After the Revolution, much of the vast revenues from the Petre estates were sent abroad to help maintain those institutions in continental Europe that provided education for Catholic Englishmen.

Thomas married Mary Clifton (died 1706), daughter of Sir Thomas Clifton, Bt of Lytham, Lancashire. He died on 10 January 1706, and was succeeded by his only son Robert, by which time the family had fully recovered financially. He also had a daughter Mary Petre, (1693–1713).

References

1633 births
1706 deaths
Thomas
Place of birth missing
6
Lord-Lieutenants of Essex


Six baronetcies have been held by the Grant family.

Colquhoun, later Grant baronets, of Grant (1625)
See Colquhoun baronets

Grant baronets, of Dalvey, Elgin (1688)

Created 10 August 1688, in the baronetage of Nova Scotia.

Sir James Grant, 1st Baronet, died 1695
Sir Ludovic Grant, 2nd Baronet, died 4 January 1701
Sir Sweton Grant, 3rd Baronet, died 1752
Sir Patrick Grant, 4th Baronet, born c. 1655, died 10 April 1755
Sir Alexander Grant, 5th Baronet (1705–1772), was member of parliament for Inverness (1761–1768)
Sir Ludovic Grant, 6th Baronet, died 17 September 1790
Sir Alexander Grant, 7th Baronet, born c. 1750, died 26 July 1825
Sir Alexander Cray Grant, 8th Baronet, born 30 November 1782, died 29 November 1854, was member of parliament for Tregony 1812–1818, Lostwithiel 1818–1826, Aldborough 1826–1830, Westbury 1830–1831 and Cambridge 1840 and again 1841–1843
Sir Robert Innes Grant, 9th Baronet, born 8 April 1794, died 1 August 1856
Sir Alexander Grant, 10th Baronet, born 23 September 1826, died 30 November 1884
Sir Ludovic James Grant, 11th Baronet, born 4 September 1862, died 11 February 1936
Sir Hamilton Grant, 12th Baronet, born 12 June 1872, died 23 January 1937
Sir Duncan Alexander Grant, 13th Baronet, born 16 December 1928, died 25 March 1961
Sir Patrick Alexander Benedict Grant, 14th Baronet, born 5 February 1953

Grant baronets, of Monymusk, Aberdeen (1705)

Created 7 December 1705, in the baronetage of Nova Scotia.
Sir Francis Grant, 1st Baronet, born 1658, died 23 March 1726
Sir Archibald Grant, 2nd Baronet, born 25 September 1696, died 17 September 1778, was member of parliament for Aberdeenshire 1722–1732
Sir Archibald Grant, 3rd Baronet, born 17 February 1731, died 30 September 1796
Sir Archibald Grant, 4th Baronet, born 7 May 1760, died 17 April 1820
Sir James Grant, 5th Baronet, born 17 February 1791, died 30 August 1859
Sir Isaac Grant, 6th Baronet, born 5 July 1792, died 19 July 1863
Sir Archibald Grant, 7th Baronet, born 21 September 1823, died 5 September 1884
Sir Francis William Grant, 8th Baronet, born 10 February 1828, died 13 December 1887
Sir Arthur Henry Grant, 9th Baronet, born 24 April 1849, died 1 March 1917
Sir Arthur Grant, 10th Baronet, born 14 September 1879, died 21 June 1931
Sir Arthur Lindsay Grant, 11th Baronet, born 8 September 1911, died 18 July 1944, m. Priscilla Buchan, Baroness Tweedsmuir
Sir Francis Cullen Grant, 12th Baronet, born 5 October 1914, died 31 August 1966
Sir Archibald Grant, 13th Baronet, born 2 September 1954

Grant baronets, of Forres, Moray (1924)

Created 25 June 1924, in the baronetage of the United Kingdom.

Sir Alexander Grant, 1st Baronet, born 1 October 1864, died 21 May 1937
Sir Robert McVitie Grant, 2nd Baronet, born 7 December 1894, died 26 January 1947, when the baronetcy became extinct due to no heir.

Grant baronet, of Househill, Nairn (1926)

Created 30 July 1926, a baronetage of the United Kingdom.

Sir James Augustus Grant, 1st Baronet, born 3 March 1867, was member of parliament for Egremont 1910–1918, for Whitehaven 1918–1922, and Derbyshire South 1924–1929. He had no son and died on 29 July 1932, when the title became extinct.

Macpherson-Grant baronets, of Ballindalloch (1838)
 See Macpherson-Grant baronets

References

Baronetcies in the Baronetage of Nova Scotia
Extinct baronetcies in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom
1688 establishments in Nova Scotia
1924 establishments in the United Kingdom


Sir James Grant, 1st Baronet (died 1695) was a Scottish lawyer of the seventeenth century.

Appointed King's Advocate, he was created a baronet, "of Dalvey, Elgin", in the baronetage of Nova Scotia on 10 August 1688, with remainder "to his heirs whatsoever". He died in 1695 and was succeeded in his title and estates by his younger brother Ludovic.

Lodge's Genealogy of the Existing British Peerage and Baronetage states that this family of Grant is "a branch of the ancient family of Grant, of Grant".

Footnotes

1695 deaths
Baronets in the Baronetage of Nova Scotia
Lord Advocates
Year of birth missing


Robert Petre, 3rd Baron Petre (22 January 1599 – 28 October 1638), was educated at Oxford and acceded to the title in 1637 but enjoyed his honours but a short time, and followed his father to the grave in little more than a year. In 1620, he married Mary (1603–1685), daughter of Anthony Maria Browne, 2nd Viscount Montague. She was a charitable and gallant Royalist and Catholic, once defying a troop of over a hundred Cromwellian / Roundhead / parliamentary soldiers alone, who wished to search Ingatestone Hall. She was a woman destined to have a long and troubled widowhood. Many are the notices in the State Papers about the Petre property in her days until she died in 1685, two years after her son.

When Lord Petre died in 1638 an inventory showed that he had no debts, £7,500 cash in hand (approximately £657,000 today) and £4,000 in realizable loans (approximately £350,000 today). The rents for Essex and Devon totalled £13,500 (approximately £1.183 million today); owing to inflation, the increase in rents was over three-fold, so that the main branch of the family had more than held its own since 1540, in spite of expensive marriage settlements.

He left three sons, each of whom succeeded to the title, and two daughters.
Mary (c. 1624–1672); wife of Edward Stourton and mother of the 12th Baron Stourton
William Petre, 4th Baron Petre (1626–1683)
John Petre, 5th Baron Petre (1629–1684)
Thomas Petre, 6th Baron Petre (1633–1706)
Dorothy; married John Thimbelby, son of Sir John Thimbelby

References

1599 births
1638 deaths
Robert
3


William Petre, 2nd Baron Petre (24 June 1575 – 5 May 1637) was an English peer and Member of Parliament.

He was born the son of Sir John Petre, 1st Baron Petre and was educated at Exeter College, Oxford and the Middle Temple. William and his family were recusants – people who adhered to the Roman Catholic faith after the English Reformation.

He was elected MP for Essex in 1597, knighted in 1603 and inherited the Barony and the Ingatestone estate on his father's death in 1613. In 1623 he was appointed justice of the peace for Essex but, due to his uncompromising recusancy, he was dismissed in 1625 from the Magistracy and deprived of all of his other public offices.

Ingatestone Hall
From its position on the Harwich road, and proximity to London, Ingatestone Hall was a constant meeting place and refuge for those disaffected to the Protestant religion or to the reigning sovereign. For example:

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.

Secret guests may 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 in 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 chimney stacks, and for example, Furze Hall might reveal similar ones if thoroughly explored.

Private life
It does not appear that the 2nd Baron got into any serious trouble about the Papists who frequented Ingatestone, in part due to the support of King Charles I. 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.

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.

Petre had married Katherine Somerset (1575–1624), second daughter of Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester in a double ceremony with her sister Elizabeth who married Sir Henry Guilford. Edmund Spenser celebrated the event in his poem, Prothalamion. They had seven surviving sons and three daughters. Katherine Petre danced in the court masque Tethys' Festival on 5 June 1610 in the character of the "Nymph of Olwy", a tributary of the River Usk.

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

Portrait
A pair of paintings among the Petre Pictures dating from 1590, attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts, were once thought to be the portraits of William's parents, John Petre, 1st Baron Petre and Mary. The paintings were restored after the fire at Thorndon Hall in 1876 and brought to Ingatestone Hall, and bear painted inscriptions naming the subjects. Art historian Roy Strong contends that these are in fact portraits of William and his wife Katherine. The portraits are colourful and relaxed, showing fashionable changes in costume. Lord Petre wears a white ruff over a lace collar, embroidered doublet, full breeches, bobbed hair, moustache and slight beard and, in the fashion of the time, the minute patch of hair below the bottom lip. His wife is equally in fashion; the cartwheel-topped skirt, the full upper sleeves and a variation of ruff open in front to show the neck, a delicate silver tiara and the splendid necklace of pearls, 1466 in all.

References

1575 births
1637 deaths
16th-century English nobility
17th-century English nobility
William
Alumni of Exeter College, Oxford
English MPs 1597–1598
2


Viva Records may refer to:

Viva Records (U.S.), subsidiary of Snuff Garrett Records
Viva Records (Philippines), a Philippine record label

See also
Viva (disambiguation)


Iain Douglas-Hamilton D.Phil CBE is an English zoologist from Oxford University and one of the world's foremost authorities on the African elephant. Douglas-Hamilton pioneered the first in-depth scientific study of elephant social behaviour in Tanzania's Lake Manyara National Park, aged 23. His work in the 1960s paved the way for much of today’s understanding of elephants and current conservation practices. During the 1970s he investigated the status of elephants throughout Africa and was the first to alert the world to the ivory poaching holocaust, bringing about the first global ivory trade ban in 1989. In 1993, Douglas-Hamilton founded Save the Elephants, which is dedicated to securing a future for elephants and their habitats. For his work on elephants he was awarded two of conservation's highest awards - the Order of the Golden Ark in 1988, the Order of the British Empire in 1992,  and the Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2015. In 2010, he was named the recipient of the Indianapolis Prize, the world's leading award for animal conservation.  In May 2012, Douglas-Hamilton spoke at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Ivory and Insecurity: The Global Implications of Poaching in Africa.

Early years

Douglas-Hamilton is the son of Lord David Douglas-Hamilton, a World War II Royal Air Force officer and Spitfire pilot, and Ann Prunella Stack, a women's fitness pioneer. His older brother - Diarmaid, who was a physicist, inventor and enthusiastic mountaineer before his death (aged 82) in Massachusetts in January 2023.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton was born in Dorset, UK, attended Gordonstoun School in Scotland between 1955 and 1960. From the time he was 10 years old, Iain  dreamed that he would fly around Africa and save animals. He went on to study Zoology at Oxford University, earning first a bachelor's degree, in 1965, and then a D.Phil., in 1972.

He is married to Oria Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Elephant Watch Camp, in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, with whom he has two daughters: Saba, a  television presenter, and Dudu, a conservationist. The Douglas-Hamiltons live in Kenya. Douglas-Hamilton and his wife, Oria, have co-authored two award-winning books, Among the Elephants (1975) and Battle for the Elephants (1992), and have made several television films.

Africa

Manyara, Tanzania

At the age of 23, Douglas-Hamilton moved to Tanzania to live in the wild in Lake Manyara National Park, where he carried out the first scientific study of the social interactions of the African elephant. From that study came his hypothesis, rooted in behavioural ecology, that elephant movements could hold the key to understanding their reactions to their changing environments. Douglas-Hamilton argues that collecting and analysing large amounts of data on elephant locations and migrations can lead to insights into their choices, and therefore assist in their protection against rising threats, including poaching and human-wildlife conflict. Douglas-Hamilton's work is described in the book Among the Elephants written together with his wife Oria, and by Peter Matthiessen in his book The Tree Where Man Was Born.

In an interview years later, Iain said about his time in Manyara - “Nobody had lived with wildlife in Africa and looked at them as individuals yet. I was incredibly lucky to have had the chance to be the first person to do that with elephants.”

Uganda
From 1980 - 82, Douglas-Hamilton moved to Uganda where he was made Honorary Chief Park Warden amid the chaos after Idi Amin’s fall. Douglas-Hamilton was in charge of anti poaching activities under a project to rehabilitate Uganda's three game parks that was jointly financed by the United Nations and the European Community. His plane was hit several times by gunfire from Sudanese troops who had been poaching animals in Kidepo National Park in northern Uganda.  In Murchison Falls, Douglas-Hamilton lived in the restored Queen Mother Lodge originally built for the visit of Queen Mother Elizabeth in the 1950s. In 2022, Douglas-Hamilton returned to Uganda for the first time in forty years as part of a cross-border mission in collaboration with Northern Rangelands Trust and Uganda wildlife authorities, to collar elephants and investigate how they moved and overlapped with local communities.

Kenya
Douglas-Hamilton moved to Kenya with his family where he  continues his conservation work today. In 1993, Douglas-Hamilton started Save the Elephants  in order to create an effective and flexible NGO dedicated specifically to elephants. He continues to provide key research findings to the international community about poaching and human-elephant conflict. He serves on the data review task force of the African Elephant Specialist Group of IUCN, and the Technical Advisory Group for the Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants Programme. He also conducts regular lecture tours and works with the media to awareness of elephants.  Additionally, Douglas-Hamilton has spoken at Universities, Zoological Societies, Embassies and private fundraising functions throughout Europe and America. His chief research interest is to understand elephant choices by studying their movements.

Work

Counting elephants

A skilled pilot, Douglas-Hamilton initially developed techniques to monitor widespread elephant movements from the air. In the early 1970s, he designed study methods that would allow for comprehensive and replicable surveys of elephant families from low-flying aircraft, which would at the same time allow large population counts to be undertaken for the first time. Between 1976 and 1979, Douglas-Hamilton worked on a joint IUCN /WWF Elephant Survey and Conservation Programme, which surveyed African elephant populations in 34 countries to produce scientific data to help shape policy recommendations for the species' protection. Around the same time, working for IUCN, Douglas-Hamilton undertook research to map out the scale of the world ivory trade, its value, and its regulations. Meanwhile, he continued to direct aerial surveys of elephant populations into the 1980s, including in Uganda, Tanzania and the Central African Republic.

The 'elephant holocaust' and international ivory trade ban
Douglas-Hamilton's aerial surveys, coupled with research coming from other studies, began to show for the first time the scale of the poaching crisis that was sweeping Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, as demand for ivory from Asia, in particular from Japan, grew. From 1980 to 1982, Douglas-Hamilton was made Honorary Chief Park Warden in Uganda. Years of poaching and political turmoil, during and after the reign of dictator Idi Amin, had taken its toll on Uganda’s national parks - once some of Africa’s finest national parks.

By 1980, most of Uganda’s elephants had been killed and were down from a probable 20,000 to an estimated 1,600 elephants and declining rapidly. Douglas-Hamilton was then working on a project for the United Nations Development Programme as an anti-poaching advisor to Uganda’s national parks. There, he designed air and ground patrols against poachers, many from Sudan, where civil war was raging and poached elephant ivory could be sold to raise money to buy weapons. On occasion, Douglas-Hamilton was shot at as he carried out his work.

His work in Uganda helped to stem the loss of elephants to poachers, and allowed him to propose ways that poachers could be stopped in other parts of Africa, using the methods he developed in Uganda. Douglas-Hamilton's estimates, drawn from his research and that of others, suggested that the population of African elephants across the continent of at least 1.3 million individuals in 1979 had been reduced to less than half, or around 600,000, by 1989.

These statistics illustrated to the world the scale of what became known as the elephant holocaust. Regulation of the trade was attempted, via the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, but eventually it was globally accepted that a ban should be enforced to stem the loss of illegally killed elephants. Douglas-Hamilton was among Africa's leading conservationists who argued for this position. It is widely accepted that the ban worked, and elephant populations, especially savannah populations, began to recover.

Save the Elephants
The first 20 years of Douglas-Hamilton's work had illustrated that close scientific study of elephant populations, coupled with surveys of their ranges and movements, could help to mould policies that could protect them from external changes. To build on this work, in 1993 Douglas-Hamilton founded Save The Elephants, a charity registered in the UK and headquartered in Nairobi. Its mission - "to secure a future for elephants" by preserving the environments in which the animals live and encouraging a tolerant relationship between elephant and human populations.

Save the Elephants main research station is in Samburu National Reserve in northern Kenya. In 2010, Douglas-Hamilton almost lost the camp when floods completely decimated the research facility and nearby tourist lodges, including Elephant Watch Camp, with beds, tents, computers and vital research documentation submerged in mud and strung up in the treetops.

At a  second research station in the Sagalla community in Tsavo, southeastern Kenya, Save the Elephants’ Human-Elephant Coexistence team is investigating ways for people to live in harmony with elephants in an increasingly crowded landscape.

Since its inception, the organisation, under the direction of Douglas-Hamilton, has conducted research on elephants across Africa and has increased public awareness of the many dangers that threaten elephants and the habitats in which they live. Fundamental to his work at STE, Douglas-Hamilton pioneered GPS tracking of elephants in Africa, which has become a standard and widely emulated survey technique; it also guides the deployment of rangers to protect vulnerable and key elephant populations.  In 2007 Douglas-Hamilton partnered with Google Earth to show elephant movement in real time via satellite images.

Collection of scientific data continues to drive Douglas-Hamilton's work with Save the Elephants, both with the aerial surveys that he pioneered early in his career, and increasingly with modern technology including tracking collared elephants by GPS and satellites. Save the Elephants has since its formation been studying herds resident or migratory to Samburu National Reserve, a cohort of roughly 1000 individuals. Hundreds of elephants have been darted and fitted with collars carrying chips that communicate via satellites or mobile telephone networks with the charity's computer databases.

The elephants of Samburu are now one of the best-studied elephant populations in the world, with detailed histories of almost 1,000 individuals and their interactions from more than 25 years of research. Data from their behaviour and population dynamics have allowed scientists to understand the impacts of the ivory poaching crisis on populations across Africa.  From the initial collaring and monitoring of herds in Samburu, Douglas-Hamilton and Save the Elephants have gone on to use the same methods to study elephant populations across Africa.  In 2016, Douglas-Hamilton announced that Save the Elephants had tracked the first ever elephant bull to cross into Somalia in more than two decades.

Alongside its focus on data collection, Douglas-Hamilton has directed Save the Elephants to increase its work on reducing the conflict between growing human populations and elephant herds.   Save the Elephants' Human-Elephant Coexistence program is run by Dr. Lucy King, who completed her doctorate demonstrating elephants' instinctive fear of honey bees under the guidance and mentorship of Douglas-Hamilton. The project utilizes Beehive Fences, with beehives occupied by African bees, to reduce the problem of elephants destroying crops on small farms in Africa and Asia.

In 2013, Save the Elephants launched the Elephant Crisis Fund in partnership with the US-based Wildlife Conservation Network  to provide flexible and responsive support to NGOs combatting the ivory trade, promoting human-elephant coexistence, and protecting elephant landscapes. The Elephant Crisis Fund has disbursed more than $34m to hundreds of organisations in more than 40 countries.

In his role as Founder and President of Save the Elephants, Douglas-Hamilton continues to oversee field projects including elephant surveys, radio-tracking, community conservation projects, and ivory studies, wildlife protection, scientific publication, and international representation.

The poaching crisis

Douglas-Hamilton, and others, argue that 'one-off' sales of seized ivory stockpiled by the governments of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana to China and Japan in 2002 and 2008 kick-started a return of uncontrolled illegal poaching of Africa's elephants that is "far graver" even than during the 1970s and 1980s. Douglas-Hamilton and others estimate that between 2010 and 2012, more than 100,000 African elephants were illegally killed. The increased price of ivory was to blame with the price paid for elephant tusks after 2007 doubling around the Samburu National Reserve area.

Douglas-Hamilton testified in 2012 to the Committee on Foreign Relations at the US Senate as part of high-level investigations into the links between resurgent ivory poaching in Africa and insecurity. The price of ivory in markets in China, especially, and Asia generally, had also increased, driven by demand from growing middle classes keen to display their wealth, and speculators hoarding ivory against expected price rises following a new trade ban, or the extinction of the African elephant.

Douglas-Hamilton, echoing colleagues in the field, highlighted to the US Senate committee that current poaching trends could only be stemmed with increased anti-poaching efforts in African range states, better enforcement of laws against poaching, smuggling and money-laundering, and campaigns to reduce the demand for ivory products in Asia.

Iain's high level meeting at the White House was followed in 2013 by both the Obama Executive Order, and the Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to action to Stop the Killing, Stop the Trafficking and Stop the Demand for ivory. That same year the first detailed analysis on the impacts of illegal killing on an elephant population was published by Save the Elephants by PLOS One.

A natural raconteur, Douglas-Hamilton has rubbed shoulders with many key figures in the world of politics, film, sports, fashion and music - all in the name of protecting Africa’s wild elephants. In 2012, Douglas-Hamilton and Save The Elephants worked with WildAid, an American charity dedicated to reducing the demand for products from endangered animals, to host Yao Ming, one of China's best-known sports personalities, during a fact-finding tour of Kenya. His campaign and others in China have helped to reduce the demand for ivory products,   surveys showed.

In 2013, the Clinton Global Initiative, part of the Clinton’s charitable foundation, announced an $80 million program to protect Africa’s elephants and end ivory trafficking, in coordination with several conservation groups including Save the Elephants and Douglas-Hamilton. Two years later, former President Bill Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, visited Save the Elephants in Samburu on a fact-finding mission and met with Douglas-Hamilton to witness first-hand the enormous poaching threat facing elephants in the area.

In 2015, Save the Elephants published new research showing the price of illegal raw ivory in China has almost halved bringing hope that the slaughter of elephants would be reduced across Africa.

Thanks in part to the enormous and impactful lobbying efforts of Douglas-Hamilton and Save the Elephants, China announced it would end its domestic ivory trade in December 2017. The ban came into effect in 2018.

Says Douglas-Hamilton “My hope is to secure a future for elephants in perpetuity, and I think it’s a challenge because we haven’t calmed down as a species, our numbers are increasing, and our demands on the environment are increasing. We want more of everything — more roads, more space, we want to carve up more forests, so there’s a big threat and a big challenge. My dream would be for human beings to come into balance with their environment, to stop destroying nature.”

Awards, works and publications

Douglas-Hamilton is the recipient of many awards for his research and his work to protect Africa's elephants, including the 2010 Indianapolis Lilly Award, a major global award for animal conservation, for which he had previously been a finalist in 2006 and 2008. He also received the George B Rabb Conservation Medal of the Chicago Zoological Society in 2014, the  Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund Award in 2006, the Dawkins Prize for Conservation and Animal Welfare in 2001, and others for his writing work prior to that.

In 2015 he was awarded the Commander of the British Empire and was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by San Diego Zoological Society and the Tanzanian Wildlife Research Institute’s (TAWIRI) Tanzania Wildlife Research Award in 2019 for his lifelong devotion to elephants.

Douglas-Hamilton is a member of the Technical Advisory Group to CITES for monitoring the illegal killing of elephants (MIKE) in Africa, a trustee of the Kenya Elephant Research Fund, a member since 1982 of the IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group, and currently a member of its African Elephant Data Review Working Group. From 1993 to 2004 he was a wildlife and environmental consultant to the European Union and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Douglas-Hamilton has published a long list of  academic research papers throughout his career. He is the author, with his wife Oria, of Battle for the Elephants (Viking, 1992) and Among The Elephants (Doubleday, 1975), and has worked with documentary filmmakers as a technical advisor and expert.

Books
1992 - Battle for the Elephants (Viking, 1992

1975 - Among the Elephants (DoubleDay 1975)

Films
1973 - The Family that Lives with Elephants (Narrated by David Niven)

1989 - Ivory Wars

1998 - Africa’s Elephant Kingdom

2009 - The Secret Life of Elephants

2015 - This Wild Life

References

External links
 Save the Elephants
 Interview with Iain Douglas-Hamilton on Passports and Poets
 Iain Douglas-Hamilton speaks at the foreign senate
 Iain Douglas-Hamilton in talks at Google
 Good advice from Iain Douglas-Hamilton at the Clinton Global Initiative
 Iain Douglas-Hamilton on the effort to eliminate the sale and distribution of ivory in parts of Africa in 1993

English zoologists
1942 births
Living people
Iain Douglas-Hamilton
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Alumni of Oriel College, Oxford
People educated at Gordonstoun
British people of Irish descent
British people of Scottish descent
Writers about Africa
20th-century British writers
20th-century British zoologists
Elephant conservation


Aviatsionnaya Ispitatelnaya Stantsiya (AIS) was a naval air test station in Russia during World War I notable for designing and producing several aircraft designs.  The facility was founded at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute near the end of 1916 with a seaplane base on Krestovsky Island.

Aircraft

Two aircraft designs were created by AIS.  The first, produced by engineer P. A. Shishkov, was a Farman pusher-biplane type modified to carry a torpedo, powered by a 130 hp Clerget engine.  First flight was achieved in August 1917, and several flights of more than 1 hour were completed.  A second design, named Aist, was built in the fall of 1917, as a two-seat seaplane powered by a 150 hp Sunbeam engine.  The Aist was armed with two machine guns, one fixed and one on a flexible mount.

See also

 List of aircraft (A)

References

Defunct aircraft manufacturers of Russia


Arso may refer to:
 Arso Jovanović (1907–1948), Yugoslav partisan general during World War II
 Arso, Keerom, a district in Papua, Indonesia
 Arso Airport
 Slovenian Environment Agency ( or ARSO)


Lundmark is a Swedish surname. Notable people with the surname include:

 Anne Lundmark (born 1946), Swedish orienteering competitor
 Charles Lundmark (1927–1999), American sprint canoeist
 Curt Lundmark (born 1944), Swedish ice hockey coach
 Jamie Lundmark (born 1981), Canadian ice hockey player
 Karl-Gösta Lundmark (1919–1995), Swedish Army lieutenant general
 Kenneth Lundmark (born 1946), Swedish high jumper
 Knut Lundmark (1889–1958), Swedish astronomer
 Pekka Lundmark (born 1963), Finnish business executive and CEO of Nokia

See also
 Lundmark (crater), a lunar crater
 Thompson-Lundmark Mine, a gold mine near Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
 Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte, an irregular galaxy located on the outer edges of the local group

Swedish-language surnames


JATO Dynamics Ltd is a global supplier of automotive business intelligence, headquartered in Uxbridge, London.

History
JATO was founded in 1984 by Jake Shafran for collecting, and supplying competitive business intelligence for automotive manufacturers.

References

Automotive intelligence companies
Market research companies of the United States
Market research companies of the United Kingdom
Business services companies established in 1984
1984 establishments in the United States


Marko Zorić (, ; born July 10, 1980, in Zrenjanin) is a retired Serbian footballer who last played for FK Banat Zrenjanin.

Club career
Marko Zorić began his professional football career with top tier side Proleter Zrenjanin where he would gradually start to establish himself within the team and attract the interests of Serbian heavyweights Partizan Belgrade who he would  join in the 2000-01 league season. His time at Partizan Belgrade was however very disappointing and he saw very little playing time, which saw a move to second tier club FK Teleoptik go through. With FK Teleoptik he'll see them relegated to the third tier, however during this period he would go on to establish himself as an integral member of the team and a return to Proleter Zrenjanin in the 2004-05 league season, who were now in the second tier.

After a season with Proleter Zrenjanin Marko Zorić would move abroad to China and join top tier side Tianjin Teda in the 2005 Chinese Super League where he immediately established himself as an integral member of the team and helped guide Tianjin to fourth within the league, which was the best placed finish for the team since the league became fully professional. Two seasons later Marko Zorić would have a chance to return to Serbia and he'll join top tier side Banat Zrenjanin in the 2006–07 Serbian SuperLiga, however he couldn't establish himself as a first choice player and left after a season to join top tier Turkish side Gençlerbirliği in the 2007–08 Süper Lig but once again this was short lived and he returned to Banat Zrenjanin where this time he was able to gain significantly more playing time but also saw the club relegated at the end of the 2008–09 Serbian SuperLiga.

On July 15, 2009, Marko Zorić was looking for a move back to the Chinese Super League and recently promoted side Jiangsu Sainty were interested in his services until he sustained an injury during training, however fellow Super League side Shenzhen Asia Travel were willing to take a chance and signed him in their fight against relegation in the 2009 Chinese Super League season. The following season Zorić would return to Tianjin Teda and once again became an integral member of the team's defence and go on to win 2011 Chinese FA Cup with them.

Honours
Tianjin Teda
Chinese FA Cup: 2011

References

External links
 Profile and stats at Srbijafudbal.
 Profile at TFF.org

1980 births
Living people
Footballers from Zrenjanin
Serbian men's footballers
Serbian expatriate men's footballers
Men's association football defenders
FK Proleter Zrenjanin players
FK Partizan players
FK Teleoptik players
FK Banat Zrenjanin players
Shenzhen F.C. players
Tianjin Jinmen Tiger F.C. players
Gençlerbirliği S.K. footballers
Serbian expatriate sportspeople in China
Chinese Super League players
Serbian SuperLiga players
Süper Lig players
Expatriate men's footballers in Turkey
Expatriate men's footballers in China


Pacific Sun may refer to:

 Pacific Sun (airline), a regional airline based in Fiji
 Pacific Sun (newspaper), a weekly newspaper in California
 Pacific Sun (ship), former name of a holiday class cruise ship now renamed Henna
 Pacific Sun (song), a single by Force & Styles