Catalogue description PAPERS OF ROBERT EDWARD, BARON PETRIE (d 1801)

Household accounts of Robert Lord Petre (1742-1801), a prominent Catholic peer, and also Grandmaster of the Freemasons in England 1772-1777 (biography in M D Petre, The Ninth Lord Petre (1926), cited Complete Peerage, x, 510). The records include numerous annual or quarterly bundles of tradesmens' bills, garden bills, household expenses including diet, and servants wages. They document the regime at both his London establishment, and in the new house which he built for himself at Thorndon Hall, and at Buckenham, as well as in the family seat at Ingatestone, Essex. The papers are probably exhibits in a suit in equity.