ABSTRACT
Monsignor Lord Petre was a dynamic, eccentric but attractive personality, a descendant of one of the few old Roman Catholic aristocratic families of England. He opened his school at the family estate of Woburn Park, near Weybridge in Surrey, in 1878. Jack Woodroffe and his younger brother Francis had been in England at least from 1872 for education by a private tutor. 'Dear Mama,' the 7 year old Jack wrote to his mother in that year, 'I am very sorry that you cannot come home just yet for I am longing to see you, and so is Frankie.' He wanted to have an ape: 'I should like you to ask Papa to send me one. I know that there are a lot out there.'1
