a baronet on 14 Feb. 1855. He spent the autumn of 1865 in America, and published next year ‘The Resources and Prospects of America, ascertained during a Visit to the States.’
On 11 May 1866 Peto & Betts suspended payment, owing to the financial panic, with liabilities amounting to four millions and assets estimated at five millions. This disaster obliged Peto to resign his seat for Bristol in 1868, when Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone paid tributes to his character, the latter referring to him as ‘a man who has attained a high position in this country by the exercise of rare talents and who has adorned that position by his great virtues’ (Hansard, 27 March 1868 p. 359, 22 April p. 1067). He bore his reverse of fortune with great resignation. He for some time lived at Eastcote House, Pinner, and then at Blackhurst, Tunbridge Wells, where he died on 13 Nov. 1889. He was buried at Pembury.
He married, first, on 18 May 1831, Mary, eldest daughter of Thomas de la Garde Grissell, of Stockwell Common, Surrey; she died on 20 May 1842, leaving a son—Henry Peto (b. 1840), M.A., barrister-at-law—and three daughters. Peto married, secondly, on 12 July 1843, Sarah Ainsworth, eldest daughter of Henry Kelsall of Rochdale, by whom he had issue six sons and four daughters.
Peto published several pamphlets, including: 1. ‘Observations on the Report of the Defence Commissioners, with an Analysis of the Evidence,’ 1862; to which three replies were printed. 2. ‘Taxation, its Levy and Expenditure, Past and Future; being an Enquiry into our Financial Policy,’ 1863.
[Sir Morton Peto, a Memorial Sketch (1893), with two portraits; Record of the Proceedings connected with the Presentation of a Service of Plate to Sir S. M. Peto at Lowestoft, 18 July 1860, 1860; Minutes of Proceedings of Institution of Civil Engineers, 1890, xcix. 400–3; Foster's Baronetage (1883), pp. 504–5; Illustr. London News, 1851 xviii. 105–6, 1857 xxx. 24–6, 1860 xxxvii. 147; Helps's Life of Mr. Brassey, 1872, pp. 163–5, 184, 216; Freeman, 22 Nov. 1889, pp. 769, 773; Engineer, 22 Nov. 1889, p. 438; London Figaro, 23 Nov. 1889, p. 10, with portrait; Times, 12 May 1866 p. 9, 15 Nov. 1889 p. 10.]
PETO, WILLIAM (d. 1558), cardinal, whose name is variously written Petow, Peytow, and Peytoo (the last form used by himself), was a man of good family (Harpsfield, Pretended Divorce of Henry VIII, p. 202, Camden Soc.; Holinshed, Chronicle, iii. 1168, ed. 1587). De Thou and others say he was of obscure parentage, simply because his parents are unknown—a fact for which one writer likens him to Melchizedek. Holinshed and some others call his christian name Peter, apparently by a sort of confusion with his surname. He was related to the Throgmortons of Warwickshire, or at least to Michael Throgmorton, a faithful attendant of Cardinal Pole, brother of Sir George Throgmorton of Coughton. As he seems to have been very old when he died, his birth must be referred to the fifteenth century. He was confessor to the Princess Mary, Henry VIII's daughter, in her early years (Cal. State Papers, Venetian, vi. 239). At the time when he first became conspicuous he was provincial of the Grey friars in England. On Easter Sunday (31 March) 1532 he preached before Henry VIII, at their convent at Greenwich, a bold sermon denouncing the divorce on which the king had set his mind, and warning him that princes were easily blinded by self-will and flattery. After the sermon the king called him to an interview, and endeavoured to argue the point with him, but could not move him, and, as Peto desired to attend a general chapter of his order at Toulouse, the king gave him leave to go. Next Sunday the king ordered his own chaplain, Dr. Hugh Curwen [q. v.], to preach in the same place. Curwen contradicted what Peto had said, till he was himself contradicted by Henry Elston, warden of the convent. Peto was then called back to Greenwich and ordered to deprive the warden, which he refused to do, and they were both arrested. It seems that he was committed to ‘a tower in Lambeth over the gate’ (Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. xii. pt. ii. p. 333). In the latter part of the year, however, he was set at liberty and went abroad. He, at least, appears by the registers of the Franciscan convent at Pontoise to have been there for some time on 10 Jan. 1533. Later in that year both he and Elston were at Antwerp together. His real object in wishing to go abroad the year before was to cause a book to be printed in defence of Queen Catherine's cause; and at Antwerp he got surreptitiously printed an answer, or at least the preface to an answer, to the book called ‘The Glass of Truth’ published in England in justification of the king's divorce. It was entitled ‘Philalethæ Hyperborei in Anticatoptrum suum, quod propediem in lucem dabit, ut patet proxima pagella, parasceue; sive adversus improborum quorundam temeritatem Illustrissimam Angliæ Reginam ab Arthuro Walliæ principe priore marito suo cognitam fuisse impudenter et inconsulte adstruentium, Susannis extemporaria.’ It professed to be printed at ‘Lunenburg’ by Sebastian
