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.[1]
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.