sentences:  Dorothy was the second and eldest surviving child of the very wealthy Sir William Petre (c.1505-1572), Secretary of State to four successive Tudor monarchs (namely Kings Henry VIII, Edward VI and Queens Mary I and Elizabeth I), who had acquired much property following the Dissolution of the Monasteries.Her mother was Gertrude Tyrrell, daughter of Sir John Tyrrell.Her date of birth as 1535 may be deduced from one of her two portraits in Wadham College, which gives her age as sixty in 1595.