Robert Jennens purchased Acton Place from the Daniels recusant Catholic family in 1708 and continuously remodelled it in the Palladian style until his death in 1725.
The two chief leaders were Lord Petre and Sir John Throckmorton, both members of old recusant families, who had suffered much in times past under the Penal Laws.
Born into the recusancy on 2 April 1831 at Stonor, England, the ancestral home of the Stonor family, he was the son of Thomas Stonor, 3rd Lord Camoys and Frances (née Towneley).
In 1579 he was imprisoned for recusancy, 'but being able to give an explanation to Burghley, was soon released'.
In 1633, Ussher wrote to the new Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, in an effort to gain support for the imposition of recusancy fines on Irish Catholics.
Catholic recusancy was strong in the surrounding countryside, under the leadership of the Giffard family of Brewood, who succeeded in building a Catholic chapel in the guise of a private house, just to the west of St. Peter's.
Part of the land on which the school is situated was donated by Lord Petre, the 11th Baron Petre (1793-1850), who was a director of the New Zealand Company and whose family seat Thorndon Hall in Essex was an important centre of Catholic Recusancy from the time of Queen Elizabeth I.