Meanwhile for three weary years the struggle with the farmers of the revenue had continued, complicated by another with the ''49 men' who claimed the whole of Sir William's Limerick property. Events in England influenced the situation. The death of the Lord Treasurer Southampton in 1667, followed as it was shortly after by the fall of the Chancellor Clarendon and the rise into power of the heterogeneous body of statesmen known as the Cabal, had for an immediate consequence the retirement of Ormonde from the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. John Petty was thereupon removed from the Surveyorship, and was succeeded by Sir James Shaen. Misfortunes, as usual, did not come singly. About the same time Sir William's house in London was destroyed by the Great Fire, and his surrounding property seriously depreciated in value.
'You know,' Sir William writes to a friend in 1667, 'when I had much money in the bank, much land in Ireland, and some houses in London; but the houses and money are gone, and only so much of the land remains as is a continual fountain of vexations to me, for I have about thirty lawsuits.'[1] In another letter he gives the following enumeration of the storms which had befallen him since the Restoration:—
'1. The "49 men" siege of my Limerick concernment, and Sir Alan Broderick; 1661 and 2.
'2. The Court of Clayms and Innocents, 1663.
'3. The great "Double bottom," 1664.
'4. The Plague, 1665.
'5. Lord Ranelagh and the Fire of London, 1666.
'6. War with Lord Kingston, 1667-8-9-70 and 1, when Sir W. Fenton died.'
In addition to these, he got involved in a suit with Sir George Carteret, the Treasurer of the Navy, who had joined him in one of his Irish undertakings.
During the first of these storms, Sir Alan Broderick, 'one of the '49 men' who had put in a claim to part of the Limerick lands, and in other respects also was a sort of second edition of Sir Hierome Sankey, being given to preaching in Dublin
- ↑ Petty to Southwell, January 21, 1667.
