B. I thinke I understand this doctrine, but there comes a conceit in my head which makes me laugh, for how if all the faults thus cast up together should amount to more then the value, will you say that the stone in such a case is so much worse then nothing? Certainly its worth something to make diamond powder of, were it never so foul or mishapen.
A. Your objection is good. Tis a pleasure to teach you, and to what you have said I can only answer theise two things: that I have heard able jewelers say that the difference of stones of equal weight is seldome more then between 15 & 5 or 3 & 9, namely that the best with all its perfections is but triple to the worst with all its faults. The other thing I say is that in case your defects cast up as aforesaid should bring your stone below 2⁄3 of its full value resulting from the weight, extent & colour, I say in such a case that the estimate of your defects must be reviewed, tempered & better proportioned & adjusted.
1. The King has a Prerogative which Lawyers must expound.
- ↑ The "Powers of the King of England" are printed from a MS volume bearing the title "Adversaria Literana I. P," Brit. Mus. Addl MSS. 27,989, f. 17—18. The volume contains a book-plate of Sir John Perceval, of county Cork, Ireland, dated 1702. Cf. Hamilton, Dated Book-plates, 28. Perceval was born in 1683. The death of his father, Sir John Perceval, a friend of Petty's (Fitzmaurice, 270), in 1686, left him an orphan and ward of Sir Robert Southwell. He was created Baron Perceval in 1715, and Earl of Egmont in the peerage of Ireland in 1733, and died in 1748. Perceval, who was in a position to procure copies of Petty's writings, was a diligent collector of MSS. Other volumes of "Adversaria" apparently compiled by him, are in existence, one of them containing a "character" of Petty. 7th Rept. Hist. MSS. Com. pp. xiii. 232—249. The "Powers of the King" are in the same hand, probably Perceval's, as the remaining, very miscellaneous, contents of the British Museum's volume of the "Adversaria." Another MS. of the "Powers of the King" is the property of the Marquis of Bath, at Longleat. 3rd Rept. Hist. MSS. Com. 199.
- ↑ The 17th November, James had replied to the address of the Commons on the
