( 19 )
mise at all times to present a List of forty persons, whose Negotiations have been pro ratâ more profitable then what is here set forth. Besides (without vanity, be it spoken) if universal favor with all the Grandees and their Ministers would have reacht this profit, I was not in any danger of failing: For before I dealt in Surveys, and Distributions, and other disobliging Trinkets, I referr you to all that knew mee (Annis 1652, —53 —54, and part of —55, and who knew the state of Ireland in those years) to give you satisfaction herein. Neither can any man alledg one cause of my coming short of the above-phancyed encrease; but I can finde him two probabilities for my exceeding the same.
You see, Sir, what an Estate I might have gotten, without ever having medled with the Surveys, much lesse with the more fatal distribution of the Lands after they were surveyed, and without medling with the Clerkship of the Councel, or being Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. All which, if I had been so happy as to have declined, then had I preserved an universal favor and interest with all men,
