Dublyn, God having kept him safe in the greatest storme that ever was knowne, as he thankfully construed it, to preserve him for his vindication." At Petty's request the officers' committee already appointed was increased by the addition of "the Receiver-General, Auditors-General, and one Mr Jeoffryes, a person well reputed for his integrity and skill in accompts, that, having given a satisfactory accompt unto these able and proper ministers of the State, he might all under one bee discharged both from the State and armyes further question or suspicion." A majority of the committee as thus constituted declared the charges to be without foundation. Three of the officers, a minority of the original committee, for a time dissented from this finding, but eventually, affecting to believe that in a new attack brought against Petty from an unexpected quarter "his Excellency himselfe was strucke att," they declined to "muddle or make further in the business."
The scruples of the officers in Ireland were by no means groundless. The death of the Lord Protector had reanimated the purely parliamentarian party of the army in England to an activity that boded no good to his sons. Petty was, throughout his life, a firm supporter of the family of Cromwell, and it was as Henry Cromwell's friend that he had been elected member for West Looe in Richard's parliament. It is not surprising, therefore, that the charges of bribery and breach of trust now preferred against him in the House of Commons by Sir Jerome Sanchey[1] should have appeared to the officers at Dublin as a blow struck at the Lord Deputy himself. A letter from speaker Bampfield[2] brought Sanchey's[3] charges to Petty 's
- ↑ H. C. Journals, vii. 612.
- ↑ History, 289.
- ↑ Sanchey, or Zankey, a son of a clergyman of Salop, was a member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and received his B.A. in 1641. More given to manly exercises than to logic and philosophy, a boisterous fellow at cudgelling and foot-ball (Wood, Fasti Oxon, ii. 69), he exchanged his gown for a trooper's jacket and soon rose to be a colonel in the parliamentary army. Whitelocke, Memorials, 302. In March, 1649, the parliamentary visitors to Oxford called him from the army to become sub-warden of All Souls. In this capacity he received Oliver Cromwell, upon his visit to the University, and presented him for his degree. Burrows, Register, 227. By the end of the year he was once more in command of a troop of cavalry and met with much military success in Ireland. He was repeatedly chosen a member of the Irish parliament and was knighted by Henry Cromwell. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, ii. 254, 302. In August, 1659, he brought his regiment to England to join Lambert, and was prominent in the disputes between the army and the Rump. Ludlow, Memoirs, (Firth's ed.), ii. 110, 118, 130, 135, 151, 162; Whitelocke, 436, 445, 509, 530, 678, 682,
