The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty/Volume 1/Introduction/PettysLife

by William Petty

 

INTRODUCTION.

PETTY'S LIFE.

William Petty^[1] was born on Monday, 26 May, 1623, at the house of his father, a poor clothier of Romsey in Hampshire.

According to the detailed account of his childhood which he gave to Aubrey, his chief amusement consisted in "looking on the artificers, e.g. smyths, the watchmaker, carpenters, joiners, etc.^[2]" until he "could have worked at any of their trades." "At twelve years of age he had acquired a competent smattering of Latin," and before his sixteenth year he was well advanced in Greek, mathematics and navigation. It was, perhaps, in his fourteenth year that Petty was overtaken by an accident which gave him opportunity to turn his precocity to good account. After some ten months' service as cabin boy on an English merchantman, he had the misfortune to break his leg. Hereupon the crew set him ashore on the French coast, not far from Caen. The unhappy lad, thus left to shift for himself, recounted his misfortunes in Latin so excellent that the Jesuit fathers of that city not only cared for him but straightway admitted him a pupil of their college^[3]. Here he prosecuted his former studies and incidentally learned the French language as well. Meanwhile he supported himself in part by teaching navigation to a French officer and English to a gentleman who desired to visit England—Latin serving, apparently, as the medium of communication in both cases—and in part by traffic in "pittiful brass things with cool'd glasse in them instead of diamonds and rubies." Upon his return to England he appears to have spent some months in the Royal Navy, but in 1643, "when the civil war betwixt the King and Parliament grew hot," he joined the army of English refugees in the Netherlands and "vigorously followed his studies, especially that of medicine," at Utrecht, Leyden^[4] and Amsterdam. By November, 1645, he had made his way to Paris where he continued his anatomical studies, reading Vesalius with Hobbes and forming many acquaintances in the group of scholars that gathered around Father Mersen and the Marquis of Newcastle. In the following year he returned to Romsey, and appears to have taken up for a time the business formerly carried on by his father^[5]. At Romsey he busied himself also with an instrument for double writing, which he had so far completed by March, 1647, that a patent upon it was then granted him for a term of seventeen years. In November, if not earlier, he went to London with the intention of selling this device^[6]. His expectations were not realized, and it may be inferred from his subsequent remarks upon patent monopolies^[7] that his career as an inventor proved far from gainful. In London Petty was "admitted into several clubbs of the virtuosi," and secured the friendship, among others, of Milton's friend, Samuel Hartlib, to whom he addressed the "Advice of W. P. for the Advancement of some Particular Parts of Learning^[8]." It was upon Hartlib's encouragement, also, that he began his abortive " History of Trades^[9]."

In 1648 Petty removed from London to Oxford, where the University had been recently reorganized by the parliamentary party. He was soon made deputy to Clayton, the professor of anatomy, and succeeded him in January, 1650, "Dr Clayton resigning his interest" in the professorship "purposely to serve him." Meanwhile he had become a doctor of medicine and a fellow of Brasenose College^[10], and, in December, 1650, had added to his reputation by participating in the reanimation of one Ann Green, a wench hanged at Oxford for the supposed murder of her child^[11]. At about the same time he was chosen vice-principal of Brasenose and professor of music in Gresham College. The vice-principalship he retained until 9 August, 1659, the Gresham professorship until 8 March, 1660^[12]. In April, 1651, the visitors to the University had granted him the unusual favour of two years' leave of absence, with an allowance of ₤3o per annum^[13]. The occasion of this grant and the nature of his occupation during the next few months are unknown; Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice conjectures that he travelled. However that may be, there soon came to him an appointment which exercised a determining influence upon the entire course of his subsequent life; he was made physician to the army in Ireland and to the family and person of the Lieutenant-General. Thenceforward his chief interests, both material and intellectual, were intimately connected with affairs beyond St George's Channel.

As physician to the army Petty resided in Ireland nearly seven years, returning to England in 1659^[14] as the bearer of Henry Cromwell's letter of acquiescence in the government set up by the Rump. It was during this first period of his Irish residence that he made the "Down Survey" of Ireland^[15], a work which laid the foundation of his fortune and constituted his earliest title to fame. After the suppression of the Irish rebellion of 1641 the government prepared to distribute the forfeited lands of the rebels, one moiety among the soldiers of the victorious army, the other among the adventurers who, under the provisions of 17 Car. I., c. 34, had advanced money for the army's support. As a preliminary to the proposed distribution, it was necessary that the situation and area of the forfeited holdings be determined. When Petty first reached Ireland he found a survey for this purpose already in progress. He soon concluded that this survey was being "most insufficiently and absurdly managed" by its director, one Benjamin Worsley, and he promptly proposed to make a more satisfactory survey himself^[16]. This he promised to complete, duly set down in maps and books, within a year and a month. After much discussion his proposals were accepted, 11 December, 1654, but the time for the completion of the survey was afterwards extended to thirteen months from February, 1655. Petty thus agreed to measure and record, on a scale of forty perches to an inch, all forfeited lands, profitable and unprofitable, set aside for the satisfaction of the officers and soldiers,—the so-called "army lands"—down to the smallest recognized civil denominations. He also undertook to survey and map, for general use and upon a smaller scale, the bounds of all baronies, whether forfeited or not, in all counties which contained forfeited lands. By March, 1656, the survey of the army lands was virtually completed, and he applied to the Council for payment and for release from his bond. His work was referred to a committee representing the army and was by them pronounced satisfactory. Worsley, on the contrary, pointed out a number of minor errors. These were such, in Petty' s view, as should "bee not charged uppon" him "as faults; but rather such accidents and disasters as ever attend vast and variable undertakings^[17]." Nevertheless he attempted a detailed answer to Worsley's objections. General Larcom, a judge eminently competent, declares that he met the charges satisfactorily, indeed triumphantly: for whatever shortcomings or blemishes might be detected in so great a work, performed with such extraordinary rapidity, over so great an extent of country at the same time, there can be no doubt that, on the whole, it exceeded the articles of agreement, and that the delay which will be seen to have taken place in the payment, was vexatious and unjust." Nevertheless Petty was obliged to wage a prolonged contest for his rights, the final order for his payment being postponed until March, 1657, while his bond was not released until December of the same year. The publication of the results of the general survey, on the other hand, appears to have been delayed for several years^[18].

The completion of the Down Survey of the army lands by no means concluded Petty's "services and sufferings" in Ireland. On the 7th July, 1656, he was named a member of the commission to distribute among the officers and soldiers the forfeited lands which he had surveyed. Vincent Gookin, one of his associates on the commission, presently departed for England to attend Parliament, and fear of offending military friends deterred the other member, Major Miles Symner, from taking an active part in its labours^[19]. Petty was therefore, obliged, "to manage the executive part of that vast and intricate work, as if it were alone, Few other Commissioners (for fear of falling into some Error) adventuring to do business without" him, "Whereby all displeasures real or imaginary, were accounted not onely" his "Permission but Commission: Not onely" his "simple Act, but design, contrivance and revenge^[20]." Working thus singlehanded, he set out their lands to the army with such dispatch that the distribution was completed in February, 1657. Meanwhile he had begun, in conjunction with Worsley, a survey of the adventurers' moiety of the forfeited lands. Distribution based upon this survey was delayed by disagreements among the adventurers at London until finally, in May, 1658, the patience of the Lord Deputy was exhausted by their indecision and he sent Petty to treat with them for the appointment of a commission which should adjust their claims out of hand. Upon his arrival in London, Petty found the adventurers already in receipt of an anonymous communication from Dublin, alleging that he intended if possible to cheat them as, it was charged, he had cheated the army. In the face of this charge he won the entire confidence of the adventurers' committee, and was provided by them with a petition to the Council at Dublin requesting "that, instead of all the said Commissioners, Dr Petty alone may bee authorized and approved by your Lordshipps, to act as well in behalfe of your Lordshipps as the adventurers, as a person best able to give the business a dispatch^[21]." The news of his triumph at London stirred up Petty's enemies at Dublin to prepare a second letter—Petty called it a libel^[22]—directed ostensibly to the adventurers and assuring them that his dishonesty in surveying and setting out the army lands had gone unpunished only because of his position as a clerk of the Council and prime favourite of the Lord Deputy. By prearrangement this letter was intercepted on its way to London and was brought to the attention of Henry Cromwell. Cromwell, whose confidence in Petty never wavered, at once referred the charges to a committee of seven officers. "Whilst these things were doeing in Ireland, the doctor rides night and day from London, in the end of December [1658], and through many hazards comes to 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^[23] should have appeared to the officers at Dublin as a blow struck at the Lord Deputy himself. A letter from speaker Bampfield^[24] brought Sanchey's^[25] charges to Petty 's attention. On the day set for his reply he appeared in the House and defended himself with great moderation. The charges were vague and there was no proof. In so extensive and difficult a work as the distribution of the army's lands it was inevitable that he should make many enemies, while he had the opportunity to make scarce any friends. He had nothing to conceal. He had often endeavoured to bring himself to a trial, but his adversaries had now done more for him than he was ever able to do for himself: they had brought him to the very fountain of justice and he willingly threw himself into it to be washed of all that was foul and superfluous. The manner of his trial and vindication he committed to the wisdom and justice of the House, asking only that instead of Sanchey's heaps of calumnies and reproach, he might receive a more distinct and particular charge, whereby he might be put in a way to vindicate himself effectually. Sanchey replied in a speech which, as reported by Petty, is remarkable for its violence and incoherence^[26]. The House lost all patience with him and he was ordered to bring in his charges in writing. The next day, 22 April, Richard Cromwell dissolved Parliament and Petty was once more defrauded of his desired vindication.

Upon the dissolution of Parliament Petty hastened to Ireland, but soon returned to England again, being sent by Henry Cromwell to Fleetwood as one whom he could best trust now his nearest concernments were at stake^[27]. Sanchey, now a person of importance in the republican reaction, took advantage of Petty's presence in London to present to the Rump Parliament, 12 July, no less than eleven "new Articles of high misdemeanours, frauds, breach of trusts and several other crimes" chargeable against him. The Rump promptly referred them to the Commissioners for Ireland, before whom they never came to trial. The possibility of an official vindication being thus precluded, Petty resolved to carry his case before the bar of public opinion. With this end in view he published a succinct account of the dispute with Sanchey down to 13 July, 1659^[28] and the succeeding year he followed it up with a volume of nearly two hundred pages^[29] describing the work of survey and distribution, answering the charges brought against him, and explaining how they arose "from the envy and hatred of several parties promiscuously" and "from particular designing persons and parties" in Ireland. About October, 1659, he also prepared for the press, at great length, a History of the Down Survey^[30], containing what he regarded as a complete vindication of his conduct, and two further works, now probably lost, upon the same subject^[31].

Among the clubs of the virtuosi to which, as Petty's will relates, it was his privilege to be admitted^[32] soon after he came to London^[33], none is more memorable than that company of "capacious and searching spirits inquisitive into natural philosophy and other parts of human knowledge," whose habit it was to meet for discussion either at Dr Goddard's lodgings in Wood Street or at the Bull's Head Tavern in Cheapside^[34]. There is no evidence that Petty was an original member of this company. But it appears probable that he was early invited to join their Invisible College^[35], and it is certain that when parliamentary reorganization of the more visible colleges at Oxford brought Goddard, Wallis, Wilkins, and other followers of the new philosophy to the venerable home of the old, they there found in Petty an enthusiastic colleague. Their Oxford meetings were held first in his lodgings at the apothecary's because of the convenience of examining drugs and the like when there was an occasion, "and after his removal to Ireland (though not so constantly) at the lodgings of Dr Wilkins^[36]." Those of the company who remained in London meanwhile continued their inquiries in a somewhat desultory manner until the Restoration brought back to the city the more prominent members of the Oxford branch, when it became necessary to change their place of meeting from the Bull's Head to the halls of Gresham College. Here the reunited company was in the habit of assembling for the discussion of questions in natural philosophy. They met regularly on Wednesdays and Thursdays, after the astronomy lectures of Christopher Wren and the geometry lectures of Lawrence Rooke^[37], and on Wednesday, the 28th of November, 1660, after Wren's lecture, the conversation chancing to turn upon foreign institutions for promoting physico-mathematical experimental learning, the company then present, of whom Petty was one, resolved to improve this meeting to a more regular way of debating things and that they might do something answerable and according to the manner in other countryes for the promoting of experimental philosophy^[38]. Among those who, in pursuance of this plan, were invited to read papers before the association thus informally organized, Petty's name appears repeatedly^[39] and when, with fitting circumstance, the association was incorporated (15 July, 1662) as the Royal Society for Improving of Natural Knowledge, he was named a charter member of its council.

Petty's famous plan for a "double bottomed" vessel, a sort of catamaran, which should excel in swiftness, weatherliness and stability any "single body" afloat, was probably set forth in one of his papers^[40] before the Society. To demonstrate the correctness of his views he built at least three such "sluice boats." The first was laid down at Dublin in 1662. She distinguished herself by beating all the boats in the harbour, and subsequently outsailed the Holyhead packet, the swiftest vessel that the King had there. Hereupon Petty brought her to England^[41] where, probably through the intervention of his friend Pepys, the attention of the Duke of York, then Lord High Admiral, and eventually the notice of the King himself was turned to the novel craft. Charles II. appears to have combined wonder at Petty's energy with quizzical amusement at his numerous projects. He at first chaffed the naviarchal Doctor without mercy^[42], but relented sufficiently to attend the launching of a new Double Bottom which he dubbed "The Experiment^[43]." She also proved herself a swift sailor, but was presently lost in the Irish Channel. This disaster, followed by the burning of several of his London houses in the great fire and by the adverse decisions of some of his Irish law suits^[44], restrained Petty from further shipbuilding experiments for nearly a score of years; but in 1682, while he was considering the establishment at Dublin of a philosophical society similar to that of London, the fit of the Double Bottom, as he tells us, did return very fiercely upon him. His new vessel, however, performed as abominably, as if built on purpose to disappoint in the highest degree every particular that was expected of her and caused him to stagger in much that he had formerly said. But so much did he prefer truth before vanity and imposture that he resolved to spend his life in examining the greatest and noblest of all machines, a ship, and if he found just cause for it to write a book against himself^[45].

The Restoration brought Petty no misfortune. A royal letter dated 2 Jan., 1660^[46], secured to him all lands that he had held on the 7th May, 1659, and the Acts of Settlement and of Explanation confirmed them to him by name. Like other owners of forfeited lands in Ireland, he suffered by the operation of the Court of Innocents in 1662, and was never able to convince himself that all who claimed innocency were in fact innocent^[47]. But in spite of his losses, he retained large Irish estates, and, in evidence of the King's approval, he was knighted^[48] and appears to have been appointed Surveyor-General of Ireland^[49]. The duties of this office at the time cannot have been more than nominal, for Petty continued to reside in London. During the Plague he withdrew to Durdens in Surrey where Evelyn found him, with Dr Wilkins and Mr Hooke, busied in contriving mechanical inventions^[50].

In the spring of 1666 Petty was once more called to Ireland by the operations of the Court of Claims, and took up his residence in Dublin. During the ensuing period of his second prolonged stay in Ireland, he thoroughly identified himself with the material interests of that kingdom. As an army physician and surveyor of forfeitures, he had felt himself at most but a sojourner. As a Kerry landholder, able from Mount Mangerton in that country to behold 50,000 acres of his own land^[51], he found abundant occupation, first in defending his titles during the sessions of the Court of Claims, and subsequently in managing his property. The uncertainty of titles in Ireland was great. "The Truth is," said Essex, "y^e Lands of Ireland have bin a meer scramble^[52]." Flaws and defects of various sorts, based on allegations of illegal forfeiture, or of unpaid quit rents, were being continually found out, and it had become "A principal trade in Ireland to... prevail with persons conversant with the Higher Powers to give grants of these Discoveries, and thereupon, right or wrong, to vex the Possessors into such a Composition as may be of Profit to the Prosecutors^[53]." Petty by no means escaped such attacks. He refused to compromise, and in consequence his time was so fully occupied with defending himself that in 1667 he grimly entered "Lawsuits" as his only work accomplished^[54].

Upon his escape from "the fire of this legal purgatory" Petty at once set about the improvement of what remained. His household was established at Dublin^[55], but his most extensive possessions were at Kenmare in Kerry, and there he gradually built up an "industrial colony" of protestants. To this enterprise he gave the closest attention, making the difficult overland journey to that "obscure corner of the world twice a year through thick and thin^[56]."

The prospect was not encouraging. His Irish neighbours were hostile, and of Kenmare itself a well informed contemporary reported that while the harbours were very good for ships to load at, the place was so rocky and bare that it would hardly maintain people enough to keep a brogue-maker employed^[57]. But there were compensating advantages. The remote bay abounded with salmon. Abundance of wood made charcoal cheap and therefore he established iron and copper works, hoping vainly to discover Irish ores for their supply. The protestant colonists prospered in trade, as he had observed the heterodox everywhere to do^[58], and Kenmare clearly demonstrated what thrift, backed by sufficient capital and directed by conspicuous shrewdness, could do for the real settlement of Ireland even under Charles II. After the accession of James II. the colonists fell victims to the jealousy of the surrounding Irish, whose violence was encouraged by Tyrconnel's policy, and thus the most successful of Petty's numerous experiments finally came to naught^[59].

As Petty's stake in the prosperity of Ireland grew larger, his interest in the affairs of the kingdom likewise increased. He had been a member of the Irish parliament of the Restoration^[60] and one of the commissioners appointed to execute the Act of Settlement, he had taken a prominent part in opposing the bill which prohibited the importation of Irish cattle into England^[61], and he had even attempted, though apparently quite ignorant of the law, to fill the position of a judge of admiralty; but the incidental discharge of these public duties had little or no effect upon the subsequent course of his life. His concern with the public revenues of Ireland was far more significant. As early as 1662 he had "frequently applied to present state and affairs of Ireland" certain of the conclusions reached in his "Treatise of Taxes." To the mere theoretical interest in the subject thus evinced, the events of later years added an interest of a very practical character. In 1668 charges of mismanagement of the Irish revenues were brought against Ormond, the Lord Lieutenant, and Anglesey, the Lord Treasurer^[62], by certain persons who desired to farm the revenues themselves. Their intrigue was successful, and the King agreed with them for seven years from Christmas, 1668, for ₤219,500 per annum^[63]. The management of the new farm was both unsatisfactory to the exchequer and oppressive to the subject^[64]. Especially did the energy of the farmers in collecting alleged arrears of quit-rents stir the landowners thus charged to active resistance. Among them was Petty. He promptly took up a "legal fight with the farmers," an account of which occupies for several years a large space in his correspondence with Southwell. His tone makes it evident that a considerable spice of personal animosity was thus added to his previous disgust with the inequalities of Irish taxation and in part explains his subsequent conduct. As the time drew near for the farm of 1668 to expire, he resolved to carry the war into the enemy's camp. Accordingly in the latter part of 1673 he made his way to London and became a bidder, on what he considered a reformed basis, for the new farm beginning Christmas Day, 1675. It appears that an agreement with him was actually made^[65] but Ranelagh's influence with Buckingham was sufficient to procure its abrogation and the substitution of the scandalous contract under which Ranelagh, Lord Kingston, and Sir James Shaen continued to mismanage the finances of Ireland until Ormond finally exposed them^[66]. Meanwhile Petty remained more than two years in London, renewing his old acquaintances and becoming once more a member of the Council of the Royal Society^[67].

In the summer^[68] of 1676 Petty once more took up his residence in Ireland, where, save for visits to London in the spring of 1680, he remained almost five years^[69]. It was during this period that he wrote the "Political Anatomy of Ireland," the "Political Arithmetick," and the "Observations on the Dublin Bills^[70]." He also fell into a new quarrel with the farmers, the result of which for a time overclouded even his invincible cheerfulness. His chief adversary, Ranelagh, being Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as farmer of the taxes, was able to procure his imprisonment for contempt of court^[71]. Thus vexed by the wicked works of man, he refreshed himself by pondering the wonderful works of God. The result was a Latin metrical translation of the 104th psalm, copies of which he sent with long complaints to Southwell and to Pepys. But his native whimsicality soon reasserted itself. "Lord," he exclaims, "that a man fifty-four years old should, after thirty-six years discontinuance, return to the making of verses which boys of fifteen years old can correct: and then trouble Clerks of the Council and Secretaries of the Admiralty with them^[72]."

The reappointment of Ormond in 1677 to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, in the room of Essex, whose opinion of Petty was not high^[73], brought about a lull in his dispute with the farmers, and after his recovery from the illness which had alarmed him in November of that year, there remained nothing to mar his pleasure in the prosperity of his affairs. He even began to think seriously of the possibility of exercising greater influence in public matters. About the time of his marriage he had been approached concerning a peerage. The condition then suggested was the payment of such a sum as, in view of his recent losses, Petty did not care to spend "in the market of ambition," and he thanked the royal emissary with scant courtesy^[74]. In 1679, when Temple was planning to remodel the Irish Privy Council upon the same lines that he had followed in England and the protestant party at court had marked Petty for appointment to the reconstituted body^[75], the offer of a peerage was again made to him. He seems in the mean time to have changed his opinion of "people who make use of titles and tools" and accordingly he made a journey to London, apparently with the intention of securing both the title and the seat at the Council table^[76]. But Charles II. answered the protestants that by their good leave he would chose his own council for Ireland, and Petty fearing that "a bare title without some trust might seem to the world a body without soul or spirit^[77]," declined the peerage for a second time. Perhaps he consoled himself, as on the previous occasion, by reflecting that he "had rather be a copper farthing of intrinsic value than a brass half-crown, how gaudily soever it be stamped and guilded."

Upon his return to Ireland, 22 March, 1680, his old controversy with the farmers broke out again, and the vigour of his attack upon their abuses^[78] attracted such attention that he was summoned to London in June, 1682, to take part in the discussion then going on before the Privy Council, as to the reorganization of the Irish revenues. He proposed the abolition of the farm, which was finally accomplished, and the imposition of a heavy ale license. Apparently he was not adverse to undertaking the direct collection of the taxes himself, but "by good luck" he "never solicited anybody in the case." His old rival. Sir James Shaen, now offered to increase the King's revenue nearly ₤ 8o,ooo a year upon a new farm—"a farm indeed, as it was drawn up" says Temple, "not of the revenue but of the crown of Ireland^[79]." But the powerful influence of Essex, whom Temple charges with intriguing for a reappointment to the Lord Lieutenancy, was thrown in Shaen's favour. Petty was represented by some to be a conjurer and by some to be notional and fanciful near up to madness^[80], the needs of the Exchequer were urgent, and the plan that promised ready cash was adopted. Deeply disappointed, Petty returned to Ireland in the summer of 1683 and solaced himself with a journey into Kerry, and presently with a renewal of the experiments that had occupied his mind some twenty years before^[81]. He built a new double bottom and was active in the establishment of the Dublin Philosophical Society^[82], for which he wrote several papers^[83].

News of the accession of James II. caused Petty to return to London in the early summer of 1685. The new occupant of the royal office had been not less gracious to him than was his predecessor, and Petty fancied the time now ripe to secure for Ireland the adminstrative reforms on which his heart was set. His plans for the revision of the farm and for the establishment, under his own supervision, of an Irish statistical office^[84] seemed for a time to be going well, and he attributed undue importance to the interviews which the King granted him^[85] upon this and other Irish matters. It was not until later that he appreciated the extent to which, under the new regime, his own personal interests were being drawn to his disadvantage into the larger currents of public affairs. Among the policies which, from time to time, were indistinctly indicated by the vacillations of James II., that looking towards independence of Louis XIV. and the resumption by England of a leading place in the affairs of Europe appealed to Petty with peculiar force. Ten years before, in the "Political Arithmetick," he had argued England's material fitness for such a place, and had proved, to his own satisfaction at least, that in wealth and strength she was potentially, if not actually, as considerable as France. He now reverted to the same theme, writing a series of essays, in order, by the methods of his political arithmetick, to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the King that London was the greatest city in the world. These efforts excited some attention among the curious, both at home and abroad^[86], but they produced no traceable effect upon the policy of James II.

Petty appears to have realized that independence of France demanded harmony at home, and to have welcomed James's Declarations of Indulgence as wise measures for the unification of national sentiment. Knowing as he did the immense material preponderance of the protestant interest both in England^[87] and especially in Ireland^[88]—a preponderance of which he did his best to convince the King by written and by oral argument^[89]—he was unable to believe that the Declarations, whose sentiments quite accorded with his own views^[90], were really issued in the sole interest of the Roman Catholics, and he continued to regard the boastings of Tyrconnel and the extreme Irish faction as without foundation in the intentions of the king^[91]. But at length tidings of the alarm prevalent among the English protestants in Ireland, and especially the news that McCarthy had been appointed governor of the province of Kerry, brought home to him the danger with which he himself, as well as the other protestants in Ireland, were threatened.

It is not certain whether Petty lived to know that Kenmare was destroyed. For some months he had been unwell. In spite of a "great lameness" he attended the annual dinner of the Royal Society on St Andrew's day. He went home ill. His foot gangrened and on December 16 he died at his house in Piccadilly.

On Trinity Sunday, June 2, 1667, Petty had married Elizabeth, daughter of his old friend Sir Hardress Waller, and widow of Sir Maurice Fenton. Though Lady Petty, "a very beautifull and ingeniose lady, browne, with glorious eies^[92]," was much younger than her husband and of a taste as magnificent as his was simple^[93], their married life was most happy. Nowhere does Petty appear to greater advantage than in his letters to his wife, and her letters to him fully bear out Evelyn's judgment, "she was an extraordinary wit as well as beauty and a prudent woman."

Three of Petty's contemporaries, men of different temperaments and attainments, have put on record their impressions of him. John Aubrey says that he was a proper handsome man, measured six-foot high, with a good head of brown hair moderately turning up. His eyes were a kind of goose-grey, very short sighted and as to aspect beautiful; they promised sweetness of nature and they did not deceive, for he was a marvellous good natured person. His eyebrows were thick, dark and straight, his head very large. Evelyn declared him so exceeding nice in sifting and examining all possible contingencies that he ventured at nothing which is not demonstration. There was not in the whole world his equal for a superintendent of manufactures and improvement of trade, or to govern a plantation. "If I were a prince, I should make him my second counsellor at least. There is nothing difficult to him... Sir William was, with all this, facetious and of easy conversation, friendly and courteous, and had such a faculty of imitating others that he would take a text and preach, now like a grave orthodox divine, then falling into the Presbyterian way, then to the fanatical, the Quaker, the monk and friar, the Popish priest, with such admirable action and alteration of voice and tone, as it was not possible to abstain from wonder, and one would swear to hear several persons, or forbear to think he was not in good earnest an enthusiast and almost beside himself; then, he would fall out of it into a serious discourse; but it was very rarely he would be prevailed on to oblige the company with this faculty, and that only amongst most intimate friends. My Lord Duke of Ormond once obtained it of him, and was almost ravished with admiration; but bye and bye, he fell upon a serious reprimand of the faults and miscarriages of some Princes and Governors, which, though he named none, did so sensibly touch the Duke, who was then Lieutenant of Ireland, that he began to be very uneasy, and wished the spirit laid which he had raised, for he was neither able to endure such truths, nor could he but be delighted. At last, he melted his discourse to a ridiculous subject, and came down from the joint stool on which he had stood; but my lord would not have him preach any more. He never could get favour at Court, because he outwitted all the projectors who came near him. Having never known such another genius, I cannot but mention these particulars, among a multitude of others that I could produce." And Pepys, who had heard everybody, found Petty "the most rational man that ever he heard speak with a tongue."

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1. The earliest printed notice of Petty's life is in Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses (1691). It is based upon memoranda by Petty procured for Wood by John Aubrey (cf. post, p. xl), and upon Petty's published writings. His autobiographical will was first published in the Tracts relating chiefly to Ireland (1769; see Bibliography, no. 27) and various letters by and about him were printed in Boyle's Works (1744) and in the Capel Correspondence (1770). In 1813 Aubrey's Lives were included in the "Bodleian Letters" edited by Walker and Bliss, and soon thereafter the printing of Evelyn's and of Pepys's diaries brought further facts to light. In 1851 Petty's History of the Down Survey was edited for the Irish Archæological Society. Finally, in 1895, appeared Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice's Life of Sir William Petty, chiefly from Private Documents hitherto unpublished (London: John Murray), a record of Petty's acts and thoughts which leaves little to be desired in point of completeness and authenticity. Of the private documents used by Lord E. Fitzmaurice, the most important appear to be the letters exchanged between Petty and Sir Robert Southwell (pp. lvi—lvii). In preparing the above account of Petty, which is confined to those phases of his life that may have suggested, or may serve to explain parts of his writings, I have drawn upon the Life without reserve, and have cited other authorities, in general, only in case the citation given is not to be found in the Life.
2. Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. by A. Clark (Oxford, 1898), ii. 140. This is far preferable to the 1813 ed.
3. Some printed versions of Petty's will read "University of Oxon," instead of "University of Caen."
4. At the University of Leyden he was matriculated as a student of medicine the 26th May, 1644, his twenty-first birthday. Album studiosorum Acad. Lugd. Bat., 350.
5. Anthony Petty, the father, was buried 14 July, 1644. Latham's transcript of the Romsey parish register, Addl. MS. 26,775, f°. 10b, British Museum.
6. Cf. his prospectuses, Bibliography, i, 2.
7. Pp. 74—75.
8. Bibliography, no. 3.
9. Hartlib to Boyle, 16 Nov., 1647, Boyle's Works vi. 76; Petty's Reflections, 164. Cf. note on p. 118, and supplement to the Bibliography.
10. On Petty's connection with the Royal College of Physicians, which began about this time, see the note on p. 27.
11. An account of this exploit, embellished with verse in English and in Latin, is contained in the pamphlet, News from the Dead, which was published at Oxford by Robinson in 1650 and again in 1651. The second edition is carelessly reprinted in Morgan's Phoenix Britannicus, 233—248. The authorship of the pamphlet has not been ascertained. Wood ascribes it to Richard Watkins Clark, Life and Times of Wood, i. 155. But Derham, who wrote in 1707, had been informed that the writer was Dr Ralph Bathurst, one of the participating physicians. Derham's Psycho and Astro-theology, i. 236, note. I see no sufficient reason for thinking that Petty wrote it. The mention of Hester Ann Green among his "works" (Suppl. to Bibliography) may refer to the experiment of resuscitation, and not to the account of it.
12. Ward, Lives of the Professors of Gresham College, 228.
13. Burroughs, Register, 335.
14. He appears to have left Ireland 16 June, 1659 (History of the Down Survey, 301) and to have reached London within a week. Mercurius Politicus, 23 June, 1659. H. Cromwell's letters commending Petty are printed in Ward's Lives, 220.
15. The chief authorities on the seventeenth century surveys of Ireland are W.H. Hardinge's papers in the publications of the Royal Irish Academy (Transactions, xxiv. Antiquities, pp. 3—118, 265—316, 379—420, Proceedings, viii. pp. 39—55) and General Sir T.A. Larcom's edition of Petty's History of the Down Survey, published for the Irish Archæological Society. See also Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement and chapter two of Fitzmaurice's Life of Petty.
16. The contest between Petty and Worsley, who belonged to the extreme wing of the English in Ireland, was complicated with the differences between Fleetwood and Henry Cromwell in ways which it is not now possible to trace. Cromwell, who became Petty's steadfast friend, took up his residence at Dublin as Major-General of the Forces and virtual Deputy in July, 1655, while the Down Survey was still in progress; Fleetwood returned to England in the following September. Concerning both the dispute with Worsley and that with Sanchey, which followed the completion of the survey, it should be borne in mind that we have Petty's story only. General Larcom apparently had a high opinion of Worsley's abilities. See his note to Petty's History, 320—321.
17. History, 119.
18. See note on p. 6, cf. Bibliography.
19. History, 208. After a time, but not until its work was nearly completed, a fourth member was added to the commission.
20. Reflections, 116—117.
21. History, 248.
22. History, 258—262.
23. H. C. Journals, vii. 612.
24. History, 289.
25. 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, 685. In Dec, 1660, he was arrested (Rugge's MS. Diary, quoted by Taylor, England under Charles II. 40) on suspicion of taking part in an alleged plot against kingly power, and his name appears as one of the thirty republicans whom the House of Commons proposed, 24 May, 1661, to exempt from pardon and confirmation of estates. Carte, Ormond ii. 226 n, 228. After that he disappears from public view, but it is known that he died in Ireland about 1685.
26. History, 299, 301; Reflections, 70—75.
27. H. Cromwell to Fleetwood, June, 1659, Thurloe, vii. 684.
28. A Brief of Proceedings between S^r Hierome Sankey and Dr William Petty, 1659. See Bibliography, no. 4.
29. Reflections upon some Persons and Things in Ireland, 1660. See Bibliography, no. 5.
30. It was not published until 1851, see Bibliography, no. 31 and cf. pp. xiii, xiv. Mr Hardinge declares that "the accuracy of the facts adduced" by Petty "in his defence have [sic] been fully borne out by the researches I have made amongst the yet surviving documents of the period." Trans. R. I. Acad. xxiv. Antiquities, p. 21.
31. They are known only by his account of them in the Reflections (pp. 60—61): "I have also written a profest Answer to Sir Hieromes Eleven last and greatest Articles, containing the proofs of what is herein but barely alledged, which I may not publish till after my tryal.... There is another piece of quite a contrary nature, being indeed a Satyre; which though it contain little of seriousness, yet doth it allow nothing of untruth: 'Tis a Gallery wherein you will see the Pictures of my chief Adversaries hang'd up in their proper colours; tis intended for the honest recreation of my ingenious friends."
32. P. 23, note.
33. Ante, p. xiv.
34. Dr John Wallis's Account of some passages in his own Life, in Hearne's ed. of Langtoft's Chronicle (1725), vol. i. p. clxiv. This with Sprat's History of the Royal Society, gives nearly all that is known of Petty's connection with the inchoate Society.
35. Masson, Life of Milton, iii. 665; Fitzmaurice, 15.
36. Wallis, loc. cit.
37. Ward, Lives of the Professors of Gresham College, 91, 96.
38. Birch, History of the Royal Society, i. 14.
39. Birch, i. 7, 12, 13, 15, 19, 55—65, 83, 124 etc.; cf. Bibliography, no. 7.
40. Anthony à-Wood's suggestion that the "Thoughts on the Philosophy of Shipping" which Petty presented to the Society in 1662, may be the same as the Treatise of Naval Philosophy printed over his name in Hale's Account of Several New Inventions in 1691 (Bibliography, no. 25) cannot be reconciled with the extraordinary value which the members of the Society appear to have set upon Petty's "thoughts." But if we recall the extravagant expectations of his "sluice boat" which he himself cherished, it is easy to see why Lord Brouncker, as president of the Society, might declare with alarm that a paper describing it was "too great an arcanum of state to be commonly perused," and accordingly forbid its printing. Cf. Aubrey, Brief Lives, II. 147. Pepys appears to have had a copy of Petty's paper in 1682. Pepys to Wood, 16 June, 1682, Rawlinson MS. A 194, f°. 279, Bodleian Library.
41. Or perhaps another boat built upon similar lines.
42. Pepys, Diary, I Feb., 1664.
43. Evelyn, Diary, 22 Mch., 1675.
44. See pp. xxiv, xxv.
45. To Southwell, 18 Oct., 1682, Fitzmaurice, 256—257. I cannot find that he ever wrote the book.
46. Officially confirmed Feb., 1661, Carte Papers, XLII. 492, Bodleian Library. On the 25 March, 1661, certain unprofitable lands in Kerry were settled on Petty "in consideration of his early endeavours for the King's Restoration, the good affection he bears his Majesty, and his abilities to serve him." Fourteenth Rept. Hist. MSS., Com. pt. 7, p. 70.
47. See pp. 199, 601. It was during a brief residence in Ireland, undertaken with a view to defending his interests against the Innocents, that Petty built the first Double Bottom and began his enquiries into the Dublin bills of mortality. See p. 398, note.
48. 11 April, 1661, Le Neve, Pedigrees of the Knights, 133; Birch, i. 41.
49. Fitzmaurice, 107; Cabinet Portrait Gallery, viii. 37. Hardinge, however, says that John Pettie, apparently Sir William's cousin, "was Surveyor-General from the Restoration in 1660 to the 13th of February, 1667, when Sir James Sheen succeeded Pettie." Trans. R. I. Acad. xxiv. Antiquities, p. 18.
50. Diary, 4 Aug., 1665. Petty appears to have given up his medical practice some years before the Plague of 1665. His plan for lessening the plagues of London (p. 109, note) contains no medical suggestion whatsoever.
51. Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 142.
52. To Harbord, 28 March, 1674, Essex Papers, i. 201.
53. Polit. Anat. ch. xi. post, p. 195.
54. Collection of his "several works" in supplement to Bibliography. At a later date Petty seems to have attempted the "trade" which he so strongly reprehended. In 1673 he joined Sir Henry Ingoldsby in a proposal to make Charles II. an annual money payment for a patent of certain "concealed lands" in Ireland. Essex declared that "nothing can be more illegall & oppressing to y^e subject than such a Patent, whereby opportunity & warr^t will be given to these Projectors to raveell into y^e Settlement of all men's Estates whatever, who, tho' they had never so just & clear Titles, will rather come to a composition than endure y^e charges and vexations that these men will put them to." To Shaftesbury 4 May, 1673, Essex Papers, i. 82.
55. He married 7 June, 1667, Elizabeth, daughter of his friend. Sir Hardress Waller.
56. Petty to Graunt, 24 Dec, 1672, Fitzmaurice, 234.
57. Peter Bronsdon to the Navy Commissioners, 17 March, 1671, C.S.P. Dom. 1671, pp. 135, 184. Bronsdon had examined much of Ireland in search of timber for the Navy (ib. p. xxxiv.) and found none so well suited for the purpose as that growing on Petty's Kerry estates. lb, p. 77, 136, 183, 207, 521.
58. Political Arithmetick, p. 263.
59. A spirited account of Kenmare, based on Smith's Ancient and Present State of Kerry, is given by Macaulay, History of England, Vol. iii., ch. xii., pp. 108—110.
60. He served with Sir William Temple on the Commons' Committee upon the means of advancing the trade of Ireland. Mountmorres, History of the Irish Parliament, 96. Cf. post, pp. 225—231.
61. See note on pp. 161, 162.
62. Carte, ii. 368; Cal. S. P. Dom., 1667—68, pp. 532, 543, 557, 564; 1668, 90.
63. Howard, Revenue and Exchequer of Ireland, i. 57.
64. On the 30 Sept., 1670, the deficit for the half year was ₤ 72,953 and the debt was ₤ 245,510. Cal. S. P. Dom., 1671, p. 54.
65. Essex to the Lords Justices, 28 Sept., 1675, Capel Correspondence, 403—404.
66. Carte, Ormond, ii. 451—464.
67. Birch iii. 112. In December, 1673, he was elected Vice-President of the Society (ib. 123) and in the following November he read before it his Discourse of Duplicate Proportion (see pp. 622—624, also Bibliography, no. 8), the only printed production of this visit to London. Cf. Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 144.
68. On 1 July, 1676, Dr Ent wrote that Petty was about to go to Ireland. Ballard MS. 33, f°. 4, Bodleian Library.
69. He reached Chester on his way to London, 5 June, 1682. Fitzmaurice, 250.
70. Cf. pp. 122, 235, 236, 480.
71. See, in addition to Fitzmaurice, pp. 169—173, the extracts from Petty's letters in Thorpe's Cat. lib, MSS. bibl. Southwellianæ, no. 710; cf. Petty's opinion of the Chancellor and Sir Richard Cox's comment on it, p. 205, post.
72. To Southwell, 3 April, 1677, Fitzmaurice, 172. Not all Petty's friends thought so meanly of his verses as he himself professed to do. In the privacy of his diary Evelyn wrote of Petty (22 March, 1675) "there is no better Latin poet living when he gives himself that diversion." See Bibliography, no. 9.
73. "I am confident in all his Majestie's 3 Kingdomes, there lives not a more grating man than Sir William Petty" wrote Essex to Shaftesbury, 4 May, 1673. Essex Papers, i. 83.
74. His letter is given by Fitzmaurice, p. 155.
75. Carte, Ormond, ii. 494, 495.
76. Ossory to Ormond, 5 June, 1680, from Windsor: "Sir William Petty has desired mee to gett him to be made a Councellor.... Without your permission I shall not move in this matter." Seventh Rept. Hist. MSS. Com., 739 b.
77. Lady Petty to Edmund Waller, 8 March, 1680, Fitzmaurice, 245.
78. The farmers were also far behind in their payments to the Exchequer. On the 18 Feby., 1679, Danby wrote to Ormond that if some speedy care be not taken the present farm of the revenue of Ireland must break in the hands of those which now manage it. Fourteenth Rept. Hist. MSS. Com., pt. 7, p. 50.
79. Works, ii. 526. Ranelagh predicted that Shaen would prove unable to execute his proposals. Ranelagh to Ormond, 12 July, 1681, Fourteenth Rept. Hist. MSS. Com., pt. 7, p. 53.
80. Ormond's report to Petty, 16 Sept., 1682, Fitzmaurice 252. In Ackerman's Monies received and paid for Secret Services of Charles II. and James II., p. 58, is an entry, dated 9 Dec, 1682, of £2 "for copies of l'res concerning S^r W^m Petty and others."
81. See p. xxiii above.
82. Molyneaux Correspondence, in Dublin University Magazine, xviii. 489; Birch, iv. 341; Wilde, in Proc. R. I. Acad., iii. 160—176. On Petty's previous connection with the Collie of Physicians at Dublin, cf. p. 165 n.
83. Bibliography, 14—16. There were also papers on concentric circles and other subjects which have not been printed, Wilde, op. cit., 164, 171, 172.
84. See pp. 480, 485, 486, cf. 396.
85. See p. 546.
86. See pp. 452, 502, 503, 522, 524.
87. Cf. his Telling of Noses, p. 461 note [where read 11870 for 11878 and 178¹⁰⁄₁₃ for 178¹⁰⁄₁₀]. Regarding "the Bishops late numbering of the Communicants," upon which Petty's calculations for England were based, Mr W.C. Abbott kindly writes me that "in 1676 the Earl of Danby, then Lord High Treasurer and Chief Minister to Charles II., ordered a census of religious bodies in England by dioceses and committed the task of making it to the Anglican clergy. Among the Leeds papers (Hist. MSS. Com., vol. xi. pt. 7, pp. 14 seq.), in consequence, we find several documents dealing with the matter. The first is a letter from Danby to Bishop Morley regarding this inquiry, which was set on foot to demonstrate to the King by actual figures the vast superiority in numbers of the Anglican Church over all other religious bodies in England. This, as the Bishop says, will probably break down the king's objection to the rigid suppression of conventicles, and he assumes that it is for that purpose. Rather, one would say from a political point of view, it was to demonstrate to Charles the absolute futility of his religious policy."
88. The figures from the Political Anatomy, pp. 156, 138—144, are familiar from the use made of them by Macaulay and Lecky. Those in the Treatise of Ireland, pp. 561, 590—596, now first published, are not less striking.
89. Fitzmaurice, 280.
90. Cf. pp. 70—73, 262—264, post; Fitzmaurice, pp. 234—243, 270. In Rawlinson MS. A 171, ff. 274—275, is a dialogue on Liberty of Conscience endorsed "S^r W^m Petty 's Paper written at my desire & given me by himselfe a little before his Death. S[amuel] P[epys]." The only theological suggestion contained in "Twelve articles of a good catholique and good patriot's creed" found in Petty's pocket after his death (Fitzmaurice, 310) is "that Liberty of Religion and Naturalization be secured."
91. Cf. pp. 577, 591.
92. Aubrey, ii. 142.
93. "When I who knew him in mean circumstances, have been in his splendid palace, he would himself be in admiration how he arrived at it; nor was it his value and inclination for splendid furniture or the curiosities of the age; but his elegant lady could endure nothing mean, or that was not magnificent. He was very negligent himself, and rather so of his own person, and of a philosophic temper. What a to do is here he would say, I can lie in straw with as much satisfaction." Evelyn, Diary, 22 March, 1675.