Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/121

 great Name so openly blasphemed!' With these words he withdrew. A few days after he was no more. The splendid obsequies decreed to him were the funeral of the Commonwealth, just as those of the Protector had marked the end of the Dictatorship. Nobody now remained except Monk, and Monk had already mentally decreed the return of the exiled King as the only measure which could prevent another civil war, in which there would have been not two, but four contending parties, as well as a rebellion in Ireland.

'I,' said Dr. Petty in his own defence, 'finding the Lord Henry Cromwell to be a person of much honour and integrity to his trust as also of a firm faith and zeal to God and to his church, and withall to have translated me from a stranger into his bosom, thinking me worthy of the nearest relation to himself, and who when all tricks and devices were used to surprize me by foul play, would still be careful I might have fair play; I did (as in justice and gratitude as I was bound) serve him faithfully and industriously. I was his Secretary without one penny of reward. I neglected my own private interest to promote his, and consequently I preferred his interest before any man's, and I served his friends before his enemies. Moreover, because he should not be jealous of me, I became as a stranger to other Grandees, though without the least distaste intended to them. When he was shaken, I was content to fall. I did not lessen him to his enemies. To magnify myself I never accused him to excuse myself. Moreover, though I never promised to live and die with him, which is the common phrase, yet I did stay to see his then interest, which I had espoused, dead and buried, esteeming that then and when a convenient time for mourning was over, that if I should marry another interest, and be as fixed unto it as I had been to his, I should do no more than I always in his prosperity told him I would do, if I saw occasion.' Therefore, if at the Restoration, in the dedication of some experiments in navigation to the King, Dr. Petty spoke of the change as under