Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/151

 The net sum which, after paying all outgoings, remained to Dr. Petty as the result of his labours was 13,000l. For the Army Survey he received 9,000l., and 600l. for the survey of the adventurers' land. He had saved 500l. before going to Ireland, and laid by 800l.— viz. two years' salary of his official post as Clerk of the Council—and 2,100l. from his salary as Physician-General and his private practice. For the distribution of the adventurers' land he had not as yet been paid at all. Of the above sums he invested part in debentures at a time when, as he wrote in his will, 'men bought without art, interest, or authority, as much land for 10s. in real money as in this year, 1685, yields 10s. per annum above His Majesty's quit rents.' With the rest he bought the Earl of Arundel's house and grounds in Lothbury, known as Token-House Yard. That he had bought debentures was one of the charges by which Sir Hierome Sankey, though fully aware that his own conduct had been far more open to criticism in this respect than that of Dr. Petty, attempted to inflame the public mind in England when bringing forward his main accusations as to lands having been wrongfully kept back from the distribution to the army.

The lands which Sir William had acquired were principally in Kerry: the county which the original allottees of Irish land did all in their power to avoid, because of the apparently rough and unprofitable character of the soil and the wildness of the inhabitants. 'When we first came into that country,' says Mr. Lewin Smith, one of the assistant surveyors, 'wee viewed the place in a generall way, considering the lands to be exceedingly bad; and was about not to returne any part of the said countrey profitable, but only arable and good pasture, though our instructions did make mention of severall kinds of pasture, which did include and reach the worst pasture, viz. rocky, fursy, heathy, mountaine, and bog, &c.; but yet it was soe bad, that wee intended to proceed. Butt then comming to the more remote part, viz. Iveragh, Dunkeron, Glanneroughty barronyes, the greatest part of Corkeaguiny barrony, the parishes of Kilcommen, Killagha, &c, and the