Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/159

 beleeve that if writeing or any other labour of mine would availe you, that your Ladyshipp should not want it. I must now desire your Ladyship to renew a letter of Attorney which I formerly had from my dear friend (who is now with God), whereby to enable mee to gett some right from Captn Stopford, who hath abused mee and his best benefactors exceedingly in the matter of the arreares, which I purchased from our friend, who dyed since I commenced a certaine suit against that man. Wherefore I desire your Ladyshipp to send mee a new letter of Attorney to recover the said arreares, with leave to take out letters of administration here for Collonell Cromwell's personall estate in this Kingdome, of which nature these arrears are which I bought of him. And if there bee any other personall estate of his in Ireland which may bee recovered, it shall bee to your Ladyshipps advantage onely.

'Doctor Wood knoweth all the circumstances of this business, and I hope will inform your Ladyshipp that there can bee noe inconvenience in doeing what I desire, even although there were noe legall obligation (as there is) for doeing the same. I shall send a man down to your Ladyship to bee witnesse to this Instrument. In the meane time I am, 'Madam,

'Your Ladishipps most

humble and faithfull servant,

'. 'For Madam Cromwell at Spinny, these.'

In the work entitled 'The Political Anatomy of Ireland,' published in 1672, Sir William makes an estimate of the general result of the successive convulsions in the land tenure of Ireland between 1641 and 1663. He takes the area of the country to be 10,500,000 Irish acres, of which 7,500,000 were good meadow, arable, and pasture. Of this amount 5,200,000 belonged in 1641 to 'Papists and sequestered Protestants.' Of all the land seized by the usurpers,' the Papists, he says, recovered 2,340,000 acres; the