Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/194

 of the Barbary corsairs, who, under the guidance of some renegade pilots from Liverpool, were making the navigation of the Channel dangerous; at another he is wrecked on his way to England, and narrowly escapes losing his portmanteau and all his business papers. In 1677 he is very ill, but mind triumphs over body; and he grimly announces his wish that 'his friends and enemies should both alike know that he is in a much better condition to chastise the one and cherish the other than at any former period.' 'Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito' is his favourite quotation. He tells Aubrey that some men may accidentally have come into the way of preferment by lying at an inn and there contracting an acquaintance on the road; but he proposes to be the architect of his own fortunes, and does not expect to get legacies in the future, having observed that he had got very few in the past, and that they had not been paid; but he intends to claim his own.

The struggle with the farmers of the revenue was continuing with unabated fury, exasperated by the attempt made by the Lord-Lieutenant in 1674, and probably suggested by Sir William, to carry out a proper survey for revenue purposes of the assessments for the hearth money. Sir William, through the combined influence of his own obstinate determination not to give way, and that of his enemies to ruin him, at last succeeded in getting into Chancery, both in England and Ireland, and was arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court. 'The two Chanceries,' he says, writing to Southwell, 'the one of England and the other of Ireland, are two sore blisters upon my affairs. My throat is also sore with crying for relief; nor hath paying nor bleeding done me any good. I cannot continue the parallel between your fortune and mine in the Point of recovering Losses; those who wrong you are in Irons and Chains, and those who abuse me have Rods of Iron