Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/323

 his coming to Ireland. So lett (I say) a dozen others whom I can name, tell to the next Powers the cause of their coming to their estates: I say to the next powers; for the last powers that gave them were but the summer; the next may be the winter, and frost nip them. I have already past the summer and winter both, as I told Sir George Lane, upon occasion given. Again, adieu.'

July 31, 1687.—'I told you that in Sep. 1652, when I first landed in Ireland that I had £280 in cash, and £120 out of Brazenose; the Anatomy Lecture of Oxford; and Gresham College; and that I had £365 pr annum salary, and the value of £35 per annum more out of the State's apotheca: in all £520 per annum, besides my practice (which tho' it were not in those days like Willis, Lowse, or Short's) made my superlucration full £800 a year; which for 4⅓ years, to Xmas 1656, was £3,456; which made my aforementioned £480 to be £13,060, as in my letter; which is about £2,176 pr ann., a sum which Boys have gotten in the late offices, and which I have only had for measuring the whole world with the Chain and Instrument for near 6 times about, the monuments whereof are to be seen in the Survey. ... I have indices and catalogues of the gross wrongs I suffered between 1656 and 1686 by the Anabaptists, Presbyterians, and the 49 men, with the rest of the "drinking" interest, till the present time, which I conceive the new expected Powers cannot well outdo. Notwithstanding all I have said, I apprehend it will be said to me:

Nevertheless, I will endeavour to leave in some good hand wherewith to shew I have deserved a better fate; that I am no mushroom, or upstart; but that my estate is the oyle of flint, and that "ut apes feci geometriam."'

Illustrating this last adage, he had devised a coat of