Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/335

 his intention of yet being even with them. If he was to die, he would fight up to the end and die in harness; and, notwithstanding the acute pain he suffered, he attended the annual dinner of the Royal Society. But it was the last flicker of the expiring lamp, and he was observed by his friends to be discomposed. Immediately afterwards he sickened, his foot gangrened, mortification set in, and on the night of December 16 he died in a house in Piccadilly, opposite to St. James's Church. It was just a year before King James fled from England.

'Sir Wm Petty,' Lord Weymouth wrote to Sir Robert Southwell, 'dyed whilst I was in towne, and I think I saw him the moment he was taken ill. You know St. Andrew's day is the Election of Officers for the Society, when my Lord Brouncker was again chosen President. At dinner at Pentack's, where we had but one bottle of wine between two, Sir Wm Petty fell very roughly upon Mr. Tovey, to soe unusual a degree for a man of his breeding and temper, that my Lord Carbery and I wondered at it, and fancied he might have drunk some wine in the morning; but it appeared afterwards to be the beginning of his distemper, for he went home ill, and the humours fell into his leg, which gangrened in a very few days. The subject of his dispute with Mr. Tovey was about the weight of woods; Sir William affirming that Quince wood was the heaviest of all woods, and though Mr. T. argued little and very modestly, Sir William fell upon him with reproachful language. He was certainly a very great man, and I heartily wish some knowing person might have the perusal of his papers, for I am told he had excellent things by him. It was for some time observed by some of his friends that the injustices done to him in Ireland, where he had lost above 700l. per annum very much discomposed him, upon the apprehension that the same method would strip him of the rest.'

Charles Petty had returned to England before his father's death. 'Dear Cousin,' he wrote to Edward Southwell, 'if there be anything to ease the great affliction I lie under for the loss of such a father, the part Sir Robert and yourself take in