Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/346

 body of common Arithmetick, the practicall Geometry and Astronomy conducing to Navigation, Dialing, &c, with the knowledge of severall Mathematicall Trades, at which, and having been at the University of Caen, preferred me to the King's Navy, where, at the age of 20 years, I had gotten up about three score pounds, wth as much mathematices as any of my age was known to have had. With this provision, Anno 1643, when the civill warrs betwixt the King and Parliament great hatt, I went into the Netherlands and France for three years, and having vigorously followed my studies, especially that of medicine, att Utretch, Leydon, Amsterdam, and Paris, I returned to Rinsey, where I was born, bringing back with me my brother Anthony, whom I had bred, with about ten pounds more then I had carried out of England; with this £70 and my endeavours, in less than four years more I obtained my degree of Doctor of Phisick in Oxford, and forthwith thereupon to be admitted into the College of Phistians, London, and into severall clubbs of the virtuous, after all which expenses defrayed I had left twenty-eight pounds; and in the next two years being made Fellow of Brasen Nose, and Anatomy Professor in Oxford, and also Reader at Gersham Colledge, I advanced my said stock to about four hundred pounds, and with £100 more advanced and given me to go for Ireland into full five hundred pounds. Upon the tenth of September, 1652, I landed att Waterford, in Ireland, Phisitian to the army who had suppressed the Rebellion began in the year 1641, and to the Generall of the same, and the Head Quarters, at the rate of 20s. per diem, at which I continued till June, 1659, gaining by my practice about £400 per annum, above the said sallary. About September, 1654, I, perceiving that the admeasurement of the lands forfeited by the forementioned Rebellion, and intended to regulate the satisfaction of the soldiers who had suppressed the same, was most unsufficiently and absurdly managed, I obtained a contract, dated the 11th of December, 1654, for making the said admeasurement, and by God's blessing so performed the same as that I gained about nine thousand pounds thereby, which, with the £500 above-mentioned, my sallary of 20s. per diem, the benefit of my practice, together with £600 given me for directing an after survey of the adventrs lands, and £800 more for 2 years' sallary as Clerk of the Councell, raised me an estate of about thirteen thousand pounds in ready and reall money, at a time when, without art, interest, or authority, men bought as much lands for 10s. in reall money, as in this year, 1685, yield 10s. per ann. rent above his Maties quitt rents. Now I bestowed part of the said £13,000 in soldier's debentures, part in purchasing the Earl of Arundell's house and garden in Lothbury,