Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/95

 'His adversaries were persons of extraordinary pertinacity, sometimes raising up one, sometimes another evil report, sometimes asserting one kind of crime, sometimes another; sometimes accusing him before the Council, sometimes causing him to be convened before the general and chief officers; then setting up a court in the Green Chamber at Dublin, under the pretence of deciding controversies between soldier and soldier; and sometimes designing to trouble him at law, wherein they knew he had noe experience or dexterity to defend himself.'

After the dissolution of the second Parliament called by the Protector, in 1658, the struggle between him and the Anabaptists continued, and the favour shown to Dr. Petty by Henry Cromwell was a sufficient reason for his being the mark of the attacks of the religious fanatics. He was censured by the old surveyors, the protégés of Worsley, many of whom he had had to dismiss as incompetent, the evidence against them being only too clear. Then 'another more dreadful clamour arose,' that he had employed drunken surveyors; and that through their drunkenness unprofitable land, especially in Kerry, had been set out as profitable land to the detriment of the soldiery, and to his own advantage. His foes declared him to be 'a Socinian, a Jesuit, and an atheist.' He, on the other hand, considered them as 'hypocrites, proud Pharisees and Ananiases, following Christ for loaves.' They accused him of having profited by his position as Commissioner to rob the army, to plunder the adventurers, and to defraud the State. He charged them with having wished to do so, and of having only failed through his own opposition.

Where open attack had failed, flattery, it was thought, might succeed, and his enemies now offered, as a pretended mark of distinction, to give him the command of a troop of horse, 'believing that being no soldier, he should soon fall into some misfortune, for which they would disgrace