Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/96

 or punish him at a court martial of their own packing.' But the wary Doctor, knowing full well what was intended, refused the insidious honour and declined to be tempted with the prospect of enjoying military rank. A more agreeable distinction, however, awaited him, for at this moment, 'even,' as he says, 'when the cry of his adversaries was loudest,' he received the appointment at a salary of 400l. a year of Additional Clerk to the Council, and Private Secretary to the Lord Deputy, which title Henry Cromwell now at length assumed. The honour was evidently intended as a rebuke to his assailants.

'The access, however, of these new and more honourable trusts,' he relates, 'did but quench his fires with oyle, and provoked his ambitious adversaries to think of hewing down the tree uppon a twigg whereof he stood; so as by multiplying their surmises and clamours hee became the Robin Goodfellow and Oberon of the country; for as heretofore domestics in the country did sett on foot the opinion of Robin Goodfellow and the fairies, that when themselves had stolen junkets, they might accuse Robin Goodfellow of itt; and when themselves had been revelling at unreasonable hours of the night, they might say the fairies danced; and when by wrapping themselves in white sheets, they might go any-whither without opposition, upon the accompt of there being ghosts and walking spirits; in the same manner several of the Agents of the Army, when they could not give a good accompt of themselves to those that entrusted them, to say that Dr. Petty was the cause of the miscarriage was a ready and credible excuse.'