Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/97

 And so on throughout the whole chapter. Whatever went wrong was the fault of Dr. Petty; for whatever went right small thanks were due to him: the disappointed accused him of being the cause of their disappointment; and the envious affected to believe he had been corrupted by those to whom the best lands had fallen.

As the surveyors themselves could not be proved to have been all either dishonest, incompetent, or drunkards, he was accused, notwithstanding the precautions he had taken, of having maliciously made them return unprofitable as profitable land, to increase his own gains, and when it was pointed out that special precautions had been taken to prevent this, his methods, it was said, were employed 'to obscure his gaines,' by puzzling and confounding the surveyors, and so making them amenable to his purposes. To some he was 'a juggler; to others he was 'Judas Iscariot;' to all the discontented alike he was the common enemy, to be denounced and hunted down as best they might, by force or by fraud, according to the circumstances of the hour.

The Anabaptists now commenced an organised attack on the Protector in England, and their influence made itself felt in Ireland in a general sense of trouble and unrest. 'It is the worms or vipers lying in the gutts of the Commonwealth,' Henry Cromwell wrote home to Lord Fauconberg, 'which have caused the frettings and gnawings you mention; and this I rather believe, because of the five hundred maggots which you say are now again busily crawling out of the excrements of Mr. Freak's corrupted church.' 'I never lived a more miserable life than now,' Dr. Petty wrote to Robert Boyle. But, supported as he was by Henry Cromwell, he could have continued to defy his enemies, if at this critical moment the death of the Protector had not altered the whole character of the political situation, and threatened to expose him to far more serious dangers than any which he had hitherto had to fear.