Page:Petty 1851 The Down Survey.djvu/17

 the monarchy. Again, in the present work, as well as in the "Reflections," he always speaks of Henry Cromwell, for whom he appears to have entertained a sincere respect and esteem, in the past tense, but had not yet arrived at the time when, in some of his later writings, he adopts the phraseology of the monarchy, and calls Oliver "the Usurper."

He had, therefore, only reached his thirty-sixth year (having been born in 1623), an age at which it is the lot of few men to record the successful accomplishment of so great a work, and the performance of such multifarious and complicated duties.

In regard to the designations Civill Survey and Grosse Survey, which occur so frequently, and Down Survey, which more especially has been a subject of conjecture, it will be seen by this work that the Civill Survey was the terrier or list of forfeited lands, prepared under the commissioners appointed by the commission of 1st June, and Act of 26th September, 1653. The Grosse Survey was the designation by which the surveys ordered by the commission above quoted are referred to in the Act. It is, therefore, the name given by Dr. Petty to the surveys made under that Act by his predecessor Mr. Worsley, and others, which furnished only the "grosse surroundes" of the lands surveyed; and the Down Survey was so called simply to mark its distinction from those former surveys, by its topographic details being all laid down by admeasurement on maps. This is well expressed in the letter from Mr. Weale, already quoted, in which he says: "Childish as the etymon has always sounded in my ears, I am obliged to admit that the Survey obtained its name solely from the continued repetition of the expressions, 'by the survey laid down,' 'laid down by admeasurement,' in contra-distinction to Worsley's surveys, the word Down being so written as often as it occurs in the MS."

It must be admitted that the name would have equally applied to