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ia Hampshire, 26th May 1623, He retired to the Continent during the early part of the civil war, and is stated to have worked as a carpenter at Caen in Normandy. But he must also have studied medicine, for in 1649, soon after his return to England, he took his degree of Doctor of Medicine at Oxford. He secured the appointment of physician to the Parliamentary army in Ireland, and landed at Waterford in September 1652, having then a capital of £500. In this office he continued until 1659, at a salary of £365, making at the same time by private practice some £400 per annum. In December 1654 he entered into a con- tract with Government for the survey of Ireland at the rate of £7 3s. 4d. per 1,000 acres of arable land, besides id. per acre from the soldiers to whom it was to be allotted. Mr. Prendergast writes, in his Cromwellian Settlement: "It was characteristic of the period, that this great step in perfecting the scheme of plantation was consecrated with all the forms of religion, the articles being signed by Dr. Petty in the Council Chamber of Dublin Castle, on the 11th December 1654, in the presence of many of the chief officers of the army, after a solemn seeking of God, performed by Colonel Tomlin- son, for a blessing upon the conclusion of so great a business... The field work of the survey was carried on by foot soldiers, instructed by Dr. Petty, and select- ed by him as being hardy men, to whom such hardships as to wade through bogs and water, climb rocks, and fare and lodge hard, were familiar. They were fittest, too, 'to ruffle with' the rude spirits they were like to encounter, who might not see without a grudge their ancient inherit- ances, the only support of their wives and children, measured out before their eyes for strangers to occupy; and they must often wheix at work be in danger of a sur- prise by Tories. Some of the surveyors were captured by these bold and desperate outlaws, when the sending away of the forces for England and Scotland, about the beginning of the work, left him naked of the guards he had been promised. Eight of them were surprised by Donagh O'Derrick, commonly called 'blind Do- nogh' (who, however could see well enough for this purpose), near Timolin, in the County of Kildare, and were by him and his party carried up the moun- tains of Wicklow into the woods, and there, after a drum head kind of court martial, executed by them as accessories to a gigantic scheme of ruthless robbery." The office work of Petty's survey was
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carried on in a large house, known as the " Crow's Nest," in Dublin, on the site of the present Crow-street, to which it gave its name. His task was completed in the amazingly short time of thirteen months. Major-General Larcom, who carried to completion the Ordnance Survey of Ire- land in the present century, bears the fol- lowing testimony to the manner of its execution : Petty's "survey will always remain one of the most remarkable under- takings of which we have any record. We are not to estimate its merits as a topographical work by the precision which has been attained in modern times, nor test it by comparison with modern surveys, but with those which had gone before, and which it immediately replaced, as well as the circumstances under which it was executed, and the short time in which the whole operation was performed... It would be no easy task in our own day, to accomplish in thirteen months, even a traverse survey in outline of 5,000,000 acres in small divisions, and it was immeasurably greater then... It stands to this day, with the accompanying books of distribution, the legal record of the title on which half the land of Ireland is held; and for the purpose to which it was and is applied it remains sufficient."By this survey Dr. Petty, according to his own ad- mission, made some £9,000, which, with other smaller items, including his professional emoluments and his salary as Clerk of the Council in Dublin, enabled him to purchase ofi"-hand some 19,000 Irish acres of land, which twenty years later yielded him as much per annum as the price paid. By a judicious system of dealings in land, he added still more to his possessions, which included all the country to be seen from the top of Mangerton, in the County of Kerry. He was returned to Eichard Cromwell's Parliament in 1658. In March 1659 he was accused by Sir Jerome Sankey, another English adventurer, and a member of the same Parliament, of having "made it his trade to purchase deben- tures,"he "being then the chief sur- veyor."Petty's maiden speech was a justification of his conduct. He appears to have courted the closest scrutiny into all his dealings; but such a storm was raised that Richard Cromwell was obliged to dismiss him from his public employ- ments. Dr. Petty having made his fortune under the Commonwealth, obtained court favour and rank after the Restoration. Charles II. was "mightily pleased with his discourse."He was knighted in 1661, in 1662 was made one of the Court of Commissioners for Irish Estates, and Surveyor-
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