After being deprived of his office, Pett disappears from view. He married, on 8 Sept. 1632, Catherine (b. August 1617), daughter of Edward Cole of Woodbridge, Suffolk (Register of St. Mary's, Woodbridge, by favour of Mr. Vincent B. Redstone). Mention is made of one son, Warwick.
Pett has been confused with his cousin Peter, the master-shipwright at Deptford, who died in 1652, and with each of that Peter's two sons, Sir Peter [q. v.], advocate-general for Ireland, and Sir Phineas Pett, master-shipwright at Chatham, who was knighted in 1680, was comptroller of stores, and resident commissioner at Chatham, and is to be distinguished from the commissioner Peter's brother Phineas, a clerk of the check at Chatham. Three others, named Phineas Pett, were at the same time in the naval service at Chatham or in the Thames, one of whom was killed in action in 1666, while in command of the Tiger. The name Phineas Pett continued in the navy till towards the close of last century.
[Calendars of State Papers, Dom., the indexes to which have so confused the Peters and the Phineases as to be useless; the only possibility of clearing the confusion is by reference to the original documents, and by carefully distinguishing the signatures; Pepys's Diary; Harl. MS. 6279; Literæ Cromwellii, 1676, p. 229.]
PETT, Sir PETER (1630–1699), lawyer and author, son of Peter Pett (1593–1652), master-shipwright at Deptford, grandson of Peter Pett of Wapping, shipbuilder, and great-grandson of Peter Pett (d. 1589) [q. v.], was baptised in St. Nicholas Church, Deptford, on 31 Oct. 1630. He was educated in St. Paul's School and at Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge, where he was admitted in 1645. After graduating B.A. he migrated to Pembroke College, Oxford, and in 1648 was elected to a fellowship at All Souls'. He then graduated B.C.L. in 1650, was entered as a student at Gray's Inn, and settled there ‘for good and all’ about a year before the Restoration. From 1661 to 1666 he sat in the Irish parliament as M.P. for Askeaton. He was called to the bar from the Middle Temple in 1664. When the Royal Society was formed, in 1663, Pett was one of the original fellows, elected on 20 May, but was expelled on 18 Nov. 1675 for ‘not performing his obligation to the society.’ He was probably absorbed in other interests. He had been appointed advocate-general for Ireland, where he was knighted by the Duke of Ormonde. He was also much engaged in literary work, more or less of a polemical nature. A short tract of his, headed ‘Sir Peter Pett's Paper, 1679, about the Papists,’ is in the Public Record Office (Shaftesbury Papers, ii. 347). His published works are: 1. ‘A Discourse concerning Liberty of Conscience,’ London, 1661, 8vo. 2. ‘The Happy future Estate of England,’ 1680, fol.; republished in 1689 as ‘A Discourse of the Growth of England in Populousness and Trade … By way of a Letter to a Person of Honour.’ 3. ‘The obligation resulting from the Oath of Supremacy …,’ 1687, fol. He edited also the ‘Memoirs of Arthur [Annesley], Earl of Anglesey,’ 1693, 8vo, and ‘The genuine Remains of Dr. Thomas Barlow, late Lord Bishop of Lincoln,’ 1693, 8vo. He died on 1 April 1699. Pett has been often confused with his father's first cousin, Peter, commissioner of the navy at Chatham, who is separately noticed.
[Knight's Life of Colet, p. 407; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Wood's Athenæ, iv. 576; St. Paul's School Reg. p. 43; Burrows's Worthies of All Souls', pp. 476, 540.]
PETT, PHINEAS (1570–1647), master-builder of the navy and naval commissioner, elder son of Peter Pett (d. 1589) [q. v.], by his second wife, Elizabeth Thornton, was born at Deptford on 1 Nov. 1570. After three years at the free school at Rochester, and three more at a private school at Greenwich, he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1586. After his father's death, in September 1589, Phineas was left destitute, and in 1590 was bound ‘a covenant servant’ to Richard Chapman, the queen's master-shipwright at Deptford. Within three years Chapman died, and he shipped as carpenter's mate on board the Edward and Constance, in the second expedition of Edward Glemham [q. v.] The voyage had no great success, and after two years of hardship and privation Pett found himself again in London as poor as when he started. In August 1595 he was employed ‘as an ordinary workman’ in rebuilding the Triumph at Woolwich. Afterwards he worked, under Matthew Baker, on the Repulse, a new ship which was being got ready for the expedition to Cadiz. During this winter Pett studied mathematics, drawing, and the theory of his profession, in which Baker gave him much assistance and instruction. In April 1597 Lord Howard, the lord admiral, who was much at Baker's house, accepted him as his servant. It was not, however, till near Christmas 1598 that Howard was able to employ him in ‘the finishing of a purveyance of plank and timber’ in Norfolk and Suffolk, which occupied Pett through the whole of 1599; and in June 1600 Howard appointed him ‘keeper of the plankyard, timber, and other provisions’ at Chatham, ‘with promise of better preferment to the utmost of his power.’
