sprang a mine, which he had placed in the covered way, with good effect. All the efforts of the defenders were, however, unavailing, and on 10 July the town capitulated.
It may be assumed that Petit was exchanged almost immediately, for in August 1708 General Stanhope took him with him as chief engineer in his expedition to Minorca. He effected a landing on 26 Aug., and laid siege to Port Mahon. The place fell on 30 Sept., and a few days later the whole island surrendered to the British. Petit was appointed governor of Fort St. Philip, the citadel of Port Mahon, and lieutenant-governor of the island. He built a large work for the defence of Port Mahon harbour. He was promoted brigadier-general for his services, and given the command in Minorca. He was at this time a lieutenant-colonel in the army, and also a captain in Brigadier Joseph Wightman's regiment of foot (cf. a petition of his wife Mariana to receive his captain's pay by his authority for herself and four children). From March 1709 Petit was, according to the ‘Muster Rolls,’ in Spain until March 1710, when he returned to Minorca. He remained there until 1713, when he returned to England.
After the treaty of Utrecht the engineers were reduced to a peace footing. But as England had acquired Gibraltar, Minorca, and Nova Scotia, an extra staff was required for each of those places. Petit is shown on the rolls in May 1714 at the head of the new establishment for home service, and seems to have been employed at the board of ordnance. On the accession of George I Petit was sent, in September 1714, to Scotland, to assist General Maitland in view of the threatened rising of the clans, and to report on the state of the works at Fort William, as well as at Dumbarton and other forts and castles in the west of Scotland. On 27 Nov. a warrant was issued for the formation of an ordnance train for Scotland, and Petit was appointed chief engineer. Petit and six other engineers went by land, leaving the train to follow by sea. The ships carrying the train lay windbound at the mouth of the Thames. Petit was consequently ordered to make up a train of eighteen, twelve, and nine pounders, and six small field-pieces from the guns at Edinburgh and Berwick, and to hire out of the Dutch and British troops such men as had skill in gunnery to the number of fifty for gunners and matrosses, to be added to the old Scots corps of gunners, then at Stirling. He was also instructed to get together what ammunition and other warlike stores would be necessary, and nine thousand men, either for siege or battle, in readiness, with the utmost expedition, together with pontoons for crossing rivers. The Jacobite rebellion was soon suppressed. Petit then marched with Cadogan's army by Perth to Fort William, and later surveyed land at the head of Loch Ness for a fort.
On 3 July 1716 a warrant was issued appointing Petit chief engineer and commander-in-chief of the office of ordnance at Port Mahon, Minorca. He appears to have returned to England the following year. In 1717 he was employed to design four barracks and to report upon their sites in Scotland to prevent robberies and depredations of the highlanders. In 1718 Petit was again at Minorca as chief engineer, and in September reported that he was making defensible the outworks for covering the body of St. Philip's Castle. The board of ordnance reported to Secretary Craggs on 14 Oct. that the cost of the work would probably be 50,000l., besides stores of war, and that only 16,965l. had been supplied. In 1720 Petit went to Italy for his health, and, dying at Naples, was buried there. His eldest son, Robert, was a captain and engineer, and was stationed at Port Mahon when his father died. John Louis Petit [q. v.] was a descendant.
[War Office Records; Conolly MSS.; Porter's History of the Corps of Royal Engineers; Cust's Annals of the Wars of the Eighteenth Century; Armstrong's History of Minorca, 1752; Carleton Memoirs, 1728; Royal Warrants; Smollett's History of England, 1807; Board of Ordnance Letters; Rae's History of the Late Rebellion, 1718; Patten's History of the Rebellion of 1715, 1745; Boyer's Annals of Queen Anne, 1735; Addit. MSS. Brit. Museum.]
PETIT or PETYT or PETYTE, THOMAS (fl. 1536–1554), printer, was supposed by Ames ‘to be related to the famous John Petit,’ the Paris printer (Typogr. Antiq. i. 553). His house was at the sign of the Maiden's Head in St. Paul's Churchyard, London, where he produced in 1536 an edition of the ‘Rudder of the Sea.’ He also printed Taverner's New Testament (1539), the ‘Sarum Primer’ (1541, 1542, 1543, 1544, 1545), Chaucer's ‘Workes’ (n. d.), and ‘Sarum Horæ’ (1541, 1554).
On 6 April 1543 he, ‘Whitchurch, Beddle, Grafton, Middleton, Maylour, Lant and Keyle, printers, for printing of suche bokes as wer thowght to be unlawfull, contrary to the proclamation made on that behalff, wer committed unto prison’ (Acts of the Privy Council, 1890, new ser. i. 107). All except Petit were subsequently released from the Fleet, on declaring ‘what nomber off bookes and ballettes they have bowght wythin thiese
