'For my owne part my businesse is and shall be, night and day, though without ostentation, to think of you and pray for you, and to make our being more quiet and comfortable hereafter than hitherto. In these endeavors I remaine,
'Yours intirely,
'I vehemently fear,' Sir William told Lady Petty, 'that an Irish estate cannot exist without the owner daily, for sense and inspection. But I would have you satisfy yourself of this matter by your own actual experience upon the place.'[1]
Lady Petty, however, continued to be very reluctant to leave England, for a few days after we find Sir William writing to her as follows:—
'To yours of the 13th my deerest, I say God is angry with us, that we cannot meet without so much inconvenience. In short I cannot stir from Ireland, unless all I have done should relapse again. I am a slave and a prisoner, nor did I ever believe that you could come without inconvenience; wherefore stay where you are, and let us pray and withal endeavour that the time may be shortened.' He very soon, however, repented of his consent, as only a week afterwards he writes to Lady Petty: ' In my last perceiving your indisposition to come hither, I said that then you might stay there. But opinions and even lawes against nature are not stable and permanent. Wherefore I say again now, why may you not take a time before All Hallows tide to come to me, leaving your family as it is and bringing only a man and a maid. If your train and attendance in your journey be not great and splendid, consider that here you are sufficiently known, and therefore shall not want these outward signs to shew who you are. Well, I say again, methinks you might come with one man and a maid, and make any shift rather than let me be here alone and as it were a prisoner: aye a slave for your sake and concernments.... I am in the fairest way to beget a thoro' settlement in my affairs that there ever yet was. Let the
- ↑ July 30, 1672.
