Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/338

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1687
A POLITICAL PROPHECY
311

whereas 450 thousand will suffice. The Irish will send 100 thousand Protestants into France, which 100 small vessells will do in one Sumer; the East India and other trades will be taken from England by the Hollanders. England will swarme and be pestered with poore English driven out of Ireland.

'The Princess of Orange will question the loosing of Ireland.

'The Hollanders and all Northerne States will oppose France in having Ireland.

'The 30 thousand papists of England and Scotland will be sent into Ireland in exchange of the Protestants.

'The Scotts and fugitive English will come in with Orange and Holland.

'The French and Irish will invade England, and will be left Prisoners there.

'The Emperour and Spain will fall upon France.

'The Venetian and the Turk [will be] busyed.

'1. The Brittish will beat the French and Irish, and keep them Prisoners in England.

'2. The Irish and French will be brought Captives into England.

'3. Ireland and the Northern third of Scotland will be made a place of pasturage.

'4. 9,600 thousand English, Irish, and Scotch, and 2,000 thousand out of France, will plant in 58 millions, and be a Republick, at ye upshot of the troubles, at 5 livres to each head.'[1]

Lady Petty was created a Peeress for life by King James, who appears to have entertained a sincere goodwill for Sir William, and possibly regretted that his own policy in Ireland had proved so disastrous to his friend. She became Baroness Shelburne in the Peerage of Ireland, and Charles, her eldest son, Baron Shelburne, by a simultaneous creation.[2] In the events which followed, Lord Shelburne was attainted, and the whole of the Petty estates were sequestered by the Irish Parliament in 1689, but they were restored by the events of

  1. Longleat MS.
  2. The privy seal is dated December 6, 1688, five days before the flight of James II. from England. The patent was passed December 31 of the same year. Rot. de Ao., 4 Jac. II. 6, p. 1.