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lvi
Introduction.

remains, comprising both letters and manuscripts that have proved of value in preparing this edition of Petty's economic writings.

Of Petty's letters several hundred are extant and parts of some six score are in print. They range in date from his nineteenth year to the month of his death and touch upon a great variety of subjects. The earliest are addressed to Dr John Pell[1] and are concerned with Petty's pursuits as a student on the continent. Later he corresponded with Boyle[2] and Hartlib as to his plans for education and for a history of trades, and after the Restoration he sent a number of letters to the Royal Society concerning his double-bottomed ship and other topics[3]. His interest in shipping led also to a prolonged correspondence with Pepys, and among others to whom letters by him are known there may be mentioned Henry Cromwell, Ormond, Anglesey, Sir Peter Pett and John Aubrey[4]. It was, however with his wife's kinsman, Sir Robert Southwell[5], that Petty carried on his

  1. ↑ Pell was born at Southwick in Sussex, 11 March, 1611. He graduated B.A. at Cambridge in 1628 and in 1643 he succeeded Hortensius in the chair of mathematics at Amsterdam, where Petty made his acquaintance. The letters to him, dated 14 Aug., 1644, 8 Sept., 1644, and 8 Oct., 1645, are in the British Museum (Lansdowne MS. 4279) and are printed in Halliwell's Collection of Letters illustrative of the Progress of Science in England, pp. 81, 90.
  2. ↑ Brit. Mus. Addl. MS. 6193, f. 70—72, printed in Boyle's Works, vi. 136—140.
  3. ↑ These letters are dated 1662 or 1663 and are addressed either to Brouncker, the president, or to Sir Robert Moray, the secretary of the Royal Society; or to Graunt: Royal Society's Letter book, P. 1. f. 11—33, cf. Halliwell's Catalogue of MS. Letters in the possession of the R. S., 143, also p. 398 note, post.
  4. ↑ Some of the later letters to Pepys, dated 1683—1687, are in the Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS. A. 189, f. 17—19, A. 190, f. 21, cf. pp. 546, 547, post; others are in the possession of J. Eliot Hodgkin, Esq., of Richmond on the Thames. Fifteenth Report, Hist. MSS. Comm., pt. 2, p. 181. To Cromwell, in the British Museum, Lansdowne MS. 823; to Ormond at Kilkenny Castle (3rd Rept. Hist, MSS. Comm., 429, 4th Rept., 551, 7th Rept., 742); to Anglesey in the Bodleian Library (Rawlinson MS. A. 185, f. 219—a copy, the original is probably at Longleat, cf. 3rd Rept., 199); to Pett at Bowood (Fitzmaurice, 249); to Aubrey in the Bodleian (Aubrey MS. II. f. 100—104).
  5. ↑ Southwell was born 31 Dec., 1635, at Battin Warwick on the river Bandon, near Kinsale, where his father was collector of customs. After graduating B.A. at Oxford University, reading for a time in Lincoln's Inn and travelling for two years on the continent, he returned to London in 1661. In Sept., 1664, he was named a clerk of the Privy Council and displayed much method and diligence in that office. Between November, 1665 and August 1669, he was twice envoy to Portugal where he negotiated the Treaty of Lisbon. The following ten years, save the brief period of his mission to Brussels, he passed in London. In
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