The life of Sir William Petty, 1623-1687 : one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society, sometime secretary to Henry Cromwell, maker of the 'Down Survey' of Ireland, author of 'Political Arithmetic' &c. : chiefly derived from private documents hitherto unpublished / by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice.

  • Fitzmaurice, Edmond George Petty-Fitzmaurice, Baron, 1846-1935.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life of Sir William Petty, 1623-1687 : one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society, sometime secretary to Henry Cromwell, maker of the 'Down Survey' of Ireland, author of 'Political Arithmetic' &c. : chiefly derived from private documents hitherto unpublished / by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    work, and also some memoranda by a contemporary writer on Dr. Petty’s method of wTork while engaged on the Survey. I have referred to this volume under the title of the 4 Nelligan MS.’1 My work has been greatly lightened by the use of a syllabus of the most important of the Petty MSS. at Bo wood, made by my late uncle, the Earl of Kerry, who a short time before his death, as stated in 4 Moore’s Diary and Correspon- dence,’ commenced collecting materials for a 4 Life of Sir William Petty.’ The Earl of Kerry had also collected some information from extraneous sources. In a few cases, when I have not been able to identify the origin of it, I have referred in the notes to the MS. he left. I desire to acknowledge the obligations I owe to the notes of Sir Thomas Larcom in his edition of ‘ The History of the Down Survey,’ and to the studies on the 4 Irish Surveys ' by Mr. W. H. Harding, published in the 4 Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy,’ vol. xxiv., parts i. and iii. (Antiquities);2 and to Mr. Prendergast’s work 4 On the Cromwellian Settle- ment of Ireland ’ (Longmans, 1865). The references to Roscher are to a study by that author on 4 The English Political Economists of the 17th and 18th Centuries,’ published in the 4 Abhandlungen der philologisch- historischen Classe der Koniglich Stichsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften,’ vol. ii. (Leipzig, 1857), which is probably the most complete account of Petty’s work as an economist which has yet been published. I am indebted to Mr. Madden, Sub- Librarian of the Bodleian Library, for the opportunity I have had of reading a very careful dissertation on Sir William 1 British Museum, Miscellaneous Series, 21128, Plut. clxiii. d.