rities. Fortunately the work had become a labour of love, and in the 'Political Anatomy of Ireland' he was at length able to record in 1673 that 'at his own charge, besides those maps of every parish which by his agreement he delivered unto the Surveyor General's office, he had caused maps to be made of every barony or hundred, as also of every county, engraved on copper; and the like of every province and of the whole kingdom.' The map so published, which was engraved at Amsterdam at a cost of 1,000l., was declared by Evelyn to be 'the most exact map that ever yet was made of any country.'[1]
Throughout these transactions Sir William continued to act for the Cromwell family, and was no doubt able to contribute to the protection of his former chief, to whom the King seems to have been personally well disposed, from the attacks of the old Cavalier party, who were constantly attempting to persuade the Court that the former Lord Deputy was engaged in a plot. By means of a trust the property of Henry Cromwell escaped, at least in part, the general confiscation which befell the property of the regicides and those immediately connected with the Protector,[2] though at a later date the Clanrickarde family succeeded in ejecting the representatives of the Lord Deputy's family, on some question of title.[3]
The following letter to the Lady Cromwell was written several years after, in connection with these affairs, when she was living at Spinney, the country place in Cambridgeshire to which Henry Cromwell retired after the Restoration:—
'Madam,—I hope your Ladyshipp will not take it ill that I have not often troubled you with letters. And I hope you
- ↑ Political Anatomy, ch. ix.; Evelyn's Memoirs, ii. p. 96.
- ↑ See 14, 15 Charles II. c. 2, 5, ccxxiv. The persons there named are connections by marriage of the Cromwell family. Henry Cromwell died March 23, 1674. The Lady Cromwell died April 7, 1687, only a few months before Sir William Petty.
- ↑ See article 'Henry Cromwell' in the Dictionary of National Biography. The recently published Literary Recollections of Mr. Lespinasse contain an account of an interesting conversation on the character of Henry Cromwell between Lord Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle, and Sir G.C. Lewis, Pages 84 and 85, note. In the Bodleian Library the conveyance of Henry Cromwell's Irish estate to trustees, Sir W. Russell and Mr. E. Waldron, exists, dated April 3 and 4, 1661. Rawlinson MSS. (A. 253, 188).
