become known to him, especially as Dr. Petty, being a person of detached political opinions, belonged precisely to the class of men able to serve, for whom the Protector was looking in the peculiar circumstances of the hour.
Petty had powerful friends in two leading adherents of the Protector in London: Captain John Graunt, who had served with distinction in the war, and was the reputed author of some 'Observations on the Bills of Mortality' and Mr. Edmund Wylde, a member of Parliament, 'a great fautor of ingenious men for merit's sake,'[1] and also in Colonel Kelsey, the commander of the Oxford garrison. Thus it came about that he was created a fellow of Brasenose by virtue of a dispensation from the delegates of the University: according to Wood's account, 'because they had received sufficient testimony of his rare qualities and gifts from Colonel Kelsey;' according to Thomas Hearne, because 'he had cut upp Dogges and taught anatomy in the war,' and because the visitors, whom Hearne detested, liked 'to put out loyal persons in order to put him and such others in.'[2] He was also appointed Deputy to the University Professor of Anatomy, Dr. Clayton. The Professor himself, oddly enough, had such an insurmountable aversion to the sight of a mangled corpse, that he eagerly availed himself of his substitute's ability as an operator. 'Anatomy,' says Aubrey, 'was then little understood by the University, and I recollect that Dr. Petty kept a body that he brought by water from Reading, a good while to read on, some way preserved or pickled.'[3]
In 1650 an event occurred which made his name known in the whole country and opened up the way to a larger career. One Ann Green had been tried, convicted, and executed at Oxford on December 14, 1651, for the murder of her illegitimate child. Her execution seems to have been carried out with a combination of clumsiness and brutality charac-
- ↑ Bodleian Letters, ii. 483.
- ↑ Wood's Fasti Oxon. ii.156. Hearne's Diary, Oxford edition, edited by W.C.E. Doble, i. 78. Wood says that Colonel Kelsey had been 'a godly button-maker' in London. He was afterwards promoted to several places of trust by Cromwell. An entry of September 12, 1650, in the college books, records Dr. Petty's election as a fellow of Brasenose.
- ↑ Bodleian Letters, ii. 483.
