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By this time the persons ordered on the 7th of November to "attend the board with a perfect and particular accompt of the contents of the several baronyes," had completed their return, which, on the 27th of November, was sworn before "Miles Corbett," on which the auditors of the Exchequer finally reported a sum of £3784 15s. 4½d. due to Dr. Petty, in addition to the sum of £13,057 17s. 3d. already paid, which the council approved on the 28th of November.
This general account being passed, the survey of Limerick, Carlow, and Wicklow, subsequently surveyed, were submitted to the same examination and scrutiny, and passed to the auditors of the Exchequer in reference to the repayments to the old surveyors, which were to be charged against the payment of £1533 8s. 6d. for those counties, on a due balance of which accounts it was reported by the auditors, that the Doctor had to repay to the State the sum of £422 10s., which the council remitted, on consideration of the circumstances stated by him, still retaining the right to claim it if found necessary, by subsequent deduction on any other account.
It is to be observed, that the tables in this chapter, at pp. 137, &c., were incorrect in all the manuscripts, but as there was no certainty whether the errors were in the totals or in the details, it was resolved to print them as they were, rather than attempt any corrections. Subsequently, however, a contemporary entry has been found among the books of the late Surveyor-General's office, now preserved in the office of the Paymaster of Civil Services, and in this case therefore it has been thought desirable to depart from the rule of making no corrections which were not in one or other of the manuscripts, and the tables in question are corrected from the authentic document.
By these tables, and the summary in the text which follows them, it will be seen that the sums thus passed as due to Dr. Petty, were £16,842 12s. 7½d., and £1533 8s. 6d., and £156 7s. 3d., making in all £18,532 8s. 4½d., for the detail survey of 3,521,181a. 2r. 29p., under the several heads of profitable, unprofitable, church, and other lands, including also £1000 for the separate set of barony maps. Out of this sum was deducted £1533 8s. 6d. for the old surveyors, and he had to pay his own surveyors, and all other expenses of the survey. He appears to have received the whole in money, except the deduction for the old surveyors, and £614 8s. 9d., which could not be collected from the army, and was afterwards commuted in land; the details of which will be found in the twelfth and fifteenth chapters.
This was the whole amount of surveying and payment included in Dr. Petty's contract of the 11th of December, 1654. For the adventurers' survey and other surveys performed jointly by himself and Mr. Worsley, under the order of the 3rd of September, 1656, given in the Appendix, he appears to have been merely paid a small sum for superintendence. The extent of these surveys is not stated, but they could not have contained on the whole less than a million and a half of acres.
The opening paragraph of this chapter, is one of many places in which the Doctor speaks both in the first and third person. In this instance, the narrative approaches to the epistolary style in which the "Reflections" are written, and it is indeed probable, as conjectured by Mr. Weale, that much of it was communicated in that form, either to Sir Robert Southwell
