Add MS 72900-72902

PETTY PAPERS. VOLS. LI-LIII. Papers, chiefly schedules of lands, petitions, court orders, reports and accounts, with some notes and letters of Petty, his widow and son Henry, relating to Petty's estates in the baronies of Glanerought, Iveragh and Dunkerron, co. Kerry, particularly concerning the disputed level of quit rents payable to the Crown after the Restoration; [1663?]-1728. Partly autograph; several with extensive 20th cent notes by the 6th Marquess of Lansdowne. Although Petty had a claim that the quit rents of the lands, which had been granted to him under the Protectorate and confirmed after the Restoration, initially in partnership with Robert Marshall and Sir George Carteret, had been fixed too high, he was pursued for arrears by successive farmers of the Irish revenue from the 1670s onwards and had prolonged legal proceedings with them in the Court of Exchequer of Ireland. Most of the papers derive from this dispute, although they must represent only a fraction of those originally generated by it. On this subject, see further the 6th Marquess of Lansdowne, Glanerought and the Petty-Fitzmaurices (Oxford, 1937), Chs. I-IV, and T. C. Barnard, 'Sir William Petty, Irish Landowner', History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed. H. L. Jones (1981), pp. 201-217. For related material Add. 72858-72864, containing Petty's correspondence concerning his estates, and a few items in Add. 72857, especially, ff. 147-148v, 164-165v for Petty's appeals to James II for redress of his grievances. There are also references in Petty's correspondence with his wife (Add. 72856) and in the Petty-Southwell Correspondence. Many formerly from Box D (see Slatter, 'Report', II, pp. 239-254 for an item by item list); also from Box F and Boxes 14 and 15.

Three volumes.