e bargain I was loser 100L. at least."

Pett fared much worse at the hands of Raleigh himself. His great ship,
the Destiny, was finished and launched in December, 1616. "I delivered
her to him," says Pett, "on float, in good order and fashion; by which
business I lost 700L., and could never get any recompense at all for
it; Sir Walter going to sea and leaving me unsatisfied."[29] Nor was
this the only loss that Pett met with this year. The King, he states,
"bestowed upon me for the supply of my present relief the making of a
knight-baronet," which authority Pett passed to a recusant, one Francis
Ratcliffe, for 700L.; but that worthy defrauded him, so that he lost
30L. by the bargain.

Next year, Pett was despatched by the Government to the New Forest in
Hampshire, "where," he says, "one Sir Giles Mompesson[30] had made a
vast waste in the spoil of his Majesty's timber, to redress which I was
employed thither, to make choice out of the number of trees he had
felled of all such timber as was useful for shipping, in which business
I spent a great deal of time, and brought myself into a great deal of
trouble." About this period, poor Pett's wife and two of his children
lay for some time at death's door. Then more enquiries took place into
the abuses of the dockyards, in which it was sought to implicate Pett.
During the next three years (1618-20) he worked under the immediate
orders of the Commissioners in the New Dock at Chatham.

In 1620, Pett's friend Sir Robert Mansell was appointed General of the
Fleet destined to chastise the Algerine pirates, who still continued
their depredations on the shipping in the Channel, and the King
thereupon commissioned Pett to build with all dispatch two pinnaces, of
120 and 80 tons respectively. "I was myself," he says, "to serve as
Captain in the voyage"--being glad, no doubt, to escape from his
tormentors. The two pinnaces were built at Ratcliffe, and were
launched on the 16th and 18th of October, 1620. On the 30th, Pett
sailed with the fleet, and after driving the pirates out of the
Channel, he returned to port after an absence of eleven months.

His enemies had taken advantage of his absence from England to get an
order for the survey of the Prince Royal, his masterpiece; the result
of which was, he says, that "they maliciously certified the ship to be
unserviceable, and not fit to continue--that what charges should be
bestowed upon her would be lost." Nevertheless, the Pri