Read Ebook: The Autobiography of Phineas Pett by Pett Phineas Perrin William Gordon Editor

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Patent Roll 680.

'Ac in consideratione veri et fidelis servicii quod dilectus serviens noster Jacobus Baker durante vita sua impendere intendit.'

Pat. Roll 704.

Pat. Roll 833. I cannot trace in the rolls any similar grant to Holborn or Smyth.

Pat. Roll, 921.

The difference in the spelling is no argument against this, as 'ph' and 'v' are used indifferently in the documents in this surname, Stevens' name being spelt 'Stevyns' and 'Stevins' and 'Stephens' in the rolls.

Pat. Roll 1091.

Officium Naupegiarii sive unius magistrorum factorum Navium et Cimbarum nostrarum.

Pat. Roll 1249. The entry in Pat. Roll 1091 is vacated with an endorsement in the margin, signed by Mathew Baker and William Borough to the effect that the surrender was voluntary and in consideration of the grant to Baker and Addey.

Sometimes spelt Adye, Adie, or Ady.

Nec non in consideratione boni et fidelis servicii per praefatum Willelmum Pett Shipwright antehac impensi ac imposterum impendendi in fabricatione navium nostrarum heredum et successorum nostrorum ac in assistencia sua in causis nostris marinis.

Pat. Roll 1342.

Pat. Roll. 1620.

Appendix I, p. 173.

Probably these amounts should be multiplied by 6.

Appendix II, p. 175.

Appendix IV, p. 179.

Rotherhithe, where their Hall was situated.

Probably it was due to the growing resistance of the City Company of Free Shipwrights.

It is not even mentioned in Stowe's list of sixty companies attending the Lord Mayor's Banquet in 1531.

Vol. xiv. p. 482.

Prince George of Denmark, then Lord High Admiral.

When Thomas Heywood, in his description of the Sovereign of the Seas written in 1637, referred to the author of this manuscript as 'Captain Phineas Pett, overseer of the work, and one of the principal officers of his Majesty's navy, whose ancestors, as father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, for the space of two hundred years and upwards, have continued in the same name officers and architects in the Royal Navy,' he was, it may be presumed; recording the local tradition of the Pett family. That this tradition was strong and persistent is clear from the fact that Mansell, writing to Thomas Aylesbury in 1620 to propose Peter Pett as builder of the new pinnaces; recommended him on the ground that 'his family have had the employment since Henry the Seventh's time,' while forty years later, Fuller, in his 'Worthies of England,' also referred to it in these words: 'I am credibly informed that that Mystery of Shipwrights for some descents hath been preserved successfully in Families, of whom the Petts about Chatham are of singular regard.'

This tradition, so far as it relates to the descent of the 'mystery' from generation to generation, was no doubt well founded, but there is no evidence that office under the Crown was held by any of Phineas Pett's ancestors earlier than his father, Peter.

The name 'Pett' is said by a modern writer on the history of English surnames to be a Kentish variant of the name 'Pitt.' This would imply a Kentish origin of the family, and this supposition might seem to be strengthened by the fact that the name, as a place-name, only occurs in Kent and on the eastern border of Sussex.

In 1583, Peter Pett, then Master Shipwright at Deptford, obtained a grant of arms from Herald's College. The original has unfortunately disappeared, but from the reference to it in Le Neve's 'Pedigree of the Knights' it appears that he claimed descent from 'Thomas Pett of Skipton in Cumberland' through John Pett his grandfather and Peter Pett his father, who had been a shipbuilder at Harwich. The fact that there is no Skipton in Cumberland shows that this record is hardly reliable as regards the place of origin of the family. Neither of the existing Skiptons, which are both in Yorkshire, remote from the sea, is likely to have given birth to a family of shipbuilders; and there is no indication that any relations of the Petts were at any time resident in Yorkshire or Cumberland. Moreover, the name was practically unknown at this period in the North. In an attempt to elucidate this matter, Major Bertram Raves put forward in the 'Mariner's Mirror' the suggestion 'that Thomas Pett was of Hopton, in Suffolk, and that Hopton was fudged into Skipton by the Tudor Heralds in the grant of arms to Peter Pett.... Petts about or near to Hopton at the time were yeomen or husbandmen.... The pedigree may, therefore, have seemed to need treatment.' He then goes on to show that Petts were established in the neighbouring villages of Hepworth, Wattisfield, Harling, and Walsham-le-Willows; the Petts at Wattisfield having been in the neighbourhood since the 14th century. One significant fact is the letter which Peter Pett, the half-brother of Phineas, wrote to Sir Bassingbourn Gawdy of Harling, in 1598, in which he apologises for his delay in visiting him and sends his remembrances to Lady Gawdy and others: it is clear from this letter that Peter was well known in the neighbourhood, and was, it may be presumed, related to the Thomas Pett living there at that time.

But it seems very doubtful whether Skipton really was a wilful substitution for, or a mis-transcription of, an original 'Hopton,' for there is no evidence that anyone of the name ever lived at Hopton, and it seems possible that some earlier Pett may have migrated to Yorkshire and his descendant John have returned to East Anglia.

Of Thomas Pett nothing is known; and of John his son nothing can be stated with certainty.

With Peter, the son of John, we come at length upon sure ground. The will he made in March 1554 is upon record, and shows that he was possessed of a dwelling-house and shipbuilding yard at Harwich, which he bequeathed to his son Peter, the father of Phineas. Possibly he was the Peter Pett noted by Mr. Oppenheim as among the shipwrights pressed from Essex and Suffolk working at Portsmouth in 1523: there can be no doubt that he was the Peter Pett of Harwich who, with other shipwrights, signed a decree of appraisement of a ship in 1540.

His son Peter Pett, who died in 1589 when Master Shipwright at Deptford, entered the royal service some time before 1544, as already noted.

There is no record of the names of the earlier ships built by him, but it is known that in 1573 he built the Swiftsure and Achates, and in 1586 the Moon and Rainbow; all at Deptford. At the time of his death in 1589 he was engaged upon the Defiance and Advantage, which were completed by Joseph Pett, his second and eldest surviving son, who, as already remarked, succeeded to his place as Master Shipwright, his eldest son William Pett of Limehouse, also a Master Shipwright, who built the Greyhound in 1586, having died in 1587. Peter Pett was twice married, and had four sons and one daughter by his first wife, whose name is not known; and six daughters and three sons by his second wife, Elizabeth Thornton. These will be found set forth in the subjoined tables, which will serve to illustrate the relationship between them and the other members of the family referred to in the manuscript.

Peter Pett, of Wapping, the third son of the above, carried on business as a shipbuilder in the private yard at Wapping which had been left to him by his father. He does not appear to have held any office under the Crown, but seems to have been well known to the Lord High Admiral, for in his letter above referred to be puts off his visit to Gawdy on the ground that he has to be 'next Sunday with the Earl of Nottingham at the Court at Richmond.' In 1599 he published a poem entitled 'Time's Journey to seeke his Daughter Truth; and Truth's Letter to Fame of England's Excellencie,' which he dedicated to Nottingham. He was also the author of a sonnet in three stanzas of seven lines entitled 'All Creatures praise God.'

It is not necessary for our present purpose to pursue the fortunes of this family further, but the reader who is desirous of obtaining information as to the later descendants of Peter Pett of Harwich will find it in an excellent paper in vol. x. of the 'Ancestor,' by Mr. Farnham Burke and Mr. Oswald Barron, entitled 'The Builders of the Navy: a Genealogy of the Family of Pett.'

RELATIONS OF PHINEAS PETT.

FAMILY OF PHINEAS PETT.

FOOTNOTES:

Mr. Redstone informs me that to this day large blocks of loam and clay are squared off in the pits of Rickinghall to form house walls.

Printed by the Harleian Society.

Skipton in Craven in the W. Riding and Skipton upon Swale in the N. Riding.

I have only discovered one early instance of the name in Yorkshire, 'Ralph Pet' who lived in the 'Honor and Forest of Pickering' in 1314, and this, it may be observed, was on the sea coast.

April 1912, p. 124.

S.E. of Thetford: not the Hopton in East Suffolk.

They were already there in the 13th; see note on p. xliii.

Richard Pett of London, gent. in 1593 sold his share of the property at Deptford to his brother Peter Pett, of Wapping. This property had been bought by his father in 1566.

The following errors may be noted: p. 149, the name 'Marcy' should be 'March'; p. 151, the William Pett who petitioned the Admiralty in 1631, was not the son of Joseph but a much older man, apparently belonging to another branch of the family; p. 157, the dates of the death of Phineas' second wife and of his third marriage are antedated by a year; p. 158, the date 'July' was an error of the Harl. transcriber; the dates of birth and death of Phineas, junior, are incorrect; p. 172, Joseph Pett of Chatham was not the son of Phineas, but of Joseph of Limehouse, and he was born in 1592 not 1608.

From the care that had been taken to provide for his education, and from the fact that it was only at the 'instant persuasion' of his mother that he was 'contented' to be apprenticed as a shipwright, it may be inferred that Phineas had been destined for the Church or the Law, and that Peter Pett did not propose that his son should follow in his own footsteps. The peculiarity of the name chosen for him gives rise to the surmise that his parents had intended him for the Church, but whatever the intention may have been, it was certainly abandoned on the death of his father.

Phineas does not seem to have profited greatly from his studies at Cambridge. He was hardly a master of English; possibly he had a good knowledge of Latin, for the influence of the Latin idiom is to be seen in almost all his periods; but the fact that he had subsequently to practise 'cyphering' in the evenings does not imply any great acquirements in mathematics, even of the very elementary forms which at that period were sufficient for the solution of the few problems arising in connection with the design of ships. Nevertheless, he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1592 and that of Master in 1595.

If the statement that he spent the two years of his apprenticeship to Chapman 'to very little purpose' is to be accepted literally, it would seem that the misfortunes that subsequently befell him must have aroused latent energies and filled him with determination to master the details of his future profession when he returned to England in 1594. His voyage to the Levant and subsequent employment as an ordinary workman under his brother Joseph no doubt gave him a practical acquaintance with ships that enabled him to profit greatly by the instruction of Mathew Baker, although apparently this only extended over the winter of 1595-6. Pett's confession that it was from Baker that he received his 'greatest lights,' written, as it must have been, after he had found Baker an 'envious enemy' and an 'old adversary to my name and family,' indicates how great that assistance was. This is borne out by a letter which he wrote to Baker in April 1603, in order to deprecate the old man's wrath, which had been aroused when Phineas, then Assistant Master Shipwright at Chatham, commenced work on the Answer. The letter was partially destroyed by the fire which damaged the Cottonian Library in 1731, but fortunately Pepys had copied it in his Miscellanea.

SIR,--My duty remembered unto you. It is so that I received a message from you by Richard Meritt, the purveyor, concerning the Answer, who gave me to understand from you that you were informed I meant to break up the ship and to lengthen, and that I should no further proceed till I received further order from you. Indeed the ship was heaved up by general consent, both of my Lord, some of the Principal Officers, and two of the Master Shipwrights which were here present at the time she was begun to be hauled up, no determination being resolved upon what should be done unto her; for which cause she hath lain still ever since, till now that it pleased Sir Henry Palmer to command she should be blocked and searched within board only, and so let alone, partly because our men wanting stuff to perfect other businesses had little else to do, as also to the intent she might be made ready to be the better viewed and surveyed lying upright, being somewhat also easier for the ship. This is now done, but I ensure you there was no intent or other purpose to proceed in anything upon her any further till the Master Shipwrights, especially yourself who built her, had first surveyed her, and under your hands set down what should be done unto her; and therefore, good Mr. Baker, do not give so much credit to those that out of their malice do advertise you untruth concerning either this or any other matter, for it is supposed by whom this hath been done, and he is generally thought to be no other than an Ambodexter or rather a flat sheet, being so far off from either procuring credit to himself by due execution of his place and discharge of his duty, that like Aesop's Dog he doth malice any other that is willing to give him precedent of better course than all men can sufficiently in this place report himself to follow. And for myself it is so sure from me to understand anything that you should think any ways prejudicial unto you, or to any of your works, that you shall always rather find me dutiful as a servant to follow your directions and instructions in any of these businesses, than arrogant as a prescriber or corrector of anything done by you, whose ever memorable works I set before me as a notable precedent and pattern to direct me in any work that I do at any time undertake, and you yourself can say, setting private jars aside, which I hope are all now at a final end, but that I ever both reverenced you for your years and admired you for your Art, in the which I know no Artist in Christendom of our profession able in any respect to come near you. Therefore, good Mr. Baker, carry but that loving mind towards me as you shall find my loving duty to you to deserve, who you shall find always as ready to do you any service, either in this place or any other, as any servant of yours whatsoever, among whose rank I account myself one of the unworthiest, for although I served no years in your service, yet I must ever acknowledge whatever I have of any art it came only from you. Thus hoping this shall suffice to give you satisfaction in this behalf, I humbly take my leave, ever resting ready to do you service.

Your Servant, PHINEAS PETT.

To the worshipful and my loving friend Mr. Mathew Baker, one of his Majesty's Master Shipwrights, give this at Woolwich or elsewhere.

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