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.