Just before the date of this letter PETTY had suffered shipwreck on the coast of Asia, when returning from Samos. Together with his papers and personal baggage, he lost the fruits of long and successful researches. But his inexhaustible energies enabled him to recover what, to the men about him, seemed to have hopelessly perished. He found means to raise the buried marbles from the wreck. [Sidenote: _Ibid._, 7 April, 1626, p. 495.] ‘There was never man,’ wrote Sir Thomas ROE, with the frank admiration of a congenial spirit, ‘so fitted to an employment; that encounters all accidents with so unwearied patience; eates with Greekes on their worst dayes; lyes with fishermen on plancks, at the best; is all thinges to all men, that he may obteyne his ends, which are your Lordship’s service.’ To Dr. GOADE, one of the chaplains of Archbishop ABBOT, Sir Thomas ROE continued the narrative of PETTY’S zealous researches, and of the success which attended them. ‘By my means,’ he wrote, ‘Mr. PETTY had admittance into the best library known of Greece, where are loades of old manuscripts, and hee used so fine arte, with the helpe of some of my servants, that hee conveyed away twenty two. I thought I should have had my share, but hee was for himselfe. Hee is a good chooser; saw all, or most, and tooke, I thincke, those that were and wilbe of greate esteeme. Hee speaketh sparingly of such a bootye, but could not conteyne sometyme to discover with joy his treasure.... I meant to have a review of that librarye, but hee gave it such a blow under my trust that, since, it hath been locked up under two keys, whereof one kept by the townsmen that have interest or oversight of the monastery, so that I could do no good.... [Sidenote: _Ib._, p. 500.] My hope is to deale with the Patriarch, and not to trust to myselfe, and to chances.’ In November, 1626, Sir Thomas further informed the Duke of BUCKINGHAM that ‘Mr. PETTY hath raked together two hundred peices [of sculpture], all broken, or few [of them] entyre.... Hee had this advantage, that hee went himselfe into all the islands, and tooke all he saw, and is now gon to Athens.’ [Sidenote: _Ib._, p. 570; comp. pp. 619; 647; 692, and 764.] In subsequent letters and despatches the diplomatist returns often to this unofficial branch of his duties, and makes it very apparent that PETTY’S zeal had, for a time, spoiled the market of the agents who followed in his track. [Sidenote: LORD ARUNDEL’S RESEARCHES IN ITALY.]