While working as a companion for Lord Shelburne, Priestley had a great deal of free time to engage in scientific investigations.
But at this point he fell out with Fox, who he believed should give up the Pay Office, and became more closely associated with Shelburne and Pitt, and there was talk that he would be offered an Irish peerage.
In 1785 he moved to London, Lord Shelburne, then a minister of state, having invited him to undertake the education of his sons.
Initially, the Library consisted of the personal collection of Clements, thousands of rare books, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts, including the papers of General Thomas Gage, Sir Henry Clinton, Lord George Germain, William Petty, Lord Shelburne, General Freiherr von Jungkenn, and Nathanial Greene.
In England he became known by bas-reliefs executed for the Duke of Devonshire and for the Marquess of Lansdowne.
It was not mentioned in the House of Lords until 1793, by Lord Lansdowne and Lord Loughbourough.
William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne and 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, British Prime Minister between 1782 and 1783.
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A nephew of Arabella Denny was William Petty, who became Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Near the village is the Lansdowne Monument, or Cherhill Monument, a 125-foot stone obelisk erected in 1845 by the Third Marquis of Lansdowne in honour of his ancestor Sir William Petty.
In March 1655 he captured and afterwards hung eight surveyors of Sir William Petty as accessories to a gigantic scheme of ruthless robbery. A price of £30 was put on his head and that of his lieutenant, Dermot Ryan.
He was also a biographer, and published works on his great-grandfather, the Prime Minister the 2nd Earl of Shelburne and of his earlier ancestor, the economist, scientist and philosopher Sir William Petty, as well as on the 2nd Earl Granville.
German economists claimed for him the title of “Father of Statistics”; but English writers disputed this, asserting that it ignored the prior claims of William Petty and other earlier writers on the subject.
Petty was a younger son of Sir William Petty and Elizabeth, Baroness Shelburne, daughter of Sir Hardress Waller.
The Down Survey of 1655–6 was a measured map survey, organised by Sir William Petty, of the lands confiscated.
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Down Survey -William Petty's survey of Irish land and population before the Cromwellian Plantations
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English writers at the time put the Protestant victims at over 100,000 and William Petty, in his survey of the 1650s, estimated the death toll at around 30,000.
The twelve in attendance were an interesting mix of four Royalists (William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brouncker, Alexander Bruce, 2nd Earl of Kincardine, Sir Paul Neile, William Balle) and six Parliamentarians (John Wilkins, Robert Boyle, Jonathan Goddard, William Petty, Lawrence Rook, Christopher Wren) and two others with less fixed (or more flexible) views, Abraham Hill and Moray.
Thomas Taylor, founder of the Bective family, who worked with William Petty in compiling the Down Survey of Ireland, was interred here in 1682.
John Petty, 1st Earl of Shelburne (1706–1761), politician, father to former Prime Minister of Great Britain, William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne