32 Records of the Rising in the West, A.D. 1655. 
examined. Yet your petitioners, and the others, were all kept prisoners by the 
space of one whole year, and then on a sudden (without the least provocation) 
snatched out of their prisons ; the greater number by the command and pleasure 
of the then High Sheriff, Coplestone, and others in power in the County of 
Devon, and driven through the streets of the city of Exon (which is witness to 
this truth) by a guard of horse and foot (none being suffered to take leave of 
them) and so hurried to Plymuuth, aboard the ship John of London, Captain 
John Cole, whereafter they had lain aboard 14 days, the Captain hoisted sail ; 
and at the end of 5 weeks and 4 days more, anchored at the Isle of Barbadves, 
in the West Indies, being in sailing 4500 miles distant from their native country; 
wives children, parents, friends, and whatever is near and dear unto them ; the 
Captive prisoners being all the way locked up under decks (and guards), amongst 
horses, that their souls, through heat and steam fainted in them ; and they never 
till they came to the island knew whither they were going. 
Being sadly arrived there on the May 7 1656, the master of the ship sold your 
miserable petitioners and the others; the generality of them to most inhuman 
and barbarous persons, for 1550 pound weight of sugar apiece, more or less, ac- 
cording to their working faculties, as the goods and chattels of Master Noell 
and Major Thomas Alderman of London, and Captain H. Hatsell of Plymouth; 
neither sparing the aged of 76 years old, nor divines, nor officers, nor gentle- 
men, nor any age or condition,of men, but rendering all alike in this inseparable 
captivity, they now generally grinding’at the mills and attending at the furnaces, 
or digging in this scorching island ; having nought to feed on (nothwithstanding 
their hard labour) but potatoe roots, nor to drink, but water with such roots 
washed in it, besides the bread and tears of their own afflictions; being bought 
and sold still from one planter to another, or attached as horses and beasts tor 
the debts of their masters, being whipped at the whipping posts (as rogues) for 
their masters’ pleasure, and sleeping in sties worse than hogs in England, and 
many other ways made miserable, beyond expression or Christian imagination. 
Humbly your Petitioners do remonstrate on behalf of themselves and others, 
their most deplorable, and (as to Englishmen) unparalleled condition; and 
earnestly beg that this High Court, since they are not under any pretended 
Conviction of Law, will be pleased to examine this Arbitrary power, and to 
question by what authority so great a breach is committed upon the free people 
of England, they having never seen the faces of these their pretended owners, 
merchants that deal in slaves and souls of men, nor ever heard of their names 
before Mr. Cole made affidavit in the office of Barbadoes, that he sold them as 
their goods; but whence they derived their authority for the sale and slavery 
of your poof petitioners, and the rest, they are wholly ignorant to this very 
day. That this Court will be farther pleased to interest their power for the 
redemption and reparation of your distressed petitioners and the rest; or if 
the names of your petitioners, and the number of the rest, be so inconsiderable 
as not to be worthy of relief or your tender compassion, yet at least, that this 
Court would be pleased on behalf of themselves and all the free-born people of 
England, by whose suffrages they sit in Parliament, any of whose cases it may 
be next, whenever a like force shall be laid on them, to take course to curb the 
unlimited power under which the petitioners and others suffer; that neither 
‘you nor any of their bretheren, upon these miserable terms, may come into 
