PETITIOX TO REMIT FIN 7 E. CCclxXXV 



remain till the end of the year, but with such reluctance, 

 that, with the hope of quieting the King s fears, he, at one 

 time, intended to present a petition to the House of Lords 

 to remit this part of his sentence, (a) 



which can never cease in your Lordship s most obliged friend and true 

 servant, FR. ST. ALBAN. 



Being now out of use, and out of sight, I recommend myself to your 

 lordship s love and favour, to maintain me in his majesty s grace and good 

 intention. 



To Lord Digby. I pray, my Lord, if occasion serve, give me your good 

 word to the King for the release of my confinement, which is to me a 

 very strait kind of imprisonment. Your Lordship s most affectionate 

 Gorhambury, this last of December, 1621. FR. Sr. ALBAN. 



() Petition of the Lord Viscount St. Alban, intended for the House of 

 Lords. 



My right honourable very good Lords, In all humbleness acknow 

 ledging your lordships justice, I do now, in like manner, crave and implore 

 your grace and compassion. I am old, weak, ruined, in want, a very 

 subject of pity. My only suit to your lordships is, to shew me your noble 

 favour towards the release of my confinement (so every confinement is), 

 and to me, I protest, worse than the Tower. There I could have liad 

 company, physicians, conference with my creditors and friends about my 

 debts, and the necessities of my estate, helps for my studies, and the 

 writings I have in hand. Here, I live upon the sword point of a sharp air 

 endangered if I go abroad, dulled if I stay within, solitary and comfo- tless 

 without company, banished from all opportunities to treat with any to do 

 myself good, and to help out any wrecks; and that which is one of my 

 greatest griefs, my wife, that hath been no partaker of my offending, must 

 be partaker of this misery of my restraint. 



May it please your lordships, therefore, since there is a time for justice, 

 and a time for misery, to think with compassion upon that which 1 have 

 already suffered, which is not little, and to recommend this my humble, 

 and, as I hope, modest suit to his most excellent majesty, the fountain of 

 grace, of whose mercy, for so much as concerns himself merely, I have 

 already tasted, and likewise of his favour of this very kind, by some small 

 temporary dispensations. Herein your lordships shall do a work of charity 

 and nobility; you shall do me good; you shall do my creditors good; and 

 it may be, you shall do posterity good, if out of the carcass of dead and 

 rotten greatness, as out of Samson s lion, there may be honey gathered for 

 the use of future times. God bless your persons and counsels. 



Your Lordship s supplicant and servant, FR. ST. ALBAN. 



VOL. XV. C C 



