32 



Records of tlie Rising in the West, A.J). 1655. 



examined. Yet your petitioners, and the others, were all kept prisoners by the 

 space of one whole year, and then on a sudden (withouc the least provocation) 

 snatched out of their prisons ; the greater lumber 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 Plymouth, 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 Barbadoes, 

 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 (aud 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. Hatseli 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 (noth withstanding 

 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 for 

 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 poor 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 



