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their owne Congregations) by Parliament men so to do.
Truly sirs, I appeal to your own judgements and to your Consciences, and to all the people that hear me this day, whether all these provocations laid upon a poor man which is but dust and ashes, as well as other men, be not too insupportable a burden, and too much for the causers of them to take advantage of the fruits produced by them, to destroy me, and take away my life.
And therefore Sir, in the first place I shall humbly crave that favour and right, seeing I am brought before you by a piece of parchment that truly I could not read, neither could he do it that shwed it me, (I mean the Lieutenant of the Tower) for admit that if I did well understand Latine, as indeed I do not, onely some ordinary words, yet was it in such an unusual strange hand that I could not read it; and therefore being I am brought before you implicitly, and not as I conceive an Englishman ought to be, who ought to see and read the Authority by vertue of which he is convened before any power: Its true, I know some of you Gentlemen that I see sit before me, yet not many of you, and truly I have nothing but a piece of un-legeable Parchment, which cannot satisfie my understanding of the Legalnesse of my convention before you, but being I am not able to dispute that Power that compulsively brought me, but here I am, and therefore in order to the declaring of my self to be a true Englishman, I most humbly crave (and that I think is consonant to reason, and I hope to Law too) that I may see and hear read, the Commission by vertue of which you sit here this day, and convene my Person before you, that so I may compare it to the Law, and consider whether or no that by my pleading before you by vertue of it, I do not betray my liberties; and therefore I humbly crave that you would let me hear your Commission read; for this Court is no ordinary and common Assizes, Sessions, or Goal-delivery, the onely proper Courts for trying me for all criminal faults, yea and those also ought to sit where the Crimes are committed; and I was imprisoned for a pretended Crime, pretended to be committed in the County of Surry; where by the common Law of England, and expresse Statutes, I ought to be tryed therefore, and no where else.
And therefore being brought in an extraordinary manner to such an extraordinary place as this, which is no ordinary Assizes nor Sessions, no nor yet in mine own County, therefore I again humbly desire that you will be pleased to let me see and hear your extraordinary Commission, that so I may consider whether the extent or latitude of the Commission be consonant or no to the Petition of Right, and other the good old Laws of England, for those that now sit at Westminster, exercising the SupremePow-
