They therefore most humbly pray, That your lordships would be graciously pleased to appoint a day of meeting, with the rest of the reverend judges; and that the counsel on both sides may attend your lordships, so that in a convenient time you may report your sense to their lordships in parliament, as is desired in their orders of the 20th of this present June. And your petitioners, as in duty bound, shall ever pray. A petition was also presented from the town of Lowestoft to the House of Peers, wherein, after reciting the order of reference to the judges, they doubted not but that their Lordships would evidently foresee the ruin which threatened the town of Lowestoft, the western and northern fishery, and the great damage that would accrue to the city of London and the nation in general; as appears from the certificates of many hundreds of fishermen, and the remonstrance of the fishmongers in London, and the burgesses of the sea-coast towns in Suffolk, if the Yarmouth men were suffered to persevere in the cruel depredations which they had lately practiced; for, exclusive of distressing them in late unhappy wars, assisting Oliver Cromwell in taking and plundering the town, imprisoning many of their principal inhabitants, and causing others to fly beyond the sea, they now distressed them again by sending a vessel, called a man of war to ride in the roads before the town of Lowestoft during the whole herring season, and not suffering the fishers to deliver any herrings in those roads, but compelling them to go to Yarmouth, whereby their petitioners and the western and northern fishermen were greatly injured, and a thousand last of herrings were thereby prevented from being caught. Therefore they humbly beseech their lordships to afford them such relief as they in their great wisdom should deem meet and reasonable; that so they might follow the trade of herring fishing as usual, and prevent their becoming the most miserable people in his Majesty’s dominions. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORDS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED, THE HUMBLE PETITION OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE TOWN OF LOWESTOFT, IN THE COUNTY OF SUFFOLK.