4. In the same year we find a lamentable petition, now in print, of sixty persons committed unbailable to several prisons in London, as Newgate, the Gatehouse, Clink, &c., being made close prisoners, allowing them neither meat, drink, nor lodging, nor suffering any whose hearts the Lord would stir up for their relief, to have any access unto them; so as they complain that no felons, traitors, nor murderers in the land were thus dealt with; and so after many other grievous complaints conclude with these words: “We crave for all of us but the liberty either to die openly, or to live openly in the land of our nativity. If we deserve death, it beseemeth the majesty of justice not to see us closely murdered, yea starved to death with hunger and cold, and stifled in loathsome dungeons. If we be guiltless, we crave but the benefit of our innocence, viz. that we may have peace to serve our God and our Prince in the place of the sepulchres of our fathers.” And what numbers since those, who have been put unto compulsory banishment and other hard sufferings, as loss of goods, friends, and long and hard imprisonments, under which many have died,--it is so well known, that it would make up a volume to rehearse them, and would not only equalize but far exceed the number of those godly called Puritans that have suffered. Suppose they were but few of them ministers that suffered, as above expressed; yet their sorrows might be as great, and their wants more, and their souls as much afflicted, because more contemned and neglected of men. But some have said _they_ were excommunicated; and that was no great matter as excommunications went in those days. So were _these_, not only while they were living, but some of them many times after they were dead; and as some of the other were imprisoned, so were more of these. But it is further said, all of them were deprived of their ministry; and so were these of their livelihood and maintenance, although they had no offices to lose. But those remained still in the land, and were succoured and sheltered by good people in a competent wise, the most of them, and sundry of them lived as well, as may easily be proved, if not better, than if they had enjoyed their benefices; whereas the other were, a great number of them, forced to fly into foreign lands for shelter, or else might have perished in prisons; and these poor creatures endured, many of them, such hardships (as is well known to some of us) as makes our hearts still ache to remember.