"These are to will and require you in his Majesty's name, to take into your custody, and safely keep the body of Francis Smith of London, Stationer, for that traitorously and seditiously he compiled, printed, and published a treasonable and seditious book, intitled Several prodigies and apparitions seen in the heavens from August 1st 1660, to the latter end of May 1661, containing a collection of several former prodigies, mischievous events thereupon to princes, and a forgery of divers late false and feigned prodigies and impostures of the same kind, prognosticating thereby the like events to his majesty, and thereby did traitorously and seditiously instil into the hearts of his majesty's good subjects, a superstitious belief thereof, and a dislike and hatred of his majesty's person and government, and prepared them to effect a damnable design for the destruction of his sacred majesty, and to introduce a change of the government established; and for so doing, this shall be your warrant. Given at our Court at Whitehall the 15th day of August 1661. Edward Nicholas, To the Keeper of the prison of the Gatehouse, Westminster, or his Deputy. And this is the cause of the taking and detaining of the said Francis Smith in the prison of our lord the king, under my custody, whose body at the day and place in the said writ contained, I have ready as by the said writ is commanded me. "Edward Broughton, knight. "My counsel pleaded they knew nothing of that copy till now, and gave evidence that the copy I produced was taken from the clerk of the prison for which he had five shillings, upon which I was remanded back again to prison till the next term following; and here it may be remembered as an addition to the habit of cruelty attending that prison; (the gaoler notwithstanding what the Lord Chief Justice Forster had said to him) forced me to go down into the dungeon for above 20 days because I could not raise him £7 towards chamber rent at that instant. Then upon renewed complaints and counsel charge, obtained order to be taken out of the dungeon, and put upstairs into a chamber where I was again turned out within a week, at eight o'clock at night, while my poor wife and two of my children were eating, and they at that time of the night in the depth of winter, forced to seek their lodging amongst strangers in Tothill Street, Westminster, and myself constrained to lie upon the bare boards in an open entry, where I continued the rest of my time till bailed out, being several weeks, sometimes lying on the ground; the rest in a hammock.