The truth is, many of the most worthy and learned protestant gentlemen and divines were treated by him with the utmost indignity and barbarity; some of them dying in jail, and others being made to undergo the most cruel bodily punishments, for daring to oppose his arbitrary and superstitious proceedings. No man of compassion can read his treatment of Dr. Leighton, without being shocked and moved in the same tender manner as the House of Commons were, who several times interrupted, by their tears, the reading of the Doctor’s petition, which I shall here present my reader with entire, and leave him to form what character he pleases of the man that could contrive and carry on such a scene of barbarous and execrable cruelty. ------- _To the Honourable and High Court of Parliament._ _The humble Petition of ALEXANDER LEIGHTON, Prisoner in the Fleet_; HUMBLY SHEWETH, “How your much and long distressed petitioner, on the 17th of February gone ten years, was apprehended in Black-Fryers, coming from the sermon, by a high commission warrant (to which no subject’s body is liable), and thence, with a multitude of staves and bills, was dragged along (and all the way reproached by the name of jesuit and traitor) till they brought him to London-House, where he was shut up, and, by a strong guard, kept (without food) till seven of the clock, till Dr. Laud, then Prelate of London, and Dr. Corbet, then of Oxford, returned from Fulham-House, with a troop attending. The jailer of Newgate was sent for, who came with irons, and with a strong power of halberts and staves; they carried your petitioner through a blind, hollow way, without pretence or examination; and opening up a gate into the street (which some say had not been opened since Queen Mary’s days) they thrust him into a loathsome and ruinous dog-hole, full of rats and mice, which had no light but a little grate; and the roof being uncovered, the snow and rain beat in upon him, having no bedding, nor place to make a fire, but the ruins of an old smoky chimney; where he had neither meat nor drink, from the Tuesday at night, till the Thursday at noon. In this woeful place and doleful plight, they kept him close, with two doors shut upon him, for the space of fifteen weeks; suffering none to come at him, till at length his wife was only admitted.