“I have been unable to give due testimony to your Holiness in consequence of my detention in this captivity together with my long illness, but now that it has pleased God to permit for my sins and those of this unfortunate island that I should be, after twenty years of captivity, shut up in a close prison and at last condemned to die by the Government and heretical Parliament of this country: as it has been signified to me today by Lord Buckhurst, Amias Paulet, my keeper, one Sir Drew Drury, and a secretary named Beale, in name of their Queen commanding me to prepare to receive death, offering me one of their bishops and a Dean for my consolation, a priest whom I had having been by them long ago taken from me and kept I know not where, in their hands. I have considered it to be my first duty to turn myself to God, and then with my hand to signify all to your Holiness, that although I cannot make you hear it before my death, at least after it the cause of it may be manifest to you; which is, the whole well sifted and considered, for the subversion of their religion in this island alleged by them to be by me designed and in my favour attempted both by their own subjects obedient to your laws, their declared enemies, and by strangers, in particular the Catholic princes and my relations, who all maintain my right to the crown of England, causing me to be named as such in their prayers in the churches. I leave to your Holiness to consider the consequences of this opinion, supplicating you to cause prayer to be offered for my poor soul; and of all those who have died or shall die for the same and the like opinions. And also in honour of God to distribute of your alms, and instigate the kings to do the same, to those who shall remain alive from this shipwreck. My intention being to confess, to do penance so far as is in me, and receive my viaticum if I can obtain my chaplain or other lawful minister to administer to me my last sacrament, as in default of this with a contrite and penitent heart I prostrate myself at the feet of your Holiness, confessing myself to God and to His saints a most unworthy sinner, and deserving of eternal damnation, if it please not the good God who died for sinners to receive me by His infinite mercy to the number of poor sinners penitent by His grace. Entreating you to accept this my general submission and as a testimony of my intention to fulfil the rest in the form ordained and commanded by the Church and to give me your general absolution....