Friends--have done scores of times! Nothing would suit the good Shapcotts but that I should write in mine own hand a Petition to the King's Majesty. The Magistrates, who now began to take some interest in me, were for having it drawn up by their Town Clerk, and me only to put my Mark to it; for they would not give a poor little Hangdog of a Black any credit of Clergy. But being told that I could both read and write, after a Fashion, it was agreed that I was to have myself the scrivening of the Document; they giving me some Forms and Hints for beginning and ending, and bidding me con my Bible, and choose such texts as I thought bore on my Unhappy Condition. And after Great Endeavours and many painful days, and calling all my little Scholarship under my Grandmother, the kind old schoolmistress of Foubert's Passage, Gnawbit (burn him!), and Captain Night, I succeeded in producing the following. I give it word for word as I wrote it, having kept a copy; but I need not say that, as a Gentleman of Fortune, my Style and Spelling are not now so Barbarous and Uncouth. This was my Petition to His Majesty: "The Humble Pettyshon of Jon Dangerous now a prisinner under centense off Deth in His Maggesty's Gayle at Alesbury to his Maggesty Gorge by the grease of God King of Grate Briton Frans and Eyearland Deffender off the Fathe Showeth That yore Petetioner which I am Unfortunate enuff to be mixed up in this business Me and the others wich have suffered was Cast by the Jewry and Justis Blackcapp he ses that as a Warming and Eggsample i am to be Hanged by the Nek till you are Ded and the Lord have Mercy upon his Soul Great Sur your Maggesty the Book ses that wen the wicked man turneth away from his Wickedness wich he have committed and doeth that wich is Lawful and Rite he shall save his Sole alive Therefore deer Great Sur wich a repreive would fall like Thunder upon a Contrite Hart and am most sorrowful under the Black Act wich it is true I took the deere but was led to it Deere Sur wich Mungo and others was repreeved at the Tree and sent to the Plantations but am not twelve yeeres old And have always been a Prottestant Great Sur i shall be happy to serve his Maggesty by see or land and if the Grannydeere he had not Vexed me but had no other way being in a Korner and all Fiting and so i up with the demmyjon which i hoap he is better And your Petishioner will ever pray your Maggesty's loving Subject and Servant JON DANGEROUS.