owing, your bedeman
fell sick; and the Whitsun Monday was carried out on four men's backs,
and delivered to his friends to be recovered if it so pleased God. At
which time the keeper took for your bedeman's fees other ten shillings,
when four shillings should have sufficed if he had been delivered in
good health.

"Within three weeks it pleased God to set your bedeman on his feet, so
that he might walk abroad. Whereof when Sir Thomas More heard (who went
out of his chancellorship about the time your bedeman was carried out of
prison), although he had neither word nor deed which he could ever truly
lay to your bedeman's charge, yet made he such means by the Bishops of
Winchester and London, as your bedeman heard say, to the Hon. Lord
Thomas Duke of Norfolk, that he gave new commandment to the keeper of
the Marshalsea to attach again your said bedeman; which thing was
speedily done the Sunday three weeks after his deliverance. And so he
continued in prison again until Saint Lawrence tide following; at which
time money was given to the keeper, and some things he took which were
not given, and then was your bedeman re-delivered through the king's
goodness, under sureties bound in a certain sum, that he should appear
the first day of the next term following, and then day by day until his
dismission. And so hath your bedeman been at liberty now twelve months
waiting daily from term to term, and nothing laid to his charge as
before.

"Wherefore, the premises tenderly considered, and also your said
bedeman's great poverty, he most humbly beseecheth your goodness that he
may now be clearly discharged; and if books, money, or other things seem
to be taken or kept from him otherwise than justice would, eftsoons he
beseecheth you that ye will command it to be restored.

"As for his long imprisonment, with other griefs thereto appertaining,
he looketh not to have recompense of man; but committeth his whole cause
to God, to whom your bedeman shall daily pray, according as he is bound,
that ye may so order and govern the realm that it may be to the honour
of God and your heavenly and everlasting reward."

I do not find the result of this petition, but as it appeared that Henry
had interested himself in the story, it is likely to have been
successful. We can form but an imperfect judgment on the merits of the
case, for we have only the sufferer's _ex parte_ complaint, and More
might probably have been able to make some counter-stat