ds--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 ha