ere you will find great Favour, and
Honourable entertainment, far more than any of your Countrey men yet
here found. Which the great man thought would be a strong Inducement to
persuade me joyfully to accept of the Kings Employments. But this was
the thing I always most dreaded, and endeavoured to shun, knowing that
being taken into Court would be a means to cut of all hopes of Liberty
from me, which was the thing I esteemed equal unto life it self.

[But resolves to refuse it.] Seeing my self brought unto this pass,
wherein I had no earthly helper, I recommended my cause to God,
desiring him in whose hands are the hearts of Kings and Princes to
divert the business. And my cause being just and right I was resolved
to persist in a denial. My case seemed to me to be like that of the
four Lepers at the Gate of Samaria. No avoiding of Death for me: If
out of Ambition and Honour, I should have embraced the Kings Service,
besides the depriving my self of all hopes of Liberty, in the end I
must be put to death, as happens to all that serve him; and to deny
his service could be but Death. And it seemed to me to be the better
Death of the two. For if I should be put to Death only because I
refused his service, I should be pitied as one that dyed innocently;
but if I should be executed in his Service, however innocent I was,
I should be certainly reckon'd a Rebel and a Traytor, as they all
are whom he commands to be cut off.

[The answer he makes to the Great man.] Upon these confederations
having thus set my resolutions, as God enabled me, I returned him
this answer: First, That the English Nation to whom I belonged had
never done any violence or wrong to their King either in word or
deed. Secondly, That the causes of my coming on their Land was not
like to that of other Nations, who were either Enemies taken in War,
or such as by reason of poverty or distress, were driven to sue for
relief out of the Kings bountiful liberality, or such as fled for the
fear of deserved punishment; Whereas, as they all well knew, I came
not upon any of these causes, but upon account of Trade, and came
ashore to receive the Kings Orders, which by notice we understood
were come concerning us, and to render an account to the Dissauva
of the Reasons and Occasions of our coming into the Kings Port. And
that by the grief and sorrow I had undergone by being so long detained
from my Native Countrey, (but, for which I thanked the Kings Majesty,
without