PADY’S HUMBLE PETITION, OR SUPPLICATION.
Good Christian people behold me a man! who has com’d thro’ a world of wonders, a hell full of hardships, dangers by sea, and dangers by land, and yet I am alive, you may see my hand crooked like a fowl’s foot, and that is no wonder at all, considering my sufferings and sorrows: Oh! oh! oh! good people I was a man in my time who had plenty of the gold, plenty of the silver, plenty of the clothes, plenty of the butter, the beer, beef, and bisket. And now, now I have nothing: being taken by the Turks and relieved by the Spaniards, lay sixty-six days at the siege of Gibraltar, and got nothing to eat but sea wreck and raw mussels; then put to sea for our safety, cast upon the Barbarian coast among the woful wicked Algerines, where we were taken, and tied with tugs and tadders, horse-locks and cow-chains: then cut and custrate yard and testicles quite away, if you will not believe, put in your hand and feel how every female’s made smooth by the sheer-bone, where nothing is to be seen but what is natural. Then made our escape to the desert wild wilderness of Arabia: where we lived amongst the wild asses, upon wind, sand, and sapless ling. Afterwards put to sea in the hull of an old house; where we was tossed above and below the clouds, being driven thro’ thickets and groves by fierce, coarse, calm and contrary winds; at last, was cast away upon Salisbury plains, where our vessel was dash’d to pieces against a cabbage-stock. And now my humble petition to you good Christian people is, for one hundred of your beef, one hundred of your butter, another of your cheese, a cask of your bisket, a tun of your beer, a keg of your rum, with a pipe of your wine, a lump of your gold, a piece of your silver, a few of your halfpence or farthings, a waught of your butter-milk, a pair of your old breeches, stockings, or shoes, even a chaw of tobacco for charity’s sake.