“that the present intricate, delatory, chargeable, oppressive, endless practise of the Law, is become an abettor, encouragement and prop to all oppressors and defrauders, and an Egyptian reed and discouragement to most men, but in especial to all the poor who thereby are utterly disabled and disheartened from suing for their debts, rights, and inheritances, violently held from them by the rich and mighty. And if at any time (by the law) their debts and rights are seemingly recovered, yet then their able debtors have freedom (by the law and strength of their purses) to vacate judgements to arrest and imprison poor creditors upon false and strained actions (for many years) thereby enforcing some of them to compound with them at their own rates; others of them to perish miserably in goals, and so to lose both their debts and lives; whereby their wives and children are exposed to unexpressible misery; besides the many other unexpressible oppressions daylie practised by the rich and mighty on poor and simple hearted men and women in this land by sons of Belial.”
Cromwell is exhorted to act as “a faithful Joshua with the zeal of Nehemiah,” and the petition proceeds—
“The premisses piously considered, and for that the other weighty affairs of this land will not permit the speedy accomplishment of these particulars (by your Excellency) as your petitioners humbly conceive, in gaining a new representative; from which lawyers, and all ill-affected persons to be excluded. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that in the meantime there may be such a course established as that the poor may by some easie and speedy way reap the fruit of justice.”
It has been said that “women have not suffycent understanding for to lerne the lawes;” but, as the old writer who commented on this statement observed, “the contrary is made open by experyence.” Certainly the Puritan dames of the seventeenth century had “suffycent understanding” to realize the defects and hardships of the laws.
The fearful suffering caused to the inhabitants of the western counties after Monmouth’s rebellion by that incarnation of cruelty, Judge Jeffreys, brought forth a women’s petition of another kind. It is styled “The Humble Petition of the Widows and Fatherless Children in the West of England,” and begins—
“We to the number of a thousand and more, widows and fatherless children, of the counties of Dorset, Somerset and Devon, our dear husbands and tender fathers having been so tyrannously butcher’d and some transported, our estates sold from us, and our inheritance cut off by the severe and harsh sentence of George Lord Jeffreys, now we understand in the Tower of London a prisoner, who has lately, we hear, endeavoured to excuse himself from those tyrannical and illegal sentences by laying it on information by some gentlemen who are known to us to be good Christians, true Protestants and Englishmen. We your poor petitioners, many hundreds of us, on our knees have begg’d mercy for our dear husbands and tender parents, from his cruel hands, but his thirst for blood was so great and his barbarism so cruel that instead of granting mercy to some which were made to appear innocent and petitioned for by the flower of the gentry of the said counties, he immediately caus’d them to be executed.... These with many hundred more tyrannical acts are ready to be made appear in the said counties by honest and credible persons; and therefore your Petitioners desire that the said Lord Jeffreys, late Lord Chancellor, the vilest of men, may be brought down to the Counties aforesaid, where we the good women in the West, shall be glad to see him; and give him another manner of welcome than he had there years since.”[48]
Hannah Hewling, who married Major Henry Cromwell, grandson of Oliver Cromwell, played a notable part during the terrible period following the Monmouth Rebellion. Both her brothers, Benjamin and William, were implicated and condemned to death. Hannah, who was at that time a young, unmarried girl, waylaid Judge Jeffreys in his coach, beseeching him to stay the sentence.
“The merciless judge, to make her let go, caus’d the coachman to cut her hands and fingers with the lash of his whip. Nor would he allow the respite of the execution but for two days, tho’ the sister, with tears in her eyes, offered a hundred pounds for so small a favour.”
Hannah also vainly interceded with the king, James II. Lord Churchill, by whom she was introduced, warned her of the king’s obstinacy.