From midsummer, all the ensuing year, till Christmas I lay still and idle without any manner employment or comings in but what my servants got with working now and then abroad, which was very little and hardly able to buy me food.
About Christmas my honourable lord and master the Lord High Admiral commended me to an employment in Suffolk and Norfolk for the finishing of a purveyance of timber and plank formerly undertaken by one Child of Sole,[208] who dealt in Norfolk and, dying, left the business in much disorder.
And one Robert Ungle[209] who dealt in Suffolk and, for divers abuses by him there committed, fled the country and left all the service in great disorder and spoil; for the rectifying of which abuses, saving of her Majesty's provisions, and discharging of the countries,[210] it pleased my Lord to make choice of me to undertake the same, and to take order to send in all the said provisions of timber and plank; which accordingly I did, using all care and diligence in the performance of the same, both to the content of her Majesty's service, my Lord Admiral and the Officers of the Navy, and the satisfaction of all countries where I had to do. Notwithstanding through the malicious envy of old Mathew Baker, Bright, Adye, and others[211] all my doings and accounts were throughly sifted, but thanks be to God nothing could be proved against me, so that I had all my bills passed quietly; but by reason Mr. Fulke Greville,[212] being then Treasurer of the Navy, did not greatly affect[213] me, by cause of some particular spleens between him and Mr. John Trevor,[214] then newly made Surveyor, who was my especial and worshipful friend, he laid a rub[215] in my way, cutting me off wrongfully of twenty pounds in my accounts after all my bills were passed and signed by the hands of the Principal Officers, according to the custom of the Navy.
All this year of 1599, I spent wholly in this service, in which time these occurrences happened.
After the decease of my dear and loving mother there were left under the keeping of my father-in-law,[216] Thomas Nunn, then Minister of Weston in Suffolk, three sisters, vide: Abigail Pett, Elizabeth and Mary, the youngest, and one brother named Peter Pett, who was put out to a gentleman's house in Suffolk to teach his children, the daughters remaining all at home with him, he being then lately again married.
He used himself to them as a stern and cruel father-in-law, not contented that he had brought a general ruin upon my mother's whole family by cosening us of all that was left us, but proceeded further, even to blood, for upon a slight occasion about making clean his cloak, being wet and dirty with riding a journey the day before, he furiously fell upon my eldest sister Abigail, beating her so cruelly with a pair of tongs and a great firebrand that she died within three days upon that beating and was privately by his means buried; but God that would not let murder pass unrevenged, stirred up the hearts of his own parishioners and neighbours, who, complaining to the Justice, caused the body to be taken up, and so by the coroner's inquest that passed upon her and miraculous tokens of the dead corpse, as fresh bleeding, sensible opening of one of her eyes, and other things, he was found guilty of her death and so committed and bound over to answer the matter at next General Assizes to be held at Bury, which was in the Lent after, being in this year 1599, and in the time of my employment in Suffolk and Norfolk.
Upon his committing, my two other poor sisters were put by the justices to the keeping of the town of Weston, till the assizes[217] were past, at whose hands I received them at Bury in a miserable fashion, not having clothes nor any necessaries fit for them; the charge of their board I was glad to defray to the constable, and all the charge of the assizes, where both they and my young brother were bound to give in evidence against our father-in-law, to whom we shewed more mercy than he did to us, whom our spoil would not content, but he thirsted also our blood. In his arraignment Sir John Popham, then Lord Chief Justice of England and Chief Judge of that circuit, shewed such true justice (notwithstanding great means was made for him, not only by his friends, but by the clergy of that country), that all his cruelty and wicked proceedings was laid open and he, convict of manslaughter by the jury, was committed to prison to sue for the benefit of the Queen's pardon,[218] from whence being shortly freed, he, by God's just revenging hand, lived but a short time after.
From the assizes at Bury I sent my brother and my two sisters home to my wife at Limehouse, being no small charge to me, being but newly married and having little means but my hands to bring in anything, yet I refused not to do the duty of a brother to them to the utmost of my power; the eldest of my sisters, called Elizabeth, by means of friends I placed in London with a gentlewoman of good fashion, where she continued not long, but came home sick and died at my house as we doubted of the plague. My youngest sister sickened also shortly after, but it proved the small pox.
In all these extremities I had little help from my brothers, who were bound in conscience to have had some care of them, the small portions they had being in the hands of my eldest brother Joseph, yet no relief came from him towards their maintenance or bringing up; but being but half brothers and sisters they thought them less bound to do them good and therefore left all the burden upon me, worst able of all to bear it.