THE DECLARATION OF THE Lord Petre UPON HIS DEATH, TOUCHING THE PLOT, In a LETTER to his Most Sacred MAJESTY.  
May it please your Majesty,  
I Give myself the hopes that your Majesty will Pardon this Presumption of a Dying but Dutiful Subject, in giving you the trouble of this short Account and Declaration of myself, by which in the first place I offer to God my Hearty Prayers for your Majesty's long Life and happy Reign, with all the Blessings of this Life, and Eternal Happiness of the next; I having been now above Five Years in Prison, and what is more Grievous to me, lain so long under a false and injurious Calumny of a horrid Plot and Design against your Majesty's Person and Government, and am now by the Disposition of God's Providence called into another World, before I could by a Public Trial make my Innocence appear; I conceived it necessary for me, as an Incumbent Duty I own to Truth, and my own Innocency, to make this Ensuing Protestation to your Majesty and the whole World. That whereas one Titus Oats hath maliciously and falsely Sworn that he saw me receive a Commission directed to me from Joannes Paulus de Oliva, constituting me Lieutenant General of an Army, which he pretended was to come into England; I declare in the Presence of the Allseeing God, before whose just Tribunal I am shortly to Appear, that I never saw any such Commission directed to me or any other Person whatsoever, and do firmly believe there never was any such; But of the Folly as well as the Falsehood of the Information, the sober Part of Mankind, as I conceive, sufficiently  this Convinced.  
And as for those Aspersions which the Ignorant and Malicious have thrown upon the Roman Catholic Church (of which I am, and by the Grace of God do Die a Member) as if Murdering of Kings, and taking up Arms against our Sovereigns were an Authorised Principle of that Religion: I do knowingly affirm there is nothing with more Horror Detested by the Catholic Church, as being expressly contrary to the Command of our Saviour and Christian Doctrine, and as such I Renounce and Detest it, as I do all Plots and Conspiracies against your Sacred Person. Having thus Briefly, and with all Sincerity of a Dying Man discharged my Conscience, I shall end where I began, and with my last Breath beg of God to Defend your Majesty from all your Enemies, and to Forgive those, who by their Perjuries have endeavoured to make me appear to be One, who Living and Dying am (as in Duty bound, etc.)  
Your Most Obedient and Loyal Subject W. PETRE.   

London, Printed by T. B. for R. Mead. 1684.