CLEAVELAND'S PETITION To His HIGHNESS THE LORD PROTECTOR.  
May it please your Highness,  
Ruler's within the Circle of their Government have a claim to that which is said of the Deity, They have their Centre every where, and their Circumference no where. It is in this confidence that I address to your Highness, as knowing no place in the Nation is so remote, as not to share in the ubiquity of your care; no Prison so close, as to shut me up from partaking of your influence. My Lord, it is my misfortune, that after ten years of retirement from being engaged in the difference of the State, having wound myself up in a private recess, and my comportment to the public, being so inoffensive, that in all this time, neither fears nor jealousies have scrupled at my Actions: Being about three months since at Norwich, I was fetched with a guard before the Commissioners, and sent Prisoner to Yarmouth, and if it be not a new offence to make inquiry wherein I offended (for hitherto my faults are kept as close as my Person,) I am induced to believe, that next to the adherence to the Royal party, the cause of my confinement is the narrowness of my estate; for none stand committed whose estate can bail them; I only am the Prisoner, who have no Acres to be my hostage. Now if my poverty be Criminal (with Reverence be it spoken,) I must implead your Highness, whose victorious Arms have reduced me to it, as accessary to my guilt. Let it suffice my Lord, that the calamity of the War hath made us poor; do not punish us for it! Who ever did Penance for being ravished? Is it not enough that we are stripped so bare, but it must be made in order to a severer Lash? must our scars be engraven with new wounds? must we first be made Cripples, then beaten with our own Crutches? Poverty! if it be a fault, it is its own punishment; Who suffers for it more, pays Use upon use. I beseech your Highness put some bounds to our overthrow, and do not pursue the chase to the other World; Can your thunder be leveled so low as our grovelling Conditions? Can that towering Spirit that hath quarried upon Kingdoms make a stoop at us, who are the rubbish of those ruins? Methinks! I hear your former Achievements interceding with you not to sully your glories, with trampling on the prostrate, nor Clog the wheels of your Chariot with so degenerous a Triumph. The most renowned Heroes have ever with such tenderness cherished their Captives, That their Swords did but cut out work for their courtesy; Those that fell by their prowess, sprung up by their favours, as if they had struck them down only to make them rebound the Higher. I hope your Highness as you are the Rival of their fame, will be no less of their virtues; the noblest Trophy that you can erect to your Honour is to raise the afflicted. And since you have subdued all opposition, it now remains that you attach yourself, and with Acts of Mildness vanquish your victory. It is not long since, my Lord, that you knocked off the Shackles from most of our party, and by a grand release did spread your clemency as large as your territories. Let not new proscriptions interrupt our Jubilee. Let not that your lenity be slandered as the Ambush of your further rigour. For the service of his Majesty (if it be objected) I am so far from excusing it, that I am ready to allege it in my vindication: I cannot conceive that my fidelity to my Prince should taint me in your opinion; I should rather expect it should recommend me to your favour; Had not we been faithful to our King, we could not have given ourselves to be so to your Highness; you had then trusted us gratis, whereas now we have our former Loyalty to vouch us. You see my Lord, how much I presume upon the greatness of your Spirit, that dare prevent my Indictment with so frank a Confession, especially in this, which I may so justly deny, that it is almost arrogancy in me to own it; for the truth is, I was not qualified enough to serve him; all that I could do, was to bear a part in his sufferings, and give myself up to be crushed with his fall; thus my charge is double (my obedience to my Sovereign, and what is the result of that, my want of a fortune;) Now what ever reflections I have on the former, I am a true penitent for the latter; My Lord you see my crimes! As to my defence you bear it about you; I shall plead nothing in my justification, but your Highness' Clemency, which as it is the constant inmate of a valiant breast, (If you graciously please to extend it to your Suppliant in taking me out of this withering durance,) your Highness will find that mercy will establish you more than power; though all the days of your life were as pregnant with victories, as your twice auspicious third of September.  
Your Highness humble, and submissive Petitioner. J. C.   

TO The Earl OF WESTMORELAND.  
My Lord,  
IT were high presumption not to be proud on this occasion, and I should be no less than a Rebel to Eloquence, if the lines you sent me, had not raised me above my ordinary Level, so that to express my gratitude, I must renounce my humility, and purchase one virtue at the price of another: and well may my modesty suffer in the service, when my reason itself is overwhelmed with the favour. To see a person of your Lordship's Eminence possessed of Nobility by a double tenure of birth and brain so to bend his greatness as to stoop to me, who live in the valley both of parts and fortune is so high an honour, that who rightly considers it, if he be not stupedly senseless, will be senseless with ecstasy I for my part am lost in amazement, and it is my interest to be so; for not knowing otherwise how to give your present a fit reception, it is the best of my play to be besides myself in the action; you see my Lord how I imply myself of my native faculties to be ready for those of your inspiring; as the Prophets of old in a sacred fury, ran out of their wits to make room for their deity. I shall not need hereafter to digest my conceptions, I shall speak by instinct, for where you designed to visit me with your lofty numbers, what was it else, but to make me the Priest to your Lordship's oracle, such is the strength and spirits of your fancy, that me thought the Poem like richest wine sent forth the steam at the opening, what flowed from your brain fumed into mine, it is almost impossible; to read your lines and be sober you, you my Lord are the favourite of the Muses, your strain is so happy, and hath a reputation so fair and matchless, as if you had a double key to the Temple of Honour to let in yourself and exclude competitors. It is you my Lord who have cut the clouds and reached perfection; who having mounted the cliff lend an hand, to me who am labouring yet in the craggy ascent; so powering are the praises you please to bestow on me, and my deserts so grovelling that to show you my head is unworthy your height, 'tis not able to bear them, but it grows giddy with the precipice: It pains me to be set upon the last of an Hyperbole, you do but crucify my tender merit thus to distend it at length and breadth: consider I pray you that the leanest Endowments would be plump and full thus blown up with a quill, and that there is none so dwarfish whom the rack would not stretch to a proper man: It is an excellent breathing for a puissant Wit to overbare the world in defence of a Paradox, and a good Advocate will weather out a cause when there's neither truth nor tackle to assist his invention. I persuade myself you had never undertaken to write my Panegyric, but that you saw it was to combat the tide and to put there abilities to the utmost test in so unlucky a subject. Little do you think what store of opposites your opinion will breed you, for though you be so powerful in the Art of persuasion, that should you turn Apostate, there would need no more but to toll the Bell for religion, yet this is an Heresy where you stand alone, and like Scaeva in the breach with your single valour duel an Army. And now my Lord if I be not mistaken I have found the motive that induced you to oblige me, you are tied by your order to give protection to the weak and succourless, so I must change my addresses & thank your red ribbon for my commendations; such and so many are the flowers of Rhetoric you have heaped upon me, that I run the hazard of that Olympic victor who was stifled with posies cast upon him in Approbation of his worth. Which fragrant fate if I should sustain, what is there more to make me enamoured of death, but that the same florist should strew my corpse in a funeral Oration? Can you think my Lord that suppressing your name was able to conceal you, when it is so easy to wind you by your phrase? The sweetness of the language discovered the Author, like that Roman senator who hiding himself in time of proscription, his perfumes betrayed him. But I shall not arrest your Lordship's affairs with a further interruption, my Lord you have ennobled me with your testimony, and I shall keep your paper as the patent of mine honour, yet give me leave to tell; you that among all the Epithets you piled so artificially to build me fame, there is one wanting to accomplish my ambition, and which I beseech your Lordship I may enjoy for the future; that is, to be esteemed.  
Your Honour's humble Servant, Jo: Cleaveland.  
FINIS.