To the high and mighty States, the Knights and Burgesses in Parliament Assembled; (England's legal sovereign power) The humble appeal and Supplication of RICHARD OVERTON, Prisoner in the most contemptible goal of Newgate.  
Humbly showeth;  
THat whereas your prisoner under pretence of a criminal fact being in a warlike manner brought before the House of Lords to be tried, and by them put to Answer to Interogatories concerning himself, both which your Petitioner humbly conceiving to be illegal, and contrary to the natural rights, freedoms, and properties of the free Commoners of England; confirmed to them by Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and the Act for the abolishment of the Star-chamber: he therefore was emboldened to refuse subjection to the said House, both in the one and the other, expressing his resolution before them, that he would not infringe the private rights and properties of himself, or of any one Commoner in particular, or the common rights and properties of this Nation in general: for which your Petitioner was by them adjudged contemptuous, and by an order from the said House was therefore committed to the goal of Newgate, where, from the 11 of August 1646. to this present he hath lain, and there commanded to be kept till their pleasures shall be further signified (as a copy of the said order hereunto annexed doth declare) which may be perpetual if they please, and may have their wills; for your Petitioner humbly conceiveth that thereby he is made a Prisoner to their wills, not to the Law, except their wills may be a Law.  
Wherefore your liege Petitioner doth make his humble appeal unto this most sovereign House (as to the highest Court of judicature in the Land, wherein all the appeals thereof are to centure, and beyond which, none can be made) humbly craving (both in testimony of this acknowledgement of its legal regality, and of his due submission thereunto) that your Honours therein assembled, would take his cause (and in his, the cause of all the free Commoners of England, whom you represent, and for whom you sit) into your serious consideration and legal determination, that he may either by the mercy of the Law be repossessed of this his just liberty and freedom, and thereby the whole Commons of England of their thus unjustly (as he humbly conceiveth) usurped and invaded by the House of Lords, with due repairations of the damages susstained, or else that he may undergo what penalty shall in equity by the impartial severity foe the Law, be adjudged against him by this Honourable House, in case by them he shall be legally found a transgressor herein.  
And your Petitioner (as in duty bound) shall ever pray, &c.