The humble REMONSTRANCE AND COMPLAINT OF Many thousands of poor distressed Prisoners in the prisons in and about the city of London; committed for debt, and other uncapitall offences.  
Wherein is plainly declared the insufferable abuses both in fees and other exactions inflicted on poor Prisoners, by jailers and such other instruments of Law, though not of Justice.  
Presented to the consideration of the High Court of PARLIAMENT.  
Potiore metallis  
Libertate caremus.  
Printed at London for John Gibson. Febr. 3. 1643.   

THE Humble Remonstrance and Complaint of many thousands of poor distressed Prisoners in and about the city of London; committed for debt and other uncapitall offences.  
SO many( Right Honourable and Noble Dispencers of equity and justice, you the Illustrious Members of both Houses of Parliament) are the grievances which we poor Prisoners, in the several Gaols of the Fleet, Kings Bench, marshalsea, Gate-house, New-gate, Lud-gate, and both the Counters, and other prisons in and about the city of London, do sustain in our durance by the insufferable insolence and severity of Officers, that in this happy time of Parliament, wherein your judicious ears are open to all complaints, wee who are only bereaved of our liberty by our mis-fortunes not malefactions; such as for debt and suretyship, and by commitment are here Captives, thought ourselves engaged in charity to ourselves, and the abject wretchedness of our sufferings, to salute your honourable wisdoms with this Remonstrance of our just complaint, hoping to find favour in your eyes, and a redress for our oppressions. But lest wee should sin too much against the public profit, being too tedious in the relation of our grievances, we shall without any longer Preamble descend briefly to the rehearsal of our affairs.  
First then, we who are either arrested for debt, or attached by command, are obnoxious to all the greediness and avarice of the Officers, in whose hands we are before we are conveyed to those houses of affliction, prisons; they making lawful prizes of us,& under shadow& pretence of doing us favours( which men in misery are always apt to accept, extorting upon us more than the jailers themselves, making us pay insufferable rates for a small procrastination of our thraldom. First, we are to remonstrate the excessive injuries inflicted on us poor prisoners, by the unconscionablenesse of Officers, those instruments of Hell the Sergeants, and far more merciless Marshals men; who though their Knight had the fortune to go to Heaven at Keinton battle,& their new Knight Siddenham hath neither seen them, nor sworn them his servants, yet do they still assume the privilege to arrest, and take fees beyond the extortion of Bawds and Brokers: your Sergeants and plump Yeomen running the same course, who are grown so licentiously valiant in these times, that on Tuesday night last in Fetter-lane, having arrested a Gentleman who obeied their authority without resistance, they fell upon his man because he wore a sword, and being four of them upon the young man, almost out him to pieces: and certainly, though the Law allows them to detain and arrest peoples persons, it does not patronise them to cut their throats; debt, as we take it, being neither felony nor treason; for which offences, though crimes of the highest nature, the Law privileges not their Officers of justice to kill men before the jury have found them guilty. And surely it is no point of justice, that we who are only unfortunate undone men, should suffer worse punishment, and be in less safety than public and notorious malefactors.  
Besides, which is a bitter aggravation to our just complaint, when we are once committed to prison, against the custom of all other Nations, who restrain men by durance for debt, only for a year and a day, to try it in that time they can work means for their liberty, and satisfy their debt, and then finding them impossibilited of paying, they are discharged, their Creditors even paying their fees, if they be unable. We are here imprisoned past hope of release, if wee cannot discharge to the utmost farthing our debts, our wives, children, and families, in the mean time being betrayed to all the miseries of penury and want, wee who should get their livings by our occupations, trades, and other industrious means, being deprived by our want of freedom, of affording them any succours, our debts by our enthralment being never the nearer paid, but the Creditours cruelty must be satisfied with our carcases, which certainly some of those avaricious wretches more desire than their money; for otherwise they would afford us liberty, that by it we might endeavour in our vocations to give them some satisfaction, which here we can never do, being utterly disenabled for getting a farthing any way, but forced to live either on the alms of good people, or out of the poor remainder of our ruined estates.  
Besides, we are no way secure from daily running into debts: the extraordinary rent of our chambers in prison surpassing all the usury and brokage in the world; fifty, thirty, twenty, ten, and eight pounds per annum, being an ordinary rent for a chamber which a man can scarce turn himself in: and we do verily believe, the law which was instituted for the relief of distressed persons, never intended they should by its execution upon them be ruined past all redemption; for a lamentable case it is, that a man who shall be arrested for some trivial debt of forty or fifty shillings, shall be compelled to lye in prison there, till his very chamber rent amount to thrice the value of his debt, and that to be esteemed as due as the principal, there being no hope of liberty till the utmost penny of our racked and injust fees be paid to the merciless jailor and his cruel Officers, who have no sense of compunction in them, nor will descend to the least mitigation of their exactions; so that wee may truly and confidently affirm, there are as many men, very near, that are condemned to perpetual imprisonment for their fees, as suffer that misery for their debts; wee are besides used with no more respect then if we were Turks, or persons condemned to the slavery of the gallies, the cruel and implacable jailers, being, for the most part, men of austere and inhuman conditions, such as are fitter to keep wild Beasts in Cages, or have command over the bears then tyramnize over men. These fellowes, no longer then wee are able to feed their greedy humours with money, wine, and the like presents, never permit us to enjoy one minute of quietness, but are still reviling us with the terms of beggarly and bankrupt Rogues and Rascals, threatening us with the terror of the hole and dungeon, nay, even with fetters themselves; and if these be fit usages for honest and Christian men, let any charitable persons be indifferent judges, and but make it their own case, what an affliction it is to any man to be deprived of all the blessings which nature and fortune hath bestowed upon him, to be bereaved of the benefit which Beasts enjoy, to walk abroad; to be bereaved of the society of his friends, kindred and acquaintance, and circumscribed to one filthy stinking place; confined to the narrow limits of a prison where wee scarce ever converse with ought but our own miseries; hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes, our dayes and nights being both, as it were, produced at once, and twins in misery; nor all these afflictions do not terminate or conclude our sufferings, the servants to the jailers being more insufferably tyrannicall then their Masters; the fat Turne-keyes, and drunken Porters, and the like, ministers of incivility and barbarism, triumphing and insulting over prisoners of the best quality, Genltemen that formerly would have disdained to have conversed with fellows of that abject quality, being glad to stand cap in hand to the rascally companions, who Lord it over them with an insolent licence, making them pay and pray too for what they have, and glad they can get it, both by their money and faire persuasions; such is the insufferable condition of our thraldom, that if a cunning Painter were to delineate a local hell, he need go no further for a lively president then to one of these devilish prisons, which so aptly resembles it in all its attributes: as stench, horror and darkness, the narrowness of the rooms, and their uncleanness, being able to infect and suffocate peoples spirits who have been enured to fresh and open air; these miseries, like s●me, increasing by going on, still growing more intolerable, being bettered daily into worse; so that if the Israelites in Egypt may be said to have groaned under the heavy burden of their oppressions there, we may justly parallel ours with their miseries, all manner of mischiefs flowing about us, and the shadow of death encompassing us round; so that if some sudden order be not taken for the mitigation of the rigour and tyranny of prisons, many a hundred of honest and able men must suffer worse deaths then the most ungracious malefactors, they dying but one death for their capital offences, and we for no offence at all, dying for many moneths, weeks and yeeres a daily death: nor is this condition onely of such of us as prisoners merely for debt, they who are in upon command from any Court of Judicature or otherwise committed, running the same misfortune, they are subject to the same contumelies and disgraces, liable to the same affronts and abuses, no redress being given to their grievances, nor end to their afflictions during their imprisonment. If either any of them or us can obtain so much favour as to go abroad with a keeper( which is esteemed a superlative courtesy) we are sure to pay as many shillings as we are abroad houres, besides the excessive wages must be allowed to those Harpies our keepers, who will not permit us to stay abroad a minute longer then they are fed either with gifts, or faire promises; so that by all this former Discourse and Relation of this our complaint, you may plainly perceive, Right Honourable and just reformers of all abuses in the Commonwealth, you of both the noble Houses of Parliament, how against law, equity, and conscience many thousands of poor stressed men, who have formerly been had in very good esteem in this City, and in their own Countries, paying scot and lot, and doing very good service to the kingdom by their industry, are, as it were, killed alive by the daily torments for their debts, and yet their creditors never the nearer, but a greater deal farther off from their expected debts; wee being daily more and more impoverished in our estates by the cruelty and expense of our durance; our wives& childen either enforced to beg their bread, or to live upon the alms of the Parishes in which they dwell.  
In consideration of all which hideous and insufferable grievances, we your poor Complainants most humbly beseech you for the honour of God, and in regard we are Christian men, for our poor wives and children sake, that languish and groan under our sufferings, that some way may be taken for the speedy redress of these our heavy grievances, that our creditors may by some act of yours be engaged to give such of us our liberties as by evident testimony of our neighbours are known and approved utterly unable to pay our debts, and that our jailers may be compelled to a more moderate and civill dealing with us, without exaction of such unconscionable and illegal fees; that Serjeants, Marshals men, bailiffs and the like, may be taught to use more humanity toward their prisoners under arrest, and wee, our wives and children, as in all duty bound, shall ever pray for your tranquillity, peace and happiness.  
FINIS.