I Give my self 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 my self, by which in the first place I offer to God my Hearty Prayers for your Majesties 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 Majesties Person and Government, and am now by the Disposition of Gods Providence called into another World, before I could by a Publick Tryal make my Innocence appear; I conceiv'd it necessary for me, [Page]as an Incumbent Duty I owe 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 Lievtenant General of an Army, which he pretended was to come into England; I declare in the Presence of the All-seeing 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 Falshood of the Information, the sober Part of Mankind, as I conceive, sufficiently e're this Convinced.

And as for those Aspersions which the Ignorant and Malicious have thrown upon the Roman Catholick Church (of which I am, and by the Grace of God do Dye a Member) as if Murthering of Kings, and taking up Arms against our Soveraigns were an Authoriz'd Principle of that Religion: I do knowingly affirm there is nothing with more Horror Detested by the Catholick Church, as being expresly 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, &c.)