[A1661/1/48]*[print] [email] [cite] [preceding] [following]
To his majesty's commissioner's grace and honourable estates of parliament, the humble petition of John Wemyss, late master of the ship called The Elizabeth.
Shows,
That it is known how the petitioner's ship with all the goods therein was lately lost at sea by no defect on the petitioner's part, but being overloaded by 85 hogsheads of registers and papers violently put therein against the petitioner's consent in Yarmouth roadstead whereby the leak could not be found out; and that the petitioner, being thereby deprived of his livelihood and subsistence, tendered a petition to the honourable committee of estates for supply, which was referred by them to your grace and lords. In respect whereof, and that the petitioner is informed there are reflections and aspersions laid upon him in relation to the loss of his ship, whereas it is most manifest he had no hand therein but that the same fell out by accident, incident to all who trade at sea; his innocency calls that he should be cleared of the aforesaid aspersions as the depositions of the witness used for clearing of his innocency therein, which are in the clerk's hands, will notify; besides that equity and conscience pleads that he should have some supply for his subsistence since if the aforesaid hogsheads had not been put in his ship, by all probability the leak had been found out and he had not lost his ship with all he had therein, which was his only subsistence. And it cannot be imagined that the petitioner and his company would have endangered themselves and lost the ship and goods therein upon any particular account whatsoever.
Therefore it is humbly petitioned that your grace and lords may be pleased to take the depositions of the witness into consideration and accordingly to declare the petitioner and his company free of having any accession to the loss of the aforesaid hogsheads and registers; and likewise to look upon the sad case and condition of the petitioner and his family, who are deprived of all livelihood and subsistence by the loss above-specified, and their loss after Dunbar and Worcester in his majesty's service, which will by an act of singular piety preserve a number of innocents from starving and will procure a blessing upon all your endeavours, for which the petitioner and his distressed family shall ever pray.