Your Majesty’s enemies. But we again declare that that accusation is groundless ; it was our fixed resolution to maintain, to the utmost of our power, the oath of fidelity whith we had taken, not only from a sense of indispensable duty, but also because we were well satisfied with our situation under Your Majesty’s Government and protection, and did not think it could be bettered by any change which could be proposed to us. It has also been falsely insinuated that we held the opinion that we might be absolved from our oath so as to break it with impunity, but this we likewise solemnly declare to be a false accusation, and which we plainly evinced by our exposing ourselves to so great losses and sufferings rather than take the oath proposed to the Governor and Council, because we apprehended we could not in conscience comply therewith.
Thus we, our ancient parents and grandparents — men of great integrity and approved fidelity to Your Majesty — and our innocent wives and children, became the unhappy victims to those groundless fears ; we were transported into the English Colonies, and this was done in so much haste, and with so little regard to our necessities and the tenderest ties of nature, that from the most social enjoyments, and affluent circumstances, many found themselves destitute of the necessaries of life. Parents were separated from children, husbands from wives, some of whom have not to this day met again ; and we were so crowded in the transport vessels, that we had not room even for all our bodies to lay down at once, and consequently were prevented from carrying with us proper necessaries, especially for the support and comfort of the aged and weak, many of whom quickly ended their misery with their lives. And even those amongst us who had suffered deeply from Your Majesty’s enemies, on account of their attachment to your Majesty’s Government, were equally involved in the common calamity, of which Rene LeBlanc, the Notary Public before mentioned, is a remarkable instance. He was seized, confined, and brought away among the rest of the people, and his family, consisting of twenty children, and about one hundred and fifty grandchildren, were scattered in different colonies, so that he was put on shore at New York, with only his wife and two youngest children, in an infirm state of health, from whence he joined three more of his children at Philadelphia, where he died without any more notice being taken of him than any of us, notwithstanding his many years’ labor and deep sufferings for Your Majesty’s service.
The miseries we have since endured are scarce sufficiently to be expressed, being reduced for a livelihood to toil and hard labor in a southern clime, so disagreeable to our constitutions that most of us have been prevented by sickness from procuring the necessary subsistenee for our familles ; and therefore are threatened with that which we esteem the greatest aggravation of all our sufferings, even of having our children forced from us, and bound out to strangers and exposed to contagious distempers unknown in our native country.
This, compared with the affluence and ease we enjoyed, shows our condition
