Petitions to the Staffordshire Quarter Sessions, 1589-1799.
This free content was born digital and sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Grant: ‘The Power of Petitioning in Seventeenth-Century England’ (AH/S001654/1) for costs including transcription of seventeenth-century items and editorial work, with the cost of photographing the petitions being funded by an Economic History Society Carnevali Small Research Grant: ‘Seeking Redress in Early Modern England: Petitions to Local Authorities, c.1580-1750’; and the cost of transcribing eighteenth-century items was funded by a later Economic History Society Carnevali Small Research Grant: ‘Poverty, Taxation and Regulation: Petitions to Local magistrates in Eighteenth-Century England’. CC-NC-BY.
Joseph Crump, a prisoner in Stafford county gaol. Q/SBe/39/4 (1749)
County of Stafford
To wit to Walter Chetwynd esquire one of his majesties justices of the
peace for the county of Stafford
The humble petition of Joseph Crump late of [Knighton?]
now a prisoner in the goal for the county of Stafford
Humbly sheweth
that your petitioner was actually a prisoner upon the first day
of January 1747 in the common goal for the said county of Stafford and
does still continue there an actual prisoner charged at the suit of
William Cotton and others
And your petitioner humbly conceiving that he is intituled to have the
benefit of an act of Parliament made in the twenty first year of the
reign of his present majesty King George the Second intituled an
Act for the Releif of Insolvent Debtors and your petitioner being
desirous to take the benefit thereof and in all things to conform himself
to the severall matters and things which in and by the said act on his
part are to be done and performed in his being discharged from his
imprisonment for which end and purpose your petitioner hath
annexed a true copy of the schedule intended to be by me subscribed and
sworne to at the next general quarter sessions of the peace to be holden
for the said county containing his intended discovery of his whole estate
of what nature or kind soever (except as in the said schedule is excepted
Your petitioner therefore prays your worship to grant unto him
your warrant directed to and requiring the goaler of the said county
to bring your petioner before the justices of our said sovereign
lord the King at the next general quarter sessions of the peace to be
holden in and for the said county of Stafford together with a true
copy or copyes of the cause or causes with which your petitioner is
charged and also that your worship would please to grant to your
said petitioner your summons directed to all and every your
petitioners creditors purporting and giving notice to the effect
as is beforementioned to the end your petitioner may be
discharged from his imprisonment pursuant to the direction
of the said act of Parliament
And your petioner shall ever
pray etc
Joseph Crump