On the Method of Plants

Notwithstanding the aforementioned Assembly's grievances and petitions did come to the hands of the said Company, (by this remarkable token, That the Deputy of the said Company, William Webb Esq; by name, said in open Court, That the drawers thereof deserved to be hanged: and the said Mr. Webb did further say, That the Bermudians Inhabitants of the Somers Isles, now known as Bermuda. had no more to do with Magna Charta The Great Charter of 1215, establishing that the King and his government are not above the law., than the inhabitants of Brazil had; for the King had left the Government wholly to the hands of the Company): yet the said Company did stifle the said grievances and petitions aforesaid, and did deny by their Council, before the King and Parliament, that there came any such papers to their hands: and instead of showing the said papers, as was desired by those men that knew they received them; the said Company produced before the King and Parliament something that was drawn up by private persons in the Islands, and signed by those of the Assembly; the which paper coming to hand, with the Assembly's grievances, made the Right Honourable, the Earl of Shaftesbury (then the present Governor) in open Court, to say, He admired In this context, "admired" means to be astonished or surprised. that there should be sent such a paper in that strange manner, in those words aforesaid, signed by PART OF THE ASSEMBLY.

And let all the unbiased persons in the world judge, if the Somer Islands Company, (that have acted as they have done in the aforesaid, and following narrative, as by the grievances made out, by a petition lately presented to the Parliament by several members of the said Company will most plainly appear) be fitting to govern any longer the said Somer Islands; nay, rather it is to be desired, that His Majesty would be pleased to send a Governor thither, as he does to Barbados, Virginia, and all his other plantations, that all the poor inhabitants may be redeemed from that Egyptian bondage A biblical reference to the Israelites' slavery in Egypt, used here to describe the Company's tyranny. they all now groan under, by the government of the said Company.