DECLARATION SIGNATORY PREAMBLE: We will you, in the name of Nature’s God, That y

DECLARATION SIGNATORY PREAMBLE:

We will you, in the name of Nature’s God,

That you divest yourself, and lay apart

The borrow’d glories that by gift of heaven,

By law of nature and of nations, ‘long

To us, our kin, and our heirs;

namely, our Sovereignty.

We bid you, all, resign your offices,

and disband your bureaus,

And thereby restore our sovereignty,

That by deceit and device,

You have stolen from us,

The native and true owners.

Or else what follows?

Bloody constraint;

For if you seek to deny our sovereignty,

Even silently in your hearts,

There will we rake for it.

Therefore in fierce tempest are we coming,

In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,

That, if requiring fail, we will compel;

And we bid you, in the bowels of the Lord,

Deliver up our Sovereignty, and take mercy

On the poor souls for whom this civil war

Opens its vasty jaws;

And on your head you bear,

The widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries

The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens groans,

For husbands, fathers and betrothed lovers,

That shall be swallow’d in this controversy.

This is our demand,

Our threatening

And our message.