that they are so, which I hope to do by several circumstances, and the
insufficiency of the evidence in their favour, which amounts to nothing
more than hearsay.

The first evidence in their favour is that of John Evergin, a native
of N'o Carolina, who professes himself to be a child of the Spirit. In
April last, having been taken prisoner by the said Don Pedro Estrado, &
brought to S't Augustine, he consented, for the value of a share in the
profits, to pilot them in the bowels of his native country, and betrayed
his countrymen to that cruel and barbarous nation. Can your Honour
confide in a man who has betrayed his countrymen, robbed them of their
lives, and what was dearer to them, their liberty? One who has exposed
his brethren to imminent danger & reduced them and their families to
extreme want by fire & sword, can the evidence, I say, of such a vile
wretch, who has forfeited his liege to his King by entering the enemy's
service, and unnaturally sold his countrymen, be of any weight in a
court of justice? No, I am certain, and I hope it will meet with none to
prove that these slaves are freemen; for all that he has said, by his
own confession, was only but hearsay. The other evidence is of a villain
of another stamp, a French runnagado, Jean Baptiste Domas. His evidence
is so contradictory that I hope it will meet the same fate as I think
will befall the first. I will own that he has sworn to it. But how? On a
piece of stick made in the shape of a thing they name a cross, said to
be blest and sanctified by the polluted words & hands of a wretched
priest, a spawn of the whore of Babylon, who is a monster of nature &
a servant to the Devil, who for a _real_ will pretend to absolve his
followers from perjury, incest, or parricide, and canonize them for
cruelties committed upon we heretics, as they style us, and even rank
them in the number of those cursed saints who by their barbarity have
rendered their names immortal & odious to all true believers. By devils