To his Excellency the Lord Generall Cromwell and to the rest of the Right Honourable the Councel of State, patriots and defenders of the common-laws and liberties of the Common-wealth of England. The humble petition of many thousands of prisoners for debt, in severall prisons of a[l]lthe counties of England and Wales; remonstrating the illegality of the arrests, out-lawries and imprisonments for debt, being the saddest grievance, and of the most considerable concernment to all the free people of this nation.