help or helper in the world, as was my fate; and by which I
was not only exposed to very great distresses, even before I
was capable either of understanding my case or how to amend
it, but brought into a course of life which was not only scandalous
in itself, but which in its ordinary course tended to the swift
destruction both of soul and body.

But the case was otherwise here. My mother was convicted
of felony for a certain petty theft scarce worth naming, viz.
having an opportunity of borrowing three pieces of fine holland
of a certain draper in Cheapside. The circumstances are too
long to repeat, and I have heard them related so many ways,
that I can scarce be certain which is the right account.

However it was, this they all agree in, that my mother pleaded
her belly, and being found quick with child, she was respited
for about seven months; in which time having brought me into
the world, and being about again, she was called down, as they
term it, to her former judgment, but obtained the favour of
being transported to the plantations, and left me about half a
year old; and in bad hands, you may be sure.

This is too near the first hours of my life for me to relate
anything of myself but by hearsay; it is enough to mention,
that as I was born in such an unhappy place, I had no parish
to have recourse to for my nourishment in my infancy; nor
can I give the least account how I was kept alive, other than
that, as I have been told, some relation of my mother's took
me away for a while as a nurse, but at whose expense, or by
whose direction, I know nothing at all of it.