The following document originated in an association of 26 heads of families from four Suffolk manors, owned by the Howard family until the third duke of Norfolk fell from power in 1546 and his estates were seized by the crown. These villeins took advantage of the duke's fall to petition protector Somerset for manumission by letters patent. The part of the petition given below is printed by Diarmaid MacCulloch in his article "Bondmen under the Tudors," in Law and Government under the Tudors. Essays presented to Sir Geoffrey Elton Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge on the occasion of his retirement, ed. by Claire Cross, David Loades and J.J. Scarisbrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p.99; he notes that the petitioners first emphasized their service as taxpayers and soldiers alongside the king's other subjects, before proceeding to a detailed description of their treatment by the third Howard duke:

[T]he saied late Duke and his auncestours . . . through that colour and pretense of bondage have at all tymes at their pleasure as oft and whatosever theim lusted by their servantes and officers spoiled your saied oratours of any their landes and tenementes, gooddes and catalles that them lyked and that not onely with the most cruell and uncharitable woordes of reproche that maie be imagined and with such extremitie void of any compassion pietie or reason that your said oratours have been cast in suche despair of the world that some have dyed for thought and o small nombre have forsaken this Realme and gon prively into foren countreyes to live there and many have willfully fallen in ruine and decaie because thei knewe aforehande that whatsoever thei truly gotte with the weate of theire broughes should by plain force and violence bee taken from them in suche sore as neyther theimselfe should peaceably enioye any parte thereof nor yeat any relief or coumforte should redounde to their wives and children by their peinfull labours and trvaillis. For the saied late Duke and his officers usyn [-----] tyme to tyme towardes your saied oratours and their auncestours muche more extremite then his auncestores did, would not in any wyse permitte any of your oratours to marry acordyng to the lawes of god ne yet to sette any of their children to schoole or to any kynde of learnlyng without exaccions and fines to them to bee paied suche so great and so unreasonable as should be to thextreme detrimente and hynderance of the same so that through occasion of that and other the premisses and partely by reason of such obloquie and slaundre as ther been emongest their neighbours and other the kynges subjects concernyng the said bondage your oratours shall not onely bee in utter discomforte and despair but also bee continually spoiled and at length undoon ...