After this,he pressed me earnestly,and in the most affectionate manner,not to play the young man,not to precipitate myself into miseries which Nature and the station of life I was born in seemed to have provided against;that I was under no necessity of seeking my bread;that he would do well for me,and endeavour to enter me fairly into the station of life which he had been just recommending to me;and that if I was not very easy and happy in the world it must be my mere fate or fault that must hinder it,and that he should have nothing to answer for,having thus discharged his duty in warning me against measures which he knew would be to my hurt;in a word,that as he would do very kind things for me if I would stay and settle at home as he directed,so he would not have so much hand in my misfortunes,as to give me any encouragement to go away.And to close all,he told me I had my elder brother for an example,to whom he had used the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going into the Low Country wars,but could not prevail,his young desires prompting him to run into the army,where he was killed;and though he said he would not cease to pray for me,yet he would venture to say to me,that if I did take this foolish step,God would not bless me,and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel when there might be none to assist in my recovery.
I observed in this last part of his discourse,which was truly prophetic,though I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself-I say,I observed the tears run down his face very plentifully,and especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed;and that when he spoke of my having leisure to repent,and none to assist me,he was so moved,that he broke off the discourse,and told me,his heart was so full he could say no more to me.
I was sincerely affected with this discourse,as indeed who could be otherwise?and I resolved not to think of going abroad any more,but to settle at home according to my father's desire.But alas!a few days wore it all off;and,in short,to prevent any of my father's farther importunities,in a few weeks after I resolved to run quite away from him.However,I did not act so hastily neither as my first heat of resolution prompted,but I took my mother,at a time when I thought her a little pleasanter than ordinary,and told her,that my thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world,that I should never settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it,and my father had better give me his consent than force me to go without it;that I was now eighteen years old,which was too late to go apprentice to a trade,or clerk to an attorney;that I was sure if I did,I should never serve out my time,and I should certainly run away from my master before my time was out,and go to sea;and if she would speak to my father to let me go but one voyage abroad,if I came home again and did not like it,I would go no more,and I would promise by a double diligence to recover that time I had lost.
This put my mother into a great passion.She told me,she knew it would be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject;that he knew too well what was my interest to give his consent to anything so much for my hurt,and that she wondered how I could think of any such thing after such a discourse as I had had with my father,and such kind and tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me;and that,in short,if I would ruin myself there was no help for me;but I might depend I should never have their consent to it;that for her part,she would not have so much hand in my destruction,and I should never have it to say,that my mother was willing when my father was not.
Though my mother refused to move it to my father,yet,as I have heard afterwards,she reported all the discourse to him,and that my father,after showing a great concern at it,said to her with a sigh,‘That boy might be happy if he would stay at home,but if he goes abroad he will be the miserablest wretch that was ever born:I can give no consent to it.’
It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose,though in the meantime I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling to business,and frequently expostulating with my father and mother about their being so positively determined against what they knew my inclinations prompted me to.But being one day at Hull,where I went casually,and without any purpose of making an elopement that time;but I say,being there,and one of my companions being going by sea to London,in his father's ship,and prompting me to go with them,with the common allurement of seafaring men,viz.,that it should cost me nothing for my passage,I consulted neither father or mother any more,nor so much as sent them word of it;but leaving them to hear of it as they might,without asking God's blessing,or my father's,without any consideration of circumstances or consequences,and in an ill hour,God knows,on the first of September,1651,I went on board a ship bound for London.Never any young adventurer's misfortunes,I believe,began sooner,or continued longer than mine.The ship was no sooner gotten out of the Humber,but the wind began to blow,and the waves to rise in a most frightful manner;and as I had never been at sea before,I was most inexpressibly sick in body,and terrified in my mind.I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done,and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of heaven for my wicked leaving my father's house,and abandoning my duty;all the good counsel of my parents,my father's tears and my mother's entreaties,came now fresh into my mind,and my conscience,which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness which it has been since,reproached me with the contempt of advice,and the breach of my duty to God and my father.
