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The Colonial Governor

The governor of a British American colony, who from the 1690s to the 1720s commissioned pirate-hunters, granted the King's pardon where he was commissioned to do so, and convened and constituted the colonial courts that tried captured pirates.

Also writtenLieutenant governor

The power to try

Under the older law a pirate taken in the colonies had to be carried to England for trial at the Admiralty in London. The Act for the more effectual suppression of piracy, 11 William III c. 7, ended that requirement. It commenced on 16 November 1699, received royal assent on 11 April 1700, and authorised trial in the colonies before specially constituted courts of at least seven commissioners, drawn from naval officers, colonial officials, merchants and planters, sitting without a jury. The governor convened and constituted those courts. Later legislation continued the Act and an Act of 1719 made it perpetual.1

The power to pardon

Pardon rested on royal proclamation rather than on statute. George I's proclamation for suppressing of pirates, the Act of Grace, was given at Hampton Court on 5 September 1717 and printed on the front page of the London Gazette, but governors could not grant the pardon until they were commissioned to do so: an Order in Council of 1 July 1718 directed warrants for the commissions that empowered them, a royal warrant to the governors followed on 11 July, the commission to Sir Nicholas Lawes of Jamaica is dated 23 July, and on 24 July Secretary Craggs told the Board of Trade that the commissions were passing the seals. Woodes Rogers arrived at Nassau on 26 July 1718, landed on the twenty seventh, took possession of the fort and read His Majesty's Commission before his officers, soldiers and about three hundred of the people found there. He received the surrender of many pirates, and later tried and hanged some who returned to the trade, among them the men taken with John Auger.2

The power to commission

A governor could commission privateers and pirate-hunters, authorising private captains to pursue and take pirates on his authority. Later writers have Sir Nicholas Lawes of Jamaica renewing such a commission to Jonathan Barnet, but his own despatch of 13 November 1720 calls Barnet's vessel "a trading sloop belonging to the Island being well manned and commanded by a brisk fellow" and names no commission to him at all. Barnet took John Rackham and his company, Anne Bonny and Mary Read with them, at the leeward part of the island in the autumn of 1720. Rackham was tried at St Jago de la Vega on 16 and 17 November 1720 and hanged at Gallows Point by Port Royal on the eighteenth.3

Virginia and Ocracoke

Spotswood judged the pardoned Edward Thache a continuing menace on the North Carolina coast and mounted an expedition against him at his own charge. The men of war could not enter the shallow channels, so he hired two sloops and put pilots aboard. Spotswood wrote to the Council of Trade and Plantations on 22 December 1718 that the captains of the King's ships furnished 55 men "under the command of the first Lieutenant of the Pearle and an officer from the Lyme". He does not name Robert Maynard. They came up with Thache at Ocracoke Inlet on 22 November 1718, where he was killed with nine of his crew, and three white men and six Black men were taken alive.4

What the sources cannot yet give is the local paper: the Jamaican dispatches that would fix the date of Rackham's capture, and the royal Instructions and Council journals that would set out each colony's membership and quorum rules. The dates of the 1717 proclamation, of the pardoning commissions that followed it and of Thache's death are as the London Gazette and the calendared Colonial Office papers give them; the manuscripts behind that calendar have not been consulted.

What the evidence does not settle

Legality of Spotswood's cross border expedition

  • Legality of Spotswood's expedition into North Carolina waters contested

Date of Rackham's capture

  • Exact date of Rackham's October 1720 capture unfixed

Eden and Knight collusion with Blackbeard

  • Strength of the case against Eden and Knight unresolved

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. The Act for the more effectual suppression of piracy, 11 William III c. 7, received royal assent on 11 April 1700 and is conventionally dated from 16 November 1699, the first day of the parliamentary session in which it passed; it removed the requirement to carry accused pirates to England by authorising trial in the colonies before specially constituted courts of at least seven commissioners sitting without a jury, courts the governor convened and constituted, and it was made perpetual by an Act of 1719. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute: Piracy Act 1698, 11 William III c. 7, An Act for the more effectual suppression of piracy, underlying text in Statutes of the Realm volume 7
  2. Pardon rested on royal proclamation rather than on statute. George I's proclamation for suppressing of pirates was given at Hampton Court on 5 September 1717 and printed on the front page of the London Gazette, and Secretary Craggs's circular of the following year describes it as "the King's last Proclamation bearing date the 5th of September 1717, relating to the surrender of the pirates in the West Indies". Governors could not grant that pardon until commissioned to do so: an Order in Council of 1 July 1718 directed warrants for passing under the Great Seal commissions empowering the governors of the plantations to pardon, a royal warrant to the governors followed on 11 July, the commission to Sir Nicholas Lawes of Jamaica is dated 23 July, and on 24 July Craggs told the Board of Trade that the commissions were passing the seals and were to be sent to the several governments by the first conveyance. Woodes Rogers arrived at Nassau on 26 July 1718, landed on the twenty seventh, took possession of the fort and read His Majesty's Commission before his officers, soldiers and about three hundred of the people found there. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Royal proclamation, state papers and official correspondence: The London Gazette, no. 5573, 14 to 17 September 1717, front page, carrying "By the King, A PROCLAMATION, For Suppressing of PIRATES", dated "Given at our Court at Hampton-Court the fifth Day of September, 1717, in the fourth Year of our Reign", read from the scanned page (the proclamation's body is set in italic and the scan's optical text of it is too corrupt to quote verbatim, so no wording from the body is quoted here). Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 30, 1717 to 1718, read at British History Online: no. 589, Order of King in Council, Kensington 1 July 1718, "ordering warrants to be prepared for passing under the Great Seal Commissions empowering the Governors of Plantations to pardon all such pirates as shall have surrendred themselves according to the Proclamation in that behalf" (C.O. 323, 7. No. 130); no. 614, Kensington 11 July 1718, "H. M. Warrant to Governors of Plantations to grant pardon to pirates surrendered in accordance with the Proclamation of 5th Sept., 1717" (C.O. 324, 33. pp. 170 to 178); no. 638, Westminster 23 July 1718, copy of the commission to Governor Sir N. Lawes for granting pardon to pirates (C.O. 137, 13. No. 13); no. 639, Whitehall 24 July 1718, Craggs to the Council of Trade and Plantations, "Commissions for pardoning pirates being now passing the Seals, they are to be transmitted to the respective Governmts. by the first conveyance" (C.O. 323, 7. No. 131); no. 640, 25 July 1718, the Board having perused "a copy of H.M. Commission under the Great Seal, whereby the sevl. Govrs. of the Plantations are impowered to pardon such pirates as shall surrender themselves"; no. 580, 1 July 1718, reporting that several who had surrendered "are gone out again because the Govrs. were not impowerd to pardon them"; no. 803, Craggs's circular of 24 December 1718 to the governors of plantations, quoted above (C.O. 324, 33. pp. 202 to 204); and no. 737, Governor Woodes Rogers to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Nassau on Providence, 31 October 1718, "I arriv'd in this port 26th July in company with the men of warr ordered to assist me... On the 27th I landed and took possession of the fort, where I read H.M. Commission in the presence of my officers, soldiers and about 300 of the people found here" (C.O. 23, 13. ff. 20 to 24v). The description of Rogers as the first royal governor of the Bahamas is not carried by these documents.
  3. Governor Sir Nicholas Lawes's own despatch of 13 November 1720 describes the taking of John Rackham not as the work of a commissioned pirate hunter but of a merchantman. He writes that "About a fortnight ago a trading sloop belonging to the Island being well manned and commanded by a brisk fellow one Jonathan Barnet did us a very good peice of service he was met by a pirate vessel at the Leward part of this Island commanded by one Rackum in which were 18 pirates more whom he took and are now in goal", and that he intended to have them tried that week "by a Commission which was sent me some time agoe grounded on the Statute of the 11th and 12th of King William which by an Act of Parliament passed the last Sessions I find is made perpetuall". Lawes names no commission to Barnet, so the reference statement that he had renewed a standing one to him is not borne out by the governor's own report. The trial followed as he intended: the printed Tryals of 1721 record a Court of Admiralty held at the town of St Jago de la Vega on 16 and 17 November 1720, at which Rackham and his men were condemned for piracy, the execution of Rackham with four others at Gallows Point by Port Royal on Friday 18 November 1720 and the hanging of three of the bodies in chains, and a further sitting at St Jago de la Vega on 28 November 1720 at which Mary Read and Ann Bonny were tried. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. State papers and printed trial: Governor Sir Nicholas Lawes to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Jamaica, 13 November 1720, calendared as no. 288 in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 32, 1720 to 1721 (pp. 187 to 195), read at British History Online; endorsed "Recd. Jan. 17th, Read March 21st, 1721", 5 pp., C.O. 137, 13. No. 45. And The Tryals of Captain John Rackam and other Pirates... who were all Condemn'd for Piracy, at the Town of St. Jago de la Vega, in the Island of Jamaica, on Wednesday and Thursday the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Days of November 1720; as also the Tryals of Mary Read and Anne Bonny (Jamaica, 1721), read in the copy digitised by the National Library of Jamaica held in the project cache: "ARTICLES Exhibited at a Court of Admiralty, held at the Town of St. Jago de la Vega in the said Island, the Sixteenth Day of November, in the Seventh Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George"; "On Friday the 18th Day of November 1720. Five of the said Condemn'd Pirates, viz. Capt. John Rackam, George Fetherston, Master, Richard Corner Quarter-Master, John Davies and John Howell, were executed, at Gallows-Point, at the Town of Port-Royal, according to the aforesaid Sentence; and the Bodies of Rackam, Fetherston and Corner, were afterwards carried to Plumb-point, Bush-Key, and Gun-Key; where they were hung on Gibbits in Chains"; and the sitting of "Monday, November the 28th, 1720" at which "the Prisoners, Mary Read, Ann Bonny" were brought to the bar. The scan's optical text garbles some figures and letterforms, and the quotations above reproduce that reading. Neither document names any commission held by Barnet, and no commission of Lord Archibald Hamilton has been traced in this pass.
  4. Alexander Spotswood, lieutenant governor of Virginia, judged the pardoned Edward Teach a continuing menace on the North Carolina coast and mounted an expedition against him at his own charge. In his despatch to the Council of Trade and Plantations of 22 December 1718 he records that Teach and his crew had surrendered to the governor of North Carolina but had gone out again, that he "judged it high time to destroy that crew of villains", that the men of war could not enter the shallow channels so he hired two sloops and put pilots aboard while the captains of the King's ships furnished 55 men "under the command of the first Lieutenant of the Pearle and an officer from the Lyme", and that "they came up with Tach at Ouacock Inlett on the 22nd of last month", that is 22 November 1718, where after a close action "Tach with nine of his crew were killed, and three white men and six negros were taken alive". Spotswood does not name Robert Maynard. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. State papers and official correspondence: Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Virginia, 22 December 1718, calendared as no. 800 in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 30, 1717 to 1718 (pp. 424 to 446), read at British History Online; signed A. Spotswood, endorsed "Recd. 13th, Read 29th April, 1719", 13 pp., C.O. 5, 1318. Nos. 61, 61 i. to vi. Quotations as given.