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Execution Sermons, Broadsides and Ballads

The commercial print culture of pirate death, comprising the New England execution sermons with their appended conference transcripts and dying speeches, the American gallows broadsides, the London Ordinary of Newgate's accounts and rival last-dying-speech sheets, and the broadside ballads of piracy and the gallows, spanning 1694 to 1726 with an American afterlife running to about 1814.

From1694To1726Also writtenExecution sermons; Gallows broadsides and dying speeches; The Ordinary of Newgate's Account; Piracy ballads; New England execution sermons and their appendices

This cluster is not a record of piracy. It records what the state, the ministry and the printing trade did with piracy once a pirate was in irons and the gallows built. Its core span is 1694 to 1726, with an American afterlife running to about 1814. Four genres sit inside it, and their evidential properties appear to differ sharply.

What the cluster contains

Five New England sermon pamphlets anchor it: Cotton Mather on John Quelch's company in 1704, on Samuel Bellamy's Whydah men in 1717, on the twenty-six hanged at Newport in 1723 and on William Fly in 1726, with Benjamin Colman printing separately on two of the same 1726 condemned. Beside them is one American gallows broadside, the dying speeches of six pirates executed at Boston in 1704. From London come the Ordinary of Newgate's account of Captain William Kidd, signed Paul Lorrain and printed for E. Mallet in 1701 as a single sheet, and at least one rival unofficial sheet. Four ballads complete it: two Pepys sheets on Henry Every, the London Kidd lament and its Boston descendant.1

How the items were made

A special Court of Admiralty condemned, the governor set a date, the ministers were admitted to the gaol, and within weeks a Boston bookseller had the sermon, the conferences and the dying words in print. The commercial mechanism shows on the sheet: the 1704 broadside ends with Nicholas Boone's imprint and advertises the Quelch trial report as "now in the Press". Boone financed Mather's Whydah pamphlet thirteen years later; in 1726 Mather and Colman published on the same condemned company from rival houses. In London the office of Ordinary was salaried and licensed to exploit its holder's access to the condemned.2

What the print records

The Quelch execution is the best documented in the cluster. Six men were hanged on Friday 30 June 1704, and Francis King was brought to the place of execution and reprieved. The broadside describes the musketeer escort, the walk to Scarlet's Wharff and the silver oar carried as the emblem of Admiralty jurisdiction. The speeches are unrepentant in places: Quelch on the stage said he was "Condemned only upon Circumstances". The sheet is reported to contradict itself, heading the execution 30 June and narrating it as "On Fryday the 20th of June 1704"; the reprint in Dow and Edmonds reads the 30th in both places.3

Mather's 1717 pamphlet is the principal printed narrative of the Whydah aftermath: the wreck of 26 April, the Boston Admiralty court of 22 October, and the executions of 15 November. Mather printed a speech the compiler evidently wished had not happened, John Brown breaking into "furious Expressions". The 1723 appendix is the fullest printed account of the largest single pirate execution of the period in North America, twenty-six hanged at Newport on 19 July out of twenty-eight condemned.4

How the Archive uses it

The genre is didactic before it is documentary, and every item was made to be sold. The 1723 appendix was compiled by an unnamed collector rather than by the preacher, and says so: "Faithfully Collected, by Another Hand". Fly's much quoted advice to shipmasters exists only as Mather's indirect narration, with no quotation marks in the original, and is set here as reported speech rather than as a first-person quotation. Ballads are the least factual layer, written in an assumed voice and often dated by catalogue inference. A name, a date or a ship from these texts is checked against the Admiralty records and the printed trial reports before it is asserted as fact; a mood or a market may be taken directly.5

Survival and access

All five sermon pamphlets carry freely reusable encoded texts under Evans Text Creation Partnership numbers N00981, N01600, N02066, N02300 and N02345. The 1704 broadside is at the Library of Congress, Printed Ephemera Collection, Portfolio 33, Folder 34, digital identifier rbpe.03303400; that copy is a positive photostat and is noted "Not in Evans". Lorrain's Kidd sheet is reproduced from a British Library original, with a second copy at the Huntington Library, call number 14152. The ballads sit in three collections: Pepys Ballads 2.199 and 5.384 at Magdalene College, Cambridge; "Captain Kid's Farewel to the Seas" at the National Library of Scotland, Crawford.EB.843; and the Boston reprint of about 1810 to 1814 at the American Antiquarian Society, which corrupts the forename to "Captain Robert Kidd".6

What the sources cannot yet give is a first state for several of these items. No original of the 1704 Quelch broadside has been located, the Washington copy being a photographic surrogate whose Library of Congress entry does not say which copy it was made from. The original of that broadside has not been consulted, and its double dating is known at second hand. Whether Lorrain's sheet was issued within the Ordinary's series or separately is not established, and the rival Kidd sheet is attested only by a catalogue listing. The London Kidd ballad is recorded as undated and assigned to 1701 by convention alone.

What the evidence does not settle

Lorrain's Kidd account, publication form

  • Whether Lorrain's Kidd account was a Newgate number or half-sheet is unknown

Lorrain's Kidd account, digitisation

  • Whether Lorrain's Kidd account is in the digitised series is unknown

Mather's second 1717 sermon date

  • Mather's second 1717 sermon date differs between two sources

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 cluster as scoped for the Archive comprises five New England sermon pamphlets, four by Cotton Mather on the executions of 1704, 1717, 1723 and 1726 and one by Benjamin Colman on the same 1726 condemned company; one American gallows broadside, the dying speeches of the six pirates executed at Boston in 1704; the Ordinary of Newgate's account of Captain William Kidd, signed Paul Lorrain and printed for E. Mallet in Bride-lane in 1701 as one sheet of two pages, alongside at least one rival unofficial last-speech sheet on the same hanging; and four ballad artefacts, being two Pepys sheets on Henry Every, the London Kidd lament and its Boston reprint of about 1810 to 1814. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed pamphlets, broadsides and ballads, with library catalogue records: Cotton Mather, "Faithful warnings to prevent fearful judgments", Boston, 1704, Evans-TCP N00981; "Instructions to the living, from the condition of the dead", Boston, 1717, Evans-TCP N01600; "Useful remarks", New London, 1723, Evans-TCP N02066; "The vial poured out upon the sea", Boston, 1726, Evans-TCP N02345; Benjamin Colman, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God", Boston, 1726, Evans-TCP N02300 (Confirmed for the five sermon pamphlets); "An account of the behaviour and last dying speeches of the six pirates", Boston, 1704, Library of Congress, Printed Ephemera Collection, Portfolio 33, Folder 34, digital identifier rbpe.03303400 (Confirmed for the broadside); "The ordinary of Newgate his account... of Captain William Kidd", London, printed for E. Mallet, 1701, catalogue record, University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries (Confirmed for the imprint and form); catalogue record 2081502, Falvey Library, Villanova University, for the rival sheet "A true account of the behaviour, confession and last dying speeches, of Captain William Kidd" (Probable, title only, the full record not retrieved); English Broadside Ballad Archive records EBBA 20813, EBBA 22206, EBBA 33482 and the American Antiquarian Society record BIB ID 276904 (Confirmed for the four ballads)
  2. The New England items were produced inside a tight commercial circuit in which a special Court of Admiralty condemned, the ministers of the town were admitted to the gaol to preach at, catechise and interrogate the condemned, and a Boston bookseller had the sermon, the conferences and the dying words in print within weeks: the 1704 broadside carries the imprint "Printed for and Sold by Nicholas Boone, at his shop near the Old Meeting-House in Boston. 1704" and then advertises the forthcoming Quelch trial report from the same bookseller, Boone financed Mather's Whydah pamphlet of 1717, and in 1726 Mather and Colman published on the same condemned company from different printing houses. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Printed broadside and execution sermons: "An account of the behaviour and last dying speeches of the six pirates", Boston, 1704, Library of Congress, digital identifier rbpe.03303400, for the ministerial regime, the Boone imprint and the advertisement of the trial report (Confirmed as printed wording); Cotton Mather, "Instructions to the living, from the condition of the dead", Boston, printed by John Allen for Nicholas Boone, 1717, Evans-TCP N01600, for Boone's second investment and for the same regime in the gaol (Confirmed); Cotton Mather, "The vial poured out upon the sea", Boston, printed by T. Fleet for N. Belknap, 1726, Evans-TCP N02345, and Benjamin Colman, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God", Boston, printed for John Phillip and Thomas Hancock, 1726, Evans-TCP N02300, for the two rival imprints on one execution (Confirmed)
  3. The 1704 broadside records that six men were hanged on Charles River, Boston side, on Friday 30 June 1704 and that Francis King was brought to the place of execution and reprieved, describes the musketeer escort, the walk to Scarlet's Wharff and the silver oar carried before the prisoners as the emblem of Admiralty jurisdiction, prints John Quelch's words on the stage, "I am Condemned only upon Circumstances", and is reported to contradict itself by heading the execution 30 June and then narrating it three lines later as "On Fryday the 20th of June 1704", though the reprint in Dow and Edmonds reads the 30th in both places and the original has not been checked here. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Gallows broadside: "An account of the behaviour and last dying speeches of the six pirates, that were executed on Charles River, Boston side on Fryday June 30th 1704", printed for and sold by Nicholas Boone, Boston, 1704; Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Printed Ephemera Collection, Portfolio 33, Folder 34, digital identifier rbpe.03303400, LCCN 2020776687 (Confirmed as the printed record and as the printed wording of both dates; the identification of 20 June 1704 as a Tuesday and 30 June as a Friday is a calendrical computation on the Julian calendar)
  4. Mather's 1717 pamphlet is the principal printed narrative of the aftermath of the loss of the Whydah, recording the wreck on the coast of New England on 26 April 1717, the special Court of Admiralty at Boston on 22 October 1717 and the executions of 15 November 1717, and printing John Brown's defiant gallows speech, of which Mather records that "He broke out into furious Expressions", while the appendix to the 1723 pamphlet is the fullest printed account of the twenty-six pirates executed at Newport, Rhode Island, on 19 July 1723, out of twenty-eight condemned and eight cleared. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Execution sermons with appended narratives: Cotton Mather, "Instructions to the living, from the condition of the dead", Boston, printed by John Allen for Nicholas Boone, 1717, Evans-TCP N01600, for the wreck of 26 April 1717, the court of 22 October, the executions of 15 November and the wording of John Brown's speech (Confirmed as printed); Cotton Mather, "Useful remarks", New London, printed and sold by T. Green, 1723, Evans-TCP N02066, for the twenty-six executed at Newport on 19 July 1723 and for the arithmetic of twenty-eight condemned and eight cleared (Confirmed as the printed statement); "Tryals of thirty-six persons for piracy", Boston, printed and sold by Samuel Kneeland, 1723, Evans 39785, Evans-TCP N29929, for the number tried (Confirmed)
  5. The genre is didactic before it is documentary, and two textual facts govern its use: the appendix to the 1723 pamphlet was compiled by an unnamed collector rather than by the preacher, who was at Boston ten days after the executions, and says so in its own heading, "Faithfully Collected, by Another Hand"; and William Fly's much quoted advice that masters of vessels should carry it well to their men survives only as Mather's indirect narration, without quotation marks in the original and in the minister's own syntax, so that it must be set as reported speech and never as a first-person quotation. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Execution sermons with appended narratives: Cotton Mather, "Useful remarks", New London, 1723, Evans-TCP N02066, for the appendix heading "An Account of the PIRATES with divers of their Speeches & Letters... Faithfully Collected, by Another Hand" and for the sermon's date after the executions (Confirmed as printed wording); Cotton Mather, "The vial poured out upon the sea", Boston, 1726, Evans-TCP N02345, for the printed wording of Fly's gallows advice as indirect narration (Confirmed as a textual fact)
  6. All five New England sermon pamphlets carry freely reusable encoded full texts under the Evans Text Creation Partnership identifiers N00981, N01600, N02066, N02300 and N02345; the 1704 broadside is held at the Library of Congress, Printed Ephemera Collection, Portfolio 33, Folder 34, digital identifier rbpe.03303400, where the copy is a positive photostat noted "Not in Evans"; Lorrain's Kidd sheet is reproduced from a British Library original with a second hard copy at the Huntington Library, call number 14152; and the ballads survive as Pepys Ballads 2.199 and 5.384 at Magdalene College, Cambridge, as "Captain Kid's Farewel to the Seas" at the National Library of Scotland, Crawford.EB.843, and as the Nathaniel Coverly Boston reprint of about 1810 to 1814 at the American Antiquarian Society, which titles it for "Captain Robert Kidd". Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Library catalogue and digital archive records: Evans Text Creation Partnership phase one texts N00981, N01600, N02066, N02300 and N02345, hosted by the Oxford Text Archive and the University of Michigan Library under Creative Commons Zero (Confirmed from the rights statement carried at the foot of the texts); Library of Congress catalogue record for "An account of the behaviour and last dying speeches of the six pirates", digital identifier rbpe.03303400, LCCN 2020776687, with the notes "Positive Photostat.; Not in Evans." (Confirmed); catalogue record for "The ordinary of Newgate his account... of Captain William Kidd", University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, noting the reproduction of a British Library original, and the Huntington Library rare books call number 14152 (Confirmed); English Broadside Ballad Archive records EBBA 20813 for Pepys Ballads 2.199, EBBA 22206 for Pepys Ballads 5.384 and EBBA 33482 for National Library of Scotland Crawford.EB.843, and American Antiquarian Society, Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads Project, BIB ID 276904, for "The dying words of Captain Robert Kidd" (Confirmed)