In Part One, we followed the adventures of a pacifist Quaker sailor captured by pirates.

In Part Two, we saw the Quakers, helped by William Penn, defeat an attempt by their religious opponents in the 1790s to have them prosecuted as blasphemers.

But by the late 1690s, William Penn was no longer feeling his oats.

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He wasn’t getting any younger, he wasn’t getting the revenue he had expected from being Proprietor of Pennsylvania, and his finances were in a bad condition thanks to his un-thrifty, un-Quakerly spending habits. Worst of all, Gulielma, his beloved wife of twenty-two years, had died in 1694.

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“As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.” – Psalm 103, 15-16 (KJV)

But there was no time for Penn to sit around feeling sorry for himself….

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Hey, what did I just say?

The Board of Trade, the bureaucracy which oversaw the English Empire, had been receiving complaints that England’s Caribbean and North American colonies were tolerating pirates, with Pennsylvania among the worst of the lot. Other complaints about Pennsylvanians were that they were buying and selling goods without regard to the arbitrary British trade restrictions – this voluntary commerce in honest goods was to British imperial authorities about as much of a sin as trafficking in stolen pirate goods. Plus the antiwar views of the colonists meant the Empire wasn’t getting a lot of help from Pennsylvanians in the struggle with France.

As far as the Board of Trade was concerned, the worst of the pirates was Henry Every.

 

Seriously? An umbrella? That seems kind of effete for a pirate, if you ask me. And what about the poor umbrella holder?

Henry Every (under the umbrella)

Every led a mutiny and took over an English ship in Spain. Renaming the ship the Fancy, Every sought plunder in the Indian Ocean, the latest popular destination for greedy sea-robbers. These East Indies pirates were based in what is now called the Ile Ste Marie off the east coast of Madagascar. From this island the pirates sailed forth against the richly-loaded ships which carried goods and treasure from the Orient.

They'll go no more a-roving. ALTERNATE ALT-TEXT: I don't want to be buried in a Pet Sematary, I don't want to live my life again, I don't want to be buried in a Pirate Sematary, I just want to sail upon the Main

Pirate Cemetery, Ile Ste Marie, Madagascar

Every left a message to English and Dutch merchants in the area telling them simply to identify their nationality and they would not be harmed. Like other East Indian pirates, Every targeted ships from the Muslim countries in the area (and would be happy to seize French or Spanish ships too). The Barbary Pirates who enslaved Europeans were Muslim. The Turkish armies which had jihaded their way through Europe, almost to Vienna, were Muslim. So there was a convenient conflation between the hostile Muslim powers near Europe and the not-yet-hostile Muslim powers with their tempting loot in the Indian Ocean.

Every’s Fancy came across the Ganj-i-Sawai, a ship belonging to the powerful Mughal Emperor in India, a potentate named Aurengzeb. The Ganj-i-Sawai was part of a fleet which was returning from a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca with many distinguished passengers and a prodigious amount of treasure.

Every and his men captured the ship, stole the treasure and – if we are to believe the Mughal accounts and some of the pirates who later turned states’ evidence – raped the women. Every supposedly married Aurengzeb’s granddaughter, who had been on the captured ship, and she allegedly became a pirate queen.

 

WHY WASN'T STEVE SMITH INVITED?

“Hand over yer booty – we’re talking to you, ladies.”

The problem was that Aurengzeb was not someone the English wanted to cross – England’s East India Company was beginning its penetration of the Indian subcontinent, but Aurengzeb might put a stop to that if he became angry. At the time Aurengzeb was regarded as very harsh and cruel, though recent historical revisionism suggests he wasn’t that bad (for example, “Aurangzeb protected more Hindu temples than he destroyed”). But it was unwise to provoke the Emperor’s wrath, and Aurangzeb was wrathful that ships from a supposedly friendly power had committed such aggression on his pilgrim ship. What are you going to do about it, he asked the English threateningly, as he commenced retaliating.

Apologizing for the incident,

To be fair, this is from a French book, so the authors would have an incentive to portray the English in an ignominious position

Here are the English apologizing to Aurangzeb on an earlier occasion

…the English tried to repair the damage by hunting for Every and his crew.

Several of Every’s crew members were captured in Ireland, brought to London, convicted and hanged. Based on the trial and on the confessions of the captured pirates, authorities in London got a great deal of information about the friendly reception which England’s North American and Caribbean colonies gave to Every and other pirates. Reports came in of Every’s former shipmates spending and selling their loot in the colonies, bribing officials, and even settling down and becoming respectable citizens. The Board of Trade believed that Every and the remainder of his crew might be hiding out in America.

Many people in English America were indeed friendly with the East India pirates. Many in the colonies, including many colonial officials, had personal memories of slavery at the hands of the Muslim Barbary Pirates, slavery from which they had had to be ransomed at heavy prices after enduring painful and arduous labor. The East Indies pirates were simply robbing Muslims – who were cut from the same cloth as the Barbary Pirates, the colonists thought. Speaking of cloth, calico, an Indian fabric, was very much the rage at the time, and the pirates brought calico to enliven the wardrobes even of the Boston Puritans. The stolen goods were a great stimulus to local, currency-starved economies in America.

Reports from Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were particularly disturbing, at least to those willing to believe ill of the Quakers – and many English officials were willing. Tiny Rhode Island had a large measure of self-government, and the rich Quakers who ruled the colony enthusiastically cooperated with the East India pirates. New Jersey, with a heavy Quaker influence, had similar problems. Of course, the non-Quaker colonies, such as New York, Massachusetts, and the Bahamas, also provoked complaints, and these places were not Quaker-run.

In Pennsylvania, Every’s former crew members were selling their loot and settling in that colony, like elsewhere in English America. As deputy governor of Pennsylvania, William Markham, a non-Quaker cousin of Penn’s, was responsible for wielding Penn’s powers while Penn was away in England. Markham had been in the British Navy and had taken part in a naval attack on Algiers, the Muslim pirate-state which Markham may have equated, through guilty by association, with the Muslim kingdoms of India.

Like other American governors, Markham gave commissions to pirates for the ostensible purpose of fighting the French, who were at war with England at the time. The commissions often spoke vaguely about “the King’s enemies,” implying that the French were not the only targets. In any case, the newly-commissioned “privateers” (a term which was beginning to evolve to describe government-sanctioned pirates who fought the government’s wars) went straight to the East Indies and preyed on Muslim shipping while making the French (who didn’t have as much seizable booty) a secondary priority at best.

Markham praised the friendliness of the pirates and the stimulus they gave to the local economy. They also seem to have brought many gifts to Markham, gifts he accepted in pretended ignorance of the givers’ piratical origins. Markham accumulated a collection of East India luxuries Although Markham arrested some of Every’s crew under pressure from London, these prisoners somehow managed to get bailed out or to simply escape. A royal official investigating Pennsylvania affairs suggested that the King wouldn’t act to suppress a rebellion against Markham, if one should develop (hint, hint). The governor of Maryland tried to stir up just such a rebellion in order to add Pennsylvania to Maryland, though that didn’t work.

A Red Sea pirate named James Brown…

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Come here mama…and dig this crazy scene / He’s not too fancy…but he has loot from the Red Sea / He ain’t no drag. / Papa’s got a bunch of swag

…sailed into Philadelphia with his ill-gotten treasure, and went to see Markham, presumably with a view toward making some gifts. Brown explained to Markham about his activities, admitting that he’d sailed with the pirate Thomas Wake and also with Every, but in the latter case only as a passenger, Brown insisted. This was probably a cover story – I don’t know if Every even offered passenger service. Of the voluntary kind, that is.

Markham’s daughter fell in love with Brown and the she married the buccaneer.

 

"Where's the caterer? I'll keel-haul him!"

“Daddy, you can tell William Penn that we totally take piracy as seriously as he does.”

Perhaps this video will give some idea of the wedding ceremony. William Penn, however, probably did not feel good about having a pirate in the family. James Brown settled on a farm in what is now Delaware, then part of Pennsylvania.

Penn had to balance the demands of the imperial authorities and those of his people in Pennsylvania. In 1696, Parliament passed a law increasing royal power over the colonies, including Pennsylvania, partly in the name of getting tough on piracy. Penn feared the loss of self-government and even trial by jury. Penn tried to explain to London authorities that Pennsylvanians had moved to their colony “to have more and not less freedom than at home.”

The colonial legislature of Pennsylvania shared Penn’s concerns to an extreme degree. The Pennsylvania Quakers, as Penn had pointed out, had a longstanding suspicion of the English government, which had oppressed them when they lived in England, would seize on any excuse to extend its persecuting arm across the Atlantic. Even the anti-piracy crusade might be a pretext for colonial officials to mistreat Pennsylvanians. Robert Quarry, the admiralty judge sent to Pennsylvania to crack down on piracy, had been removed from the governorship of South Carolina for collaboration with pirates. Now Quarry had commercial interests in Pennsylvania, which suspicious Pennsylvania officials believed would give him an incentive to use his official powers to harass rival merchants – all in the name of law and order. Quarry catechized Quaker meetings about the religious beliefs, which would have reinforced the suspicion that the anti-piracy crusade was another step in England’s long-term persecution of Quakers.

But Quarry had his own complaints:

All the persons that I have employed in searching for and apprehending these pirates, are abused and affronted and called enemies to the country, for disturbing and hindering honest met, as they are pleased to call the pirates, from bringing their money and settling amongst them.

The Pennsylvania lawmakers made an “anti-piracy” law full of loopholes to shield pirates’ local accomplices. James Brown, Governor Markham’s son-in-law was elected to the legislature but didn’t show up; when he did, he suggested he hadn’t want to risk arrest for piracy. The legislature expelled Brown and Markham acted to arrest his son-in-law, while also helping him out with bail money.

Penn came to his colony to in 1799 (bringing his second wife Hannah with him), to preside over the government in person and address the vehement complaints of the colonial officials in London. He wanted to protect Pennsylvania’s autonomy as far as he could, but he also wanted to check the unrealistic defiance of the locals against the empire. If Pennsylvanians believed themselves put-upon now, how would they like it if London took the proprietorship away from Penn (again) and administered the colony directly, removing the buffer Penn provided between his colonists and the wrath of hostile imperial bureaucrats?

Investigating the situation, Penn found that, indeed, former pirates had settled in the colony, including his cousin William Markham’s son-in-law. Penn replaced Markham and other colonial officials who had buddied up too closely to the pirates.

After Penn gave the colonial legislators a stern talking to…

WILLIAM PENN SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS BROTHERS AND SISTERS. STOP DOING BUSINESS WITH PIRATES, AND IN GENERAL, PAY MORE RESPECT TO MY AUTHORITY AS PROPRIETOR OF THIS COLONY.

…the solons repealed their defendant-friendly piracy law. Mellowing somewhat, Penn suggested that the reformed pirates who had settled in Pennsylvania be left alone, so long as they earned an honest living far from the ports and coastal areas, where they might be tempted (or tempt others) into piratical ways. Perhaps Penn was thinking of his in-law, James Brown, the pirate-turned-farmer.

Penn left Pennsylvania in 1701, and never returned.

"Don't worry, we'll build you some monuments after you die and pretend we loved you all along."

“Goodbye, William, Godspeed, we will take to heart all of your solemn lectures!”

The Board of Trade was not placated, continuing to see the North American and Caribbean colonies as refuges for pirates. The problem, the bureaucrats concluded, was that not all the colonies were governed directly by the Crown. So the Board prepared a bill for Parliament by which the proprietary colonies (like Pennsylvania) and those colonies which were self-governing based on royal charters (such as Massachusetts) would become directly ruled from London Also, the colonies would be merged into larger megacolonies – for instance, Pennsylvania would be merged with Maryland and New Jersey (PenJeryland?).

A bill matching some of the Board’s ideas was introduced in the House of Lords. To opponents of the bill, such as Penn, this was sheer oppression, abrogating charter rights. And anyway, New York was a crown colony but its former governor, Fletcher, had been in cahoots with the pirates nonetheless (Fletcher had spent time as governor of Pennsylvania when Penn had been deprived of his proprietorship). The Quakers and other colonial agents out-lobbied the Board of Trade. Penn defended his powers as proprietor in terms their Lordships could understand: “Powers are as much Property as Soil; and
this is plain to all who have Lordships or Mannours [manors] in England… .” The bill died in Parliament – but not before passing a second reading in the House of Lords. The Board kept pushing for its pet bill, but without success.

There wasn’t a major crackdown on piracy in the colonies until the pirates began relocating their predatory activities to the vicinity of the colonies themselves, as opposed to the remote Indian Ocean. Then the colonists bestirred themselves, and some serious pirate hangings began, putting an end to what some call the Golden Age of Piracy.

 

Works Consulted

William C. Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism. London: MacMillan and Company, 1919.

Douglas R. Burgess, Jr., The Politics of Piracy: Crime and Civil Disobedience in Colonial America. ForeEdge, 2014.

Leonidas Dodson, “Pennsylvania Through the Eyes of a Royal Governor,” Pennsylvania History,Vol. 3, No. 2 (April, 1936), pp. 89-97.

Mark G. Hanna, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Rufus M. Jones, The Quakers in the American Colonies. London: MacMillan and Company, 1911.

John A. Moretta, William Penn and the Quaker Legacy. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007.

Andrew R. Murphy, Liberty, Conscience and Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

P. Bradley Nutting, “The Madagascar Connection: Parliament and Piracy, 1690-1701,” The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Jul., 1978), pp. 202-215.

I. K. Steele, “The Board of Trade, The Quakers, and Resumption of Colonial Charters, 1699-1702,”  The William and Mary Quarterly,Vol. 23, No. 4 (Oct., 1966), pp. 596-619.

Alexander Tabarrok, “The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Privateers,” The Independent Review, v., XI, n. 3, Winter 2007, pp. 565-577.

C. E. Vulliamy, William Penn. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934.