instructions for the-pirate-plague-of-the-dead

But this sweeping execution did not save the south-western coast from further attacks. In the beginning of 1625, Sir John Eliot presided at an Admiralty Sessions at Plymouth for the trial of twenty-three ” Turks and renegadoes” for piracy, and twenty of these were hanged. Frequent petitions to the Council from ports in the West told the dismal tale of rapine, and bore out the truth of the story of ” the distressed wives of almost two thousand poor mariners remaining most miserable captives in Sallee in Barbary,” who implored the Duke of Buckingham that as their husbands had for a long time continued in most miserable estate, suffering such unspeakable misery and torture that they were almost forced ” to convert from their Christian religion,” and as the King had not answered a single one of their many petitions for relief, his grace would “in his wonted goodness and gracious pity towards poor women and miserable captives intercede with Charles on their behalf. During the reign of James the First Cornwall and Devon had suffered grievously from the ravages of the Sallee rovers-a body remembered by most of us merely because of a chance reference in Robinson Crusoe -and at the accession of Charles the evil had not abated. It is impossible to study the general history of the time without feeling how largely in parts it is coloured by both these influences, and their effect is almost as marked upon our local chronicles.

Within a very short period, after Sir John Eliot practically commenced his political career by becoming member for Newport in 1624, the inhabitants of the West of England were distracted from the proceedings of Parliament and even from those attendant upon the change of monarch by two enemies of the public peace dead as far as the England of to-day is concerned-Pirates and the Plague.

Instructions for the-pirate-plague-of-the-dead