USA > Pennsylvania > Chronicles of Pennsylvania from the English revolution to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1688-1748, Vol. I > Part 25
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A book written some years after the death of John, or Henry, Every, or Avery, purporting to give his career, calls him "King of Madagascar," but he was not a "pirate King" in that sense. Every had been mate of a vessel fitted out at Bristol in 1694 in the ser- vice of the Spaniards. On May 30 of that year, when off the mouth of the Garonne, he secured command of
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the ship, and set sail for the Indian Ocean, allowing on the next day the captain and a few faithful ones to go off in the long boat. At Madagascar, Every made a combined fleet with men who had run away with two sloops from the West Indies. A ship belonging to the Great Mogul was captured; a proceeding which nearly caused the extirpation of the East India Company's settlements, for the Great Mogul, not discriminating between one Englishman and another, threatened so to revenge himself. Every got the treasure into his own vessel, which then sailed away from the sloops which had aided him. He reached the Bahamas in April, 1696, and, calling himself Henry Bridgeman, and the ship the "Fancy," secured permission to land at New Providence with his 200 men, on their giving security. In the company was James Brown, who, in an examina- tion later, said that Every, an old acquaintance, and not known by Brown to be a pirate, had let him come as a passenger. Brown had sailed from Boston, Massa- chusetts, to trade with Madagascar. The company of the "Fancy" scattering, and some coming to the North American colonies, Brown got back to Boston eleven months after leaving that town. The innocency of his voyage outward being suspected, he answered some queries before certain officials, and was let go. He was in Philadelphia and already married to the Lieutenant- Governor's daughter by April 26, 1698, the date of a letter from Randolph to the Commissioners for Trade. Very likely a part of Every's crew is referred to in a story that in the Spring of 1696 thirty pirates, having made 80001. each by robbing vessels in the Red Sea, arrived at New York in a ship from Madagascar, and proceeded unmolested to Pennsylvania. Every him- self going to Ireland, he and six of his men were in- dicted for piracy : he escaped, but the six were hung.
The Lords Justices of England having issued a proclamation for the arrest of Every's companions, and
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Snead, who was a County Justice, having seen a copy of it, he with some difficulty induced Markham to have three arrested, viz: Robert Chinton, or Clinton, said to have been Every's chief lieutenant, Edmund Lassall, and Peter Claussen. Whatever may be said of Robert Snead, who had been a carpenter in Jamaica, he was valiant, a quality which apparently had caused him to receive the rank of Captain and a seat on the local bench. It took a brave man to meddle with ex-pirates, and, as he desired authority to hunt out not only these three but others, Markham actually deprived him of the arms which he carried and seemed ready to use, so that Snead rode at least once to his plantation out of town defenceless. Snead's story is that when he first urged Markham to arrest Every's men, Markham's wife and daughter slipped out, and told Chinton, and that vari- ous pirates thereafter muttered "informer" as Snead passed along the street. The Council expressed wil- lingness to spend the money to send the three to England for trial. Certain of Snead's colleagues on the bench of Philadelphia County authorized bail. There was a difficulty about trying them, the crimes having been committed on the high seas, where the colonial courts had no jurisdiction, and it was thought that the Governor could not grant a special commission for a court to hear the case without encroaching upon the prerogatives of the Admiralty. The accused ap- pear not to have found bail, and were in prison when on June 16, 1697, Markham received orders from England to secure the persons of all pirates and sea robbers and those reasonably suspected of being such. He then ordered these three to be put in close confine- ment, and their goods and effects to be seized. With the help of friends, however, the three that very night got out of what the Sheriff called the safest part of the jail. Claussen was caught, but Chinton and Lassall escaped, and, although pursued, said the Sheriff, "with
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horse and foot," reached New York, where they were seized but let go. A woman's story of their being among the bushes about a mile out High street on the 17th or 18th, received little attention, probably because they were reported heavily armed. Four of the old pirates who arrived in 1692, were ordered to be ar- rested, but the Sheriff returned that they could not be found. The Sheriff was John Claypoole, mentioned in a former chapter. Much suspicion was cast by Markham's enemies upon the zeal and sincerity of this Sheriff, who, in February following, was stated by both Churchman and Quaker Justices to be unable to serve on account of lameness and misbehavior. In view of a warrant of June 19, John Matthews, who had been on Every's ship, surrendered himself, claiming to have been captured and impressed by Every, and was com- mitted to prison, where he died in a few days. Within a month, one of the four old pirates, Charles Gosse, who was about to leave the province, was killed in a quarrel with a Frenchman. At the funeral, two days later, there was a small riot. Snead, going as a magis- trate to quell it, was assaulted,-violently, it is said,- and, in defending himself, wounded a man. It being supposed that Medlicott, said to have been surgeon's mate to one of the four pirates in a trip to the Red Sea, and at this time in command of a sloop in Dela- ware River, was intending to carry away the various pirates or privateersmen, Markham made him give bond in 2000l. not to do so: nevertheless it is supposed that Chinton and Lassell, and doubtless others, sailed away with him.
By a statute of 27 & 28 Hen. VIII, piracy was to be tried by commissioners under the great seal of England. Quary's commission as Admiralty Judge did not authorize him to try for that offence. So without trial, Claussen, who was a cooper by trade, and had been on a Hamburg vessel captured by Every off the
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Isle of France, and forced, it was said, to go with Every, remained in prison for several years: and so did David Evans, arrested about May, 1698, who claimed to have been acquitted of being an associate of Every, because of also being forced to join, and who was committed in default of bail to remain in the province until he produced the record of acquittal.
In 1698, the Councillors were reelected except Pem- berton, Pusey, Alricks, and Jones, who respectively were replaced by Biles, Lloyd, Donnaldson, and Wil- liam Rodeney (now Rodney). Pemberton was chosen Speaker of the Assembly. Among the acts then passed was one for preventing frauds and regulating abuses in trade. It added to the penalties and forfeitures pre- scribed by Act of Parliament fines by the Governor and Council not exceeding the value of the goods, and fur- thermore prohibited, except by permit from the Customs officers, the lading or unlading of tobacco by vessels from foreign or other parts, and the carrying of tobacco to other provinces, or the transport of it to outgoing vessels, or for being shipped to another part of the Province or Territories. Markham, so impecunious that he had wished to be also Collector of the Port of Philadelphia, must have been pleased with a duty pay- able to the Governor for the time being of 8d. per ton on incoming vessels of which a majority of the owners were not inhabitants, and of 4d. on those of which a majority were inhabitants; and it was directed that the fines or forfeitures not otherwise disposed of were to go ¿ to the King's use, } to the Governor, and } to the person suing therefor. There was a provision to ob- viate the inability of "most part of the merchants, traders, & owners of ships or vessells within this gov- ernment being of ye people called Quakers" to register their vessels under the before mentioned Act of 7 & 8 Wm. III, c. 22, that Act requiring an oath. The Frame of Government of 1696 contained a proviso that no per-
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son should be excused from swearing who was required to take an oath by the Acts of Parliament relating to trade and navigation. The Councillors and Assembly- men stated in their Vindication, dated 3mo. 30, 1698, that Quakers were allowed to register by affirmation in England; while John Bewley, the Collector of Phila- delphia, was inclined to act accordingly, Randolph had, on April 21, threatened him with dismissal in case he did not require an oath by laying hand on the Bible and kissing the Bible. So the Assembly now provided that those who could not conscientiously take an oath, might make an affirmation whenever an oath was required by the Act of 7 & 8 Wm. III. It was also enacted that, in any court held in the Province or Territories upon bill, complaint, or information for breach of the Acts of Trade or Navigation, the trial should be according to the common law and by jury, a procedure entirely foreign to Quary's commission as Admiralty Judge. Such features of the act were complained of by the King's officials, and the Commissioners of Customs raised a question whether Markham should not be re- moved from office for consenting. Penn, to ward this off, announced that he had negatived the act. His power to veto an act passed by his deputy with consent of the freemen was denied a few years later, but he at least could agree to having the King disallow an act, and this act was formally disallowed in 1699. Penn also called the attention of the Commissioners for Trade to the mention of juries in the Act of Parlia- ment, and expressed the hope that the unskilfulness of the Assemblymen in law would cause them to be ex- cused, as mistaken instead of disobedient.
While the local act was in force, a court held by the colony's Judges undertook to exercise Admiralty powers, and condemned a vessel. This was one of a series of proceedings calculated to supplant the Ad- miralty judicature appointed by the chief officers of the
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realm. Desirable as it might be to reform the adminis- tration of justice by introducing trial by jury in every branch, no king, no national authority, could tolerate the dwellers in a little corner of an empire interfering with what the national authority sanctioned.
Before, moreover, the Quakers on the local bench had thus excited the displeasure of the rulers of England, Markham's friends and he himself had threatened or put under duress the Surveyor-General of the Customs in a way to prevent perhaps through fear his perform- ance of duty. Because Randolph, in a representation to the Commissioners for Trade in March, 1696-7, had spoken individiously of Patrick Robinson, the Secretary of the Province, as a Scotchman &ct., Robinson, on July 28, 1698, appeared at Charles Read's house, where Randolph was lodging, and, laying hands on Randolph, and pursuing him to his bed room, forced him to give a letter explaining or weakening what he had said. On the next day, Randolph wrote to Markham that certain navigation bonds would be produced when Markham appointed an Attorney-General to prosecute them, and would be put into Markham's hands upon the King's approbation of the appointment of Markham as Gov- ernor. Markham, irritated by this impugning of his title, sent a constable, who, with his staff in hand, kept Randolph in the house as a prisoner, until after Quary had had a pretty warm interview with Markham, but Randolph had given up to him the bonds.
Markham had retained in his or ostensibly the Sheriff's custody the goods of the pirates who had es- caped, although Quary claimed the custody for the Ad- miralty. Markham, under the Proprietary's right to wreckage, took into possession certain goods from a French vessel which had been captured but lost at sea; after the Admiralty Court decided that they were law- ful prize, Markham refused to hand over what he actually had, or let the Sheriff hand over what the lat-
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ter had, to John Moore, deputed to receive prize goods by the Commissioners for Prizes, Markham insisting upon waiting for an order from the Proprietary.
The climax in the interference with Admiralty pro- cedure was reached in August and September, 1698. John Adams of Boston shipped a cargo at New York for Philadelphia on board of the "Jacob," of which the master was Francis Basset. Basset, although the sur- name is English, was only a naturalized subject, Quary calling him a Frenchman. When the "Jacob" arrived at New Castle, the goods were seized, for want of a cer- tificate, and placed in the custody of Robert Webb, de- puted to receive them by the Admiralty Court. Adams was one of those merchants, probably like nearly all the others at a new place, who peddled their goods, or sold them at the water's edge, and then departed. With no dwelling-house or store, time was everything to him; paying board in Philadelphia destroyed his profits. So he sought the Governor to have the goods delivered on security at an appraisement, and was referred by him to the Collector. Exhibiting a certificate, which had subsequently come from New York, that a certain notary had seen letters of denization to Basset, Adams was told by Judge Quary that it was insufficient to qualify the captain. Offering to give security to answer at court, but being put off with various diffi- culties about getting the goods on such terms, mean- while obliged to pay storage, and incurring other ex- penses, and fearing that the goods might rot before an Admiralty Court to try the case were constituted, as the Marshall and Advocate had not yet received their com- missions, Adams petitioned the Lieutenant-Governor to grant him a replevin. Markham thought that he had no right to meddle in a matter before the Admiralty, but the next day, while Col. Quary was out of town on his way to Maryland, Adams went to Anthony Morris, one of the Justices of the County Court, and secured a
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writ of replevin. John Claypoole, apparently restored to health, was still Sheriff. He saw a writ to deliver to Adams, upon his giving security to abide the action of the County Court, goods in the hands of Robert Webb, gentleman, without any hint of the matter being connected with the Admiralty. So the Sheriff took se- curity, and when Webb, who had not the use of his limbs, had gone to the King's store by the water side, and unlocked it, the Under Sheriff and his bailiff seized and disarmed Webb, exhibited the replevin, and carried away the goods, which were then delivered to Adams. Webb making complaint, Markham issued a warrant to the Sheriff to take back the goods, and keep them in his custody until further order or trial in such court as the informer should see fit. The Sheriff's deputy was delayed in getting the goods, and Webb started after Col. Quary, whom he found at New Castle, and there drew up a narrative of the affair, which Quary enclosed in a letter to England, commenting fully upon it, and with reflections upon Markham.
We can readily understand how the sentiments of the officials in London rose to something like indigna- tion, as they heard that a colonial Justice of the Peace had sent away the property seized by a Court of high prerogative, and was calling the question before him- self-whom Penn styled a "macaronic judge"- and two or three others about as skilled in law. Had it been known to the "big wigs" that this local Justice was by profession a tailor, the thing would have seemed to them particularly preposterous. We, however, who know that Quary, the sole Judge in Admiralty, was also a layman, a merchant by occupation, do not think him fitter to decide than those who composed the County Court : but the precedent would be bad in the near future, when the Crown could employ a learned jurist in Quary's place.
Yet worse was to come : to injury to Admiralty juris-
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diction was to be added insult to the King, carrying to an unnecessary extreme the Quaker disregard of worldly pomp and rank. When the County Court, con- sisting of Morris, Shippen, Richardson, and James Fox, heard the case of replevin by Adams against Webb, the latter produced in his defence the royal let- ters patent under the seal of the High Court of Ad- miralty and the Judge's warrant for the seizure. The patent having a picture of the King at its head and the seal pendent in a tin case, David Lloyd, who had ad- vised the granting of the replevin, and was appearing as counsel for Adams, took the document in his hand, and, exposing it contemptously before those in the court, exclaimed: "What is this? Do you think to scare us with a great box and a little baby? Tis true, fine pic- tures please children; but we are not to be frightened at such a rate." This is the way Quary quotes the words: Webb swore to exclamations of similar pur- port. To be sure, the context may have qualified or counteracted them. The rest of the speech is not given, but it reflected strongly upon Admiralty procedure. Ridicule of the King's picture in public, and acqui- escence in it by those holding court,-the Judges ap- pear to have failed to stop or rebuke Lloyd,-were not mere matters of bad taste. The governments of this world, even modern republics in relation to the flag, en- force the principle that the honor or dishonor shown to the image or emblem is honor or dishonor to what it rep- resents. There was no strength as far as the Quakers were concerned in the inference of the Crown officials, that those who insulted the King's picture would treat despitefully his person, except that the Quakers would not raise their hats, or make a bow to him : but by people who fought, such dishonorings were incidents of a revo- lution.
The Judges who heard Lloyd's speech, seeing the importance of the case, ordered a continuance until the
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next term. We learn from Quary's letter of Oct. 20 that when Markham spoke to the Provincial Council in regard to the matter,-this was in September,- Halliwell and Donnaldson proposed that the Judges be superseded, but that Lloyd closed the debate by declar- ing that all who encouraged or promoted the setting up of Admiralty courts were greater enemies to the rights and liberties of the people than those who promoted ship money in the time of Charles I. The Council de- clared that the Governor was not responsible for the act of Justice Morris. On 7mo. 27, Shippen being away on a visit to New England, Morris, Richardson, and Fox wrote to the Lieutenant-Governor and Council that they considered a replevin as a right of the King's sub- ject, whenever any goods or cattle were taken or dis- trained. Moreover, the Judges suggested that it was as proper for the Sheriff to take security for the pro- duction of the goods as for them to remain in the hands of Webb, whom the Judges did not know to be a proper officer to keep them, and who had given no bonds to the Provincial government. Advice was taken how the matter should be decided.
During this episode, a French pirate sent fifty men ashore at Lewes, and plundered every house in the town, and caused an alarm not confined to the Bay. Markham, left by his Councillors to Penn's powers as a Captain-General, and obtaining an expression that any expense should be defrayed by a tax, had drums beaten for volunteers. What numbers enrolled, we do not know : but no vessel could be found to go to fight the pirate, as Markham refused to promise any share of booty. The pirate, after getting provisions by overhaul- ing a ship bringing passengers from Holland, made off, to avoid being caught by the war vessel at New York. The captain of the war vessel, in view of orders to go to England, refused to hunt for the pirate.
There could be no expectation that the English gov-
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ernment, after hearing of Lloyd's antics, would allow him to retain any offce, and the operation of the ju- dicial machinery of the empire seemed to require the elimination of such an eccentric as Justice Morris; but it became in the minds of the officials in London im- perative that, in the first place, Markham be removed, although not an actor in the more intolerable proceed- ings. His negligence, although excusable by reason of physical disability and by lack of ways and means, his complacency, and his want of influence over the legis- lature and judiciary had shown him unfit to preside over a colony. Penn had no man of capacity who could be put in Markham's place, Quakers being out of the question, and difficulties arising from the matter of salary, royal approbation, bonds, &ct. Feeling, more- over, that he himself could manage the stiff-necked free- men better than any possible envoy, Penn decided to go without further procrastination to Pennsylvania, and rule in person. This solution was accepted by the English government. The patient and slowly moving officials could hope that a new order of things would be started at the end of the months that must be allowed for him to pack up, and make the voyage. The events in America during most of the year 1699 fall therefore within the term of Markham's administration.
In 1699, Pemberton went back into the Council in place of Growdon, and Pusey in place of Simcock, and Richard Willson became a member with Rodney for Kent; but, the people of New Castle County having failed at the regular election to make any choice, and re- fused at a special election to do so, a law was passed, Blunston being Speaker, ordering in such cases a fine of 100l. to be imposed upon a county, to be collected by distraint and sale from any four or more of the in- habitants, and to become a county charge for their re- imbursement, and also a fine of 50l. upon a Sheriff for neglecting his duty in regard to an election, and a fine
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of 20s. per diem on any elected Councillor or Assembly- man absenting himself; and there was also a provision that on neglect or refusal of the counties to elect, or the absence of those chosen, such members of Council or Assembly as met the Governor might act. A tax at the same rate as that of 1696 was voted to pay, first, the balance still due on former appropriations or any by that Assembly to the Lieutenant-Governor, and, second, the necessary charges of government, as the Gover- nor and Council might appoint.
The English government had desired the various colonies to pass an act relating to piracy upon the model of that passed some years before in Jamaica. Pennsylvania neglected the matter until this session, and then passed an act providing that treasons, felon- ies, piracies, robberies, murders, or confederacies at sea or in harbor, creek, or bay where the Admiral had jurisdiction should be tried as if committed on land, and also authorizing the appointment of three persons by the Governor and Council, to assist the Admiralty Judge or such persons in his absence as the Governor and Council should name, a quorum of which persons to have the powers given to commissioners under the great seal of England by statute of 28 Hen. VIII. This Pennsylvania act made punishable as accessories or confederates all persons entertaining, concealing, &ct. pirates, and not endeavoring to have them appre- hended, and also imposed a fine of 5l. on any person refusing to obey an order to assist an officer in seizing a pirate, and a fine of 20l. on any Justice, Sheriff, con- stable, or other officer neglecting his duty. Owing to differences in phraseology and otherwise from the Jamaica act, the delay in the appointment of those to hold court, and the risks to be run in punishing cap- itally upon testimony or verdict given without oath, Quary wrote that the law was impracticable and a mere pretence. The latter word was unfair.
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After the act was passed, a brigantine at New Castle, richly laden for England, was, the night before intended departure, seized and carried off by fourteen of the crew, putting ashore the remaining four, who would not join them. Numerous inhabitants of New Castle tried to make capital out of this in a petition to the Lieutenant-Governor and Council, presented on August 9, asking for protection, and complaining that there was neither fort, castle, or breastwork, nor militia, arms, or ammunition. The five Councillors who heard this, all Quakers, had the best of the argument, insincere as they were: they pointed out that the forts of Virginia and Maryland were not much more formidable than the fort at New Castle had been; if that was decayed, it was the inhabitants' fault; it would be more dangerous to build forts, if the people would not hold them, than to have none; as for a militia, the petitioners should have proposed it to the Assembly, instead of neglecting their duty to choose Assemblymen.
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