The buccaneers and marooners of America

by A. O. Exquemelin; Daniel Defoe

Mungo Heardman, President,	⎬Witnesses.”
John Atkins, Registrar,

In like manner was drawn out and exchanged the indentures of Thomas How, of Barnstaple, in the county of Devon; Samuel Fletcher, of East Smithfield, London; John Lane, of Lombard Street, London; David Littlejohn, of Bristol; John King, of Shadwell parish, London; Henry Dennis, of Bideford; Hugh Harris, of Corf Castle, Devonshire; William Taylor, of Bristol; Thomas Owen, of Bristol; John Mitchel, of Shadwell parish, London; Joshua Lee, of Liverpool; William Shuren, of Wapping parish, London; Robert Hartley, of Liverpool; John Griffin, of Blackwall, Middlesex; James Cromby, of London, Wapping; James Greenham, of Marshfield, Gloucestershire; John Horn, of St. James’s parish, London; John Jessup, of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire; David Rice, of Bristol.

But two or three of whom, I hear, are now living; two others, viz., George Wilson and Thomas Oughterlaney, were respited from execution till his Majesty’s pleasure should be known; the former died abroad, and the latter came home, and received his Majesty’s pardon; the account of the whole stands thus:—Acquitted, 74; executed, 32; respited, 2; to servitude, 20; to the Marshalsea, 17; killed in the Ranger, 10; killed in the Fortune, 3; died in the passage to Cape Corso, 13; died afterwards in the Castle, 4; negroes in both ships, 70: total, 276.

I am not ignorant how acceptable a relation of the behaviour and dying words of malefactors are to the generality of our countrymen, and therefore shall deliver what occurred worthy of notice in the deportment of these criminals.

The first six that were called to execution were Magnes, Moody, Simpson, Sutton, Ashplant, and Hardy; all of them old standers and notorious offenders. When they were brought out of the hold, on the parade, in order to break off their fetters, and fit the halters, none of them, it was observed, appeared the least dejected, unless Sutton, who spoke faint, but it was rather imputed to a flux that had seized him two or three days before than fear. A gentleman, who was surgeon of the ship, was so charitable at this time, to offer himself in the room of an ordinary, and represented to them, as well as he was able, the heinousness of their sin, and necessity which lay on them of repentance; one particular part of which ought to be acknowledging the justice they had met with. They seemed heedless for the present, some calling for water to drink, and others applying to the soldiers for caps; but when this gentleman pressed them for an answer, they all exclaimed against the severity of the court, and were so hardened as to curse, and wish the same justice might overtake all the members of it as had been dealt to them. “They were poor rogues,” they said, “and so must be hanged, while others, no less guilty in another way, escaped.”

When he endeavoured to compose their minds, exhorting them to die in charity with all the world, and would have diverted them from such vain discourse by asking them their country, age, and the like, some of them answered, “What was that to him? They suffered the law, and should give no account but to God.” They walked to the gallows without a tear in token of sorrow for their past offences, or showing as much concern as a man would express at travelling a bad road; nay, Simpson, at seeing a woman that he knew, said, “He had lain with that b——h three times, and now she was come to see him hanged.” And Hardy, when his hands were tied behind him (which happened from their not being acquainted with the way of bringing malefactors to execution), observed, “That he had seen many a man hanged, but this way of the hands being tied behind them he was a stranger to and never saw before in his life.” I mention these two little instances to show how stupid and thoughtless they were of their end, and that the same abandoned and reprobate temper that had carried them through their rogueries, abided with them to the last.

Samuel Fletcher, another of the pirates ordered for execution, but reprieved, seemed to have a quicker sense of his condition; for when he saw those he was allotted with go to execution, he sent a message by the Provost-Marshal to the court, to be “informed of the meaning of it, and humbly desired to know whether they designed him mercy or not? If they did, he stood infinitely obliged to them, and thought the whole service of his life an incompetent return for so great a favour; but that if he was to suffer, the sooner the better, he said, that he might be out of his pain.”

There were others of these pirates the reverse of this, and though destitute of ministers or fit persons to represent their sins and assist them with spiritual advice, were yet always employing their time to good purposes, and behaved with a great deal of seeming devotion and penitence; among these may be reckoned Scudamore, Williams, Philips, Stephenson, Jeffreys, Lesly, Harper, Armstrong, Bunce, and others.

Scudamore too lately discerned the folly and wickedness of the enterprise, that had chiefly brought him under sentence of death, from which, seeing there was no hopes of escaping, he petitioned for two or three days’ reprieve, which was granted; and for that time applied himself incessantly to prayer and reading the Scriptures. He seemed to have a deep sense of his sins, of this in particular, and desired, at the gallows, they would have patience with him, to sing the first part of the thirty-first Psalm; which he did by himself throughout.

Armstrong, having been a deserter from his Majesty’s service, was executed on board the Weymouth (and the only one that was); there was nobody to press him to an acknowledgment of the crime he died for, nor of sorrowing in particular for it, which would have been exemplary, and made suitable impressions on seamen; so that his last hour was spent in lamenting and bewailing his sins in general, exhorting the spectators to an honest and good life, in which alone they could find satisfaction. In the end he desired they would join with him in singing two or three latter verses of the 140th Psalm; and that being concluded, he was, at the firing of a gun, triced up at the fore-yard-arm.