REV. COTTON MATHER, PASTOR OF THE SECOND (NORTH) CHURCH, BOSTON, 1685-1728
From a mezzotint by Peter Pelham after a portrait painted in 1728.
FOOTNOTES
[82] Water bailiff:—a custom house officer charged with the duty of searching ships.
[83] The place of the execution was about where the North End Park bathing beach is today.
[84] In the summer of 1755, two negro servants of Capt. John Codman of Charlestown, poisoned their master. Phillis, the woman servant and the principal in the murder, was burned at the stake at Cambridge and Mark, her accessory, was hanged and then gibbetted on Charlestown Neck. Three years later Dr. Caleb Rea of Wenham, while on his way to Ticonderoga, rode by and stopped to inspect the body of Mark. He recorded in his diary that “the skin was but little broken altho’ he had been hanging there near three or four years.”
[85] These pirates were tried under authority conferred by a commission sent over in accordance with an Act of the 11th and 12th year of William III, authorizing the trial of pirates by Courts of Admiralty, out of the realm. The commission sent to New England was dated Nov. 23, 1700. This commission required that all trials should be conducted “according to the civil law” of the Province, which at that time required two innocent witnesses against each defendant necessary for a conviction, and in no case was the testimony of an accomplice admissible. Moreover, by the Act under which the commission was issued, principals only were triable in the Admiralty Courts held in the Provinces; accessories were expressly required to be sent to England for trial. We learn from the Boston News-Letter of the third week in July, that Captain Larramore and Lieutenant Wells, of the “Larramore Galley,” had been sent for England in the express sloop “Sea Flower,” Captain Cary, for trial as “Accessaries in endeavouring to carry off the 7 Pirates.... He carries also with him three Evidences of their crime committed.” All the men on board the pirate brigantine could not be considered as principals. In fact, only six men were executed and the rest of those condemned to death at the same time were afterwards set free. Only such as could be shown were principals in committing acts of piracy or murder could be sentenced by the court. All others must clearly be sent to England to be tried by jury. Nothing in the somewhat detailed report of the trial that was printed in London at the time, shows that the accused were even given the benefit of a doubt either as to the law or the testimony. For an analytical summary of this trial, see Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. VIII, p. 397.
[86] Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. VIII, p. 397.
CHAPTER VIII
Samuel Bellamy, whose Ship was Wrecked at Wellfleet and 144 Drowned
Very little is known of the origin of this man save that he came from the west of England where families of the same name are living today. In company with one Paul Williams,[87] he first appears in the West Indies where they tried to raise a Spanish wreck hoping to salve the bags of silver supposed to be in the hold. Meeting with no success and being at odds with honest merchants and shipmasters, they decided to turn pirates or “go on the account,” a term adopted by men of that profession, and not long after they fell in with Capt. Benjamin Hornygold, in the sloop “Mary Anne,” and Capt. Louis Lebous, in the sloop “Postillion,” and agreed to join forces. They set out in two large sloops each having about seventy men aboard.