These are therefore in his Maj'tes Name to will and require you on Sight hereof to give Notice to all officers and Souldiers under your Comand to be in readiness with their Armes and amunition at one houres Warning as you Shall receive further Orders. given under my hand and Lesser Seal at Armes the Day and Year above written.
To Lieut. Collo. Miles Cary,
Comander in Chief of his
Maj'tes Militia in Warwick County.[6]...
Fr. Nicholson.
[1] Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson C. 933, fol. 8; also in P.R.O., C.O. 5:1311, no. 16. The piracies of La Paix, inside the capes of Virginia, show how bold the pirates had become, between wars, and the story of her capture how real the danger. She was a Dutch ship, which, seized by pirates, had run quite a career of depredation in the West Indies before she and her consorts appeared in Lynnhaven Bay. Her whole story is told in Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia, II. 217-226, and there the history of her capture may be followed consecutively, but the documents here presented show vividly how the news of her villanies and of her fate came to the authorities. The trial of the pirates is in C.O. 5:1411, Public Record Office (transcript in the Library of Congress). Col. Francis Nicholson was now governing Virginia for the second time, 1698-1705. Being himself in Elizabeth City County, he addresses these orders to the commanders of the militia in York, the next county. Gloucester, Middlesex, Lancaster, Northumberland, and Westmoreland, named below, were, in succession, the maritime counties lying to the northward.
[2] Hampton.
[3] A guardship of the royal navy was in these days kept in Virginian waters. At the moment, it happened, there were two, the Essex Prize, 16 guns, which had been there since the spring of 1698 and was now about to return to England, and the Shoreham, Capt. William Passenger, a larger vessel which was to take her place, and which had arrived Apr. 10, 1700. The Essex Prize was careened at the moment, and not available; Beverley, History of Virginia, p. 94.
[4] A roadstead on the south side of the Chesapeake, between Cape Henry and Willoughby Spit.
[5] The act is in Hening, Statutes at Large of Virginia, III. 176-179, passed in May, 1699. It had been superseded by the act 11 and 12 Will. III. c. 7, passed in the session of Parliament just ended, that of Nov. 16, 1699-Apr. 11, 1700, but that fact would not yet be known in Virginia. On Apr. 28, 1699, the Virginia council had issued a proclamation against pirates, which is printed in the Virginia Magazine of History, VIII. 191.
[6] Warwick and James City lay westward, up the James River. A series of directions like those sent northward was also sent southward, to Norfolk, Princess Anne, Nansemond, and Isle of Wight.
92. Deposition of William Fletcher. May 2, 1700.[1]