Henry Every.
At Johanna February 28th, 1694.
The Copy of which said Declaration was brought by Some of the said Company's Ships to Bombay and from thence transmitted to England with the annexed Clause of a Letter relating thereunto.[6]
And the said Governour and Company having likewise understood by some fresh Advices from Persia hereunto annexed That the said Pirate had in pursuance of his said Declaration pillaged severall Ships belonging to the Subjects of the Mogull[7] in their passage from the Red Sea to Surrat,[8] upon notice whereof the Factoryes of the said Company at Surrat had guards set upon their Houses by the Governour of the place till such time The Mogulls pleasure was known, Whereby the said Governour and Company have reason to fear many great inconveniences may attend them not only from the Reprizalls which may be made upon them at Surrat or other their Factories But also from the Interruption which may be thereby given to their Trade from Port to Port in India, as well as to their Trade to and from thence to England.
Wherefore your Peticioners do most humbly beseech your Excellencies to use such effectuall means for the preventing the great Loss and damage which threatens them hereby, as to your Excellencies great wisdom shall be thought fit.
And your Peticioners shall ever pray etca.
Signed by order of the Governour and Company
Ro. Blackborne, Secretarie.
[1] London, Privy Council, Unbound Papers, 1:46. This petition is addressed, not to the king in Council, but to the lords justices who were exercising his functions during the absence of William III. in Holland, whither he had gone on account of his war with Louis XIV. The paper is endorsed as read July 16, 1696. A proclamation was immediately issued, July 18, declaring Henry Every and his crew pirates, ordering colonial governors to seize them, and offering a reward of £500, which the East India Company agreed to pay, for their apprehension; Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, II. 299-302. Several of the crew were apprehended, tried, and hanged in November; their trial is reported in Hargrave's State Trials, V. 1-18. Others found a refuge in the colonies, despite the proclamation, Governor Markham of Pennsylvania in particular being loudly accused of connivance; Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1696-1697, pp. 613-615. Every (or Avery) was one of the most famous of the pirates. His history is told in Captain Charles Johnson's General History of the Pyrates (second ed., London, 1724), pp. 45-63. Two popular ballads respecting him are in Professor Firth's Naval Songs and Ballads, pp. 131-134. We print first the documents which first brought knowledge of his misdeeds, but the whole story in a consecutive order is better found in the examination of John Dann, [document no. 63], post. The case is only partly American, but ramifies, as will be seen, over much of the globe.
[2] Coruña.