piracy Archives - New England Historical Society

Puritanism and piracy together helped colonize New England with the zealous oversight of Robert Rich, 1^st Earl of Warwick.

Known as the “Pious Pyrate” in his day, Warwick sponsored half the pirates in the Atlantic between 1626 and 1630. His proceeds from the plunder allowed him to invest in the various companies that sponsored colonists.

Robert Rich (1587-1658), 2nd Earl of Warwick

In her new book, Jamie L. H. Goodall explains how piracy was as important as Puritanism in colonizing North America. The Daring Exploits of Pirate Black Sam Bellamy From Cape Cod to the Caribbean is less about Bellamy and more about the conditions that created pirates in the first place. Those conditions were in large part created by the man New England knew as Warwick. He “epitomized the intimate connection between piracy, colonization and intense religious devotion,” wrote Goodall.

Why Pirates? Why Bellamy?

The short version: Heads of state needed money to wage their wars, so they enlisted privateers to attack and loot enemy vessels. Then, when wars ended, unemployed privateers turned to piracy.

Privateer Boscawen engaging a Fleet of French Ships in 1745

Little is actually known about Black Sam Bellamy. He fell in love with a beautiful girl from Eastham, Mass., named Maria Hallett. He plundered the Caribbean and then sailed north, only to sink with his ship. The Whydah Gally wrecked in a hurricane off Wellfleet on April 26, 1717.

Bellamy became one of the better known pirates in 1984 when underwater explorer Barry Clifford discovered the Whydah Gally. Clifford has recovered several hundred thousand artifacts, including cannon, precious stones and pieces of silver. He also found pirate bones, though he has not identified Bellamy.

Without Warwick, Black Sam Bellamy may not have pursued his plunder.

We know a lot about Warwick.

Warwick

Robert Rich was the first son and third child of Penelope Devereaux and the 1st Earl of Warwick. Penelope, famously unhappy, bore the first earl seven children, then lived as the mistress of Charles Blount, 8^th Baron Mountjoy. she bore him five children.

Warwick was born in 1587 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a time when piracy flourished. His rich and powerful family raised him as a devout Puritan. Warwick’s father, Robert Rich, 1st Earl of Warwick, maintained a privateering fleet. In 1618 he paid King James I £10,000 for the title of Warwick.

James I didn’t feel as comfortable with the Puritan pirates as his predecessor had. He tried to pushing them away toward the Americas.

In the early years of colonization, most colonial ventures were undertaken by private investors with the permission or charter from the crown. Warwick made investments in the colonies, financed by the proceeds from his personal pirate navy. One Spanish politician said the only reason for the British colonies was that they were “good for pirates.” Boston, wrote Goodall, eventually earned a reputation as “the common receptacle for pirates of all nations.”

Warwick used his political clout and money to help Puritans get charters for the colonies of New Plymouth (New Zealand), Providence Island, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay. .

The Pious Plunderer

He also helped radical Puritan ministers, sometimes by hiding them from prosecutors. Mostly, though, he paid for their livings. Helped by his relative Sir Nathaniel Rich, he supported 22 ministers. “Warwick was well placed to support, to influence, and to help organize for various political and religious initiatives an unusually large number of Puritan ministers,” wrote Robert Brenner in Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550-1653.

Warwick’s religious zeal put him at odds with the English monarchs. When the English Civil War broke out, Parliament named Lord High Admiral of the British Navy in 1642.

Olier-Cromwell

He retired from public life in 1649, but remained close to the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell. His grandson, also Robert Rich, married Cromwell’s daughter Frances. The marriage didn’t last long, as Rich died shortly afterward in 1658. Warwick died the next year.

Here are some other fun facts about the 1st Earl of Warwick.

1. Warwick’s pirates bailed out Massachusetts.

In 1640, English merchants would only accept hard currency, but the colonists didn’t have much of it. Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop lamented, “scarcity of money made a great change in all commerce.”

Warwick helped them out of their trouble. As Lord High Admiral, he commissioned a pirate named Capt. William Jackson to assemble a small fleet. In 1643, Jackson and his men began plundering Spanish towns throughout the West Indies.

Several times they returned to New England, got drunk and spent lavishly—in hard currency. They sailed to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1646, where they “spente and scattered a great deale of money,” according to Winthrop. He felt “divine Providence” had brought them to the colony.

John Winthrop. American Antiquarian Society

2. He helped Thomas Hooker hide from his persecutors.

Hooker, credited with founding Connecticut Colony, attracted Puritans with his fiery sermons at what is now Chelmsford Cathedral. Warwick listened to Hooker’s sermons there. Hooker ran afoul of the spiritual authorities, who silenced him and bound him over to appear before the High Commission. Warwick may have paid for his bond, and he certainly hid him away at the family’s private retreat in the Netherlands.

Thomas Hoooker and his people

3. His pirates showed up drunk in Plymouth Colony.

William Bradford described how about 80 unruly “lustie men” came on shore. There they behaved like “madmen,” after they “did so distemper them with drinke.” They grew more moderate and orderly over the next few weeks. Winthrop praised them because they “spent liberally and gave freely to many of the poorer sort [in Plymouth].

Plymouth Colony’s governor William Bradford really couldn’t complain about Warwick. He signed the Peirce Patent, which promised Plymouth Colony 100 acres for everyone who stayed in the settlement for three out of seven years.

4. At least a half dozen places were named after him.

They include Warwick, R.I,. and Warwick, Mass. In Virginia, he inspired the Warwick River, Warwick Towne, Warwick River Shire and Warwick County. Warwick donated the land on which Bermuda’s oldest school, Warwick Academy, stands.

5. He was “a heroic figure among devout Puritans.”

That’s according to historian Mark Hanna. They had reason to admire him. In 1643, he headed a colonial commission tasked with governing the British colonies in North America and the Caribbean. The next year the commission incorporated Providence Plantations, now Rhode Island. He won a guarantee of religious liberty in the colonies and issued a declaration that established freedom of worship in Bermuda. .

6. He established a Puritan pirates’ nest in the Caribbean.

He started the Providence Company and financed the colonization of Providence, Henrietta and Tortuga islands. Settlers lived under strict rules: no drinking, whoring or gambling. But piracy was encouraged.

“The Earl of Warwick and his friends were sincerely trying to create three nests of pirates with the behaviour and morals of a Calvinist theological seminary,” wrote historian C.V. Woodward.

In the end, Providence Island failed when the Spanish massacred most of the inhabitants.

This story was updated in 2024.

In 1773 Ansell Nickerson, a sailor, had a bleak outlook on life. Accused of murdering four men, he had fallen into the hands of the British Court of Admiralty. Languishing in jail, he awaited the gallows.

Then John Adams took an interest.

Ansell Nickerson

Nickerson’s case was one of piracy. He had been fishing the Atlantic with his cousins and two other crewmen aboard the Abigail. and was returning to Chatham on Cape Cod when something happened aboard the vessel. To this day, no one is sure what.

Another ship had approached the Abigail, flying a flag of distress. On board they found only Nickerson alive. Four men, including the ship’s captain Thomas Nickerson, were dead.

“The Conversation of the Town and Country has been about the strange Occurrence of last Week, a Piracy said to have been committed on a Vessel bound to Cape Cod, 3 Men killed, a Boy missing, and only one Man escaped to tell the News—a mysterious, inexplicable Affair!” John Adams wrote in his diary in November of 1772.

John Adams

Ansell Nickerson told the story that Englishmen boarded his vessel. They had arrived on the scene in an armed schooner from which they dispatched a smaller boat. He didn’t know them, but allowed they might be pirates. The men had ransacked the Abigail, stolen everything aboard and departed. They had only spared a young boy named Kent who they took with them and pressed into naval service.

How had Ansell Nickerson survived? He had crawled over the ship’s transom at the sight of the approaching vessel. Initially he feared impressment. As he clung to the side of the ship, supported by molding, he overheard the murder of his fellow crew. The attackers discussed burning the ship, but instead they decided that would draw attention. Instead they let it just drift to sea. They took most of the vessel’s stores and left.

Ansell Nickerson was not a wholly reliable witness. He had served aboard several pirate vessels himself. His story raised questions, but the justice of the peace accepted his version of events and set him free.

Ruthless on Pirates

Colonial Gov. Thomas Hutchinson was outraged. He had Ansell Nickerson arrested, and put him in the hands of the Court of Admiralty. Nickerson was interrogated for hours. With the Court of Admiralty governing his fate, Nickerson had little hope of survival. The court dealt ruthlessly with pirates.

The charge against Nickerson was that the ship had sold its catch and was returning to Chatham with the crew’s money and payment for the fish. Nickerson killed his fellow crew members and had sent the money ashore, either by himself or with aid of another, and concocted the story of the attack. Among the holes in Nickerson’s story, there was some fresh meat found on board the Abigail. It seemed unlikely that actual pirates would have left something so precious behind.

But in jail, Ansell Nickerson began receiving visits from the Sons of Liberty, the gang that was building support for the American Revolution. The Sons took an interest in this poor sailor’s cause because it involved impressment – the practice of seizing sailors and forcing them into service against their will—which the British Navy employed, as well as pirates.

Thomas Hutchinson in 1750.

Suddenly Nickerson found himself with two prominent lawyers at his aid – Josiah Quincy Jr. and John Adams. Adams studied the admiralty laws exhaustively and prepared for a June trial. But the Court of Admiralty had a sudden postponement, probably because it was investigating the burning of the Gaspee.

When the court took up the matter in August, Adams and Quincy threw up all sorts of dust. They harped on the fact that Nickerson should have received a jury trial, since the case involved murder. The court, as the British were fond of doing, was acting unfairly in the matter.

The trial was a propaganda success for the Sons of Liberty, even if Nickerson had been convicted and hanged. But the arguments apparently worked. Though the details are lost, historians suspect the court deadlocked. They think four judges sided with Adams: the Court of Admiralty did not have jurisdiction over a case involving murder.

Freedom

Ansell Nickerson finally got his freedom. Some accounts say Nickerson confessed his guilt on his deathbed in Martinique some 15 or 20 years later. Adams noted in his papers that Nickerson went on to live a peaceful life. In his diary, however, he says he never got paid the £6 and change Nickerson owed him for his services. He also had no certainty about Nickerson’s guilt or innocence.

“This was and remains still a misterious Transaction. I know not to this day what Judgment to form of his Guilt or Innocence. And this doubt I presume was the Principle of Acquittal. He requested my Assistance and it was given. He had nothing to give me, but his promissory Note, for a very moderate Fee. But I have heard nothing of him, nor received any Thing for his note, which has been lost with many other Notes and Accounts to a large Amount, in the distraction of the times and my Absence from my Business.”

As for Governor Hutchinson, he had no doubt of Ansell Nickerson’s guilt. He later wrote of the trial as an event that showed the growing success of the Sons of Liberty in raising New England’s revolutionary fervor.

This story last updated in 2023.

piracy

Warwick, the Puritan Pirate King Who Colonized New England