The Every Crisis and Its Effects on English Foreign Policy

Oceanic communication being what it was, news of Henry Every's coup off Surat reached the Great Mughal several weeks before it reached London. When the tattered ship arrived in Surat harbor, minus its spoils, riots erupted throughout the city. The most obvious—though ironic—victim of the rioters’ ire was the offices of the East India Company. Angry crowds gathered outside the building, heaving stones and attempting to break in. It was only through the intervention of the local Indian governor, Itimad Khan, that the Englishmen's lives were spared. Khan arrested the forty Company employees, along with the remainder of English subjects at Surat and at least three East India Company captains. He ordered the men bound in chains and kept under close guard, awaiting word from the Great Mughal.Footnote ¹³

The imprisoned men sent a desperate plea to Sir John Gayer, governor of Bombay and local Company representative. Gayer quickly laid the matter before the Lords of Trade. Thus the first word of Every's piracy reached London as a frantic communication to release the English captives. Gayer painted a grim picture of their plight: “The Governor [Khan] sent a very strong guard to the Factory and clapt all our people in irons, shut them up in a room, planked up all their windows [and] kept strict watches about them. … We are informed that one English man in Surat carrying to prison was so wounded by the rabble that he died three days after, and that several others were barbarously used.”Footnote ¹⁴

Cursing the English as “criminals and infidels,” Emperor Aurengzeb ordered an attack on the English city of Bombay. Only the most earnest entreaties from the East India Company, through Samuel Annesley, prevented an armed assault aimed at driving the English presence out of Bombay forever.Footnote ¹⁵ Annesley worked feverishly to broker a deal. He promised Aurengzeb that the Company would fully compensate the Mughal for his losses (financial, as not even the East India Company could restore virginity), backed with a note of credit from the Bank of England. He additionally promised that all future Indian pilgrim ships would be convoyed by the Company. Finally, and most significantly, he promised revenge. The full efforts of both the East India Company and the English government would be employed in finding, capturing, and executing Henry Every and his crew. The Great Mughal agreed to spare Bombay for the time being but warned that no Indian trade would be possible until Every was hanging in chains.Footnote ¹⁶

This crisis developed at a pivotal time, the winter of 1695 and the spring of 1696, when the newly created Board of Trade replaced the Lords of Trade as the primary oversight committee on colonial affairs (though, admittedly, keeping several key figures intact).Footnote ¹⁷ I. K. Steele and others have identified this changeover as a crucial extension of the English state: a move away from aristocratic amateurs toward organized, professional bureaucracy. Yet Steele also recognizes that this was very much a period of flux: such bureaucracies, often hastily formed and vaguely chartered, lacked a clear recognition of their own prerogatives.Footnote ¹⁸ Indeed, to fully understand the government's response to the Every crisis and its extraordinary attempts to manipulate the trials, we must first recognize that to speak of “government” action in 1696 is something of a misnomer, as it implies a unified body articulating and implementing a single policy. In fact, in the realm of colonial matters and international trade, we find a multiplicity of institutions within the rubric of “government”: the Board of Trade, the Admiralty, the East India Company, the colonial governors, and others. Nor did each of these share the same goals. Philip Stern's recent article reveals that Samuel Annesley of the East India Company had a very different interpretation of Every's depredations than that of the Board of Trade: it was, for him, “a golden opportunity.”Footnote ¹⁹ The Mughal's demand for convoys, far from being onerous, would in fact increase the East India Company's stature and help augment it as a quasi-sovereign governmental body. Annesley and others, Stern writes, shared a vision of the Company “not as a commercial body or an arm of the Anglo-British state but as an independent form of polity and political community. … Far from ‘mere merchants’ driven exclusively by the bottom line, Company leadership in this period thought in distinctly political—even utopian—terms.”Footnote ²⁰ That Company men like Annesley felt unfettered enough to think on such an Olympian scale speaks volumes for the political situation at home, which Stern deftly describes as “composite, incomplete, hybrid, layered, and overlapping.”Footnote ²¹ Hence, to gauge how the crown responded to the Every crisis, culminating in the October trials, we must consider the response of each relevant body.

The first packet of letters from Sir John Gayer informing the Lords of Trade of Every's piracies had arrived in London in December 1695. It was followed by three others, stretching from January to May. The Board of Trade met as a body for the first time in May 1696, inheriting a political dilemma, the dimensions of which were only just becoming known. A letter from Gayer received that month declared that although the East India Company had undertaken to hunt down Every themselves, in all probability he had sailed for the American colonies, where he was assured to find a more hospitable climate.Footnote ²² This passed the buck from the private company to the English state: Every and his men, having left the East India Company's jurisdiction, were now a national (and imperial) problem.

The Board of Trade responded with a proclamation drafted for King William and dated 10 August 1696, suspecting he might be harbored by one of the sympathetic colonial governors. The proclamation was thus addressed to them, posted to every English colony in the Atlantic world, and worded to give even the most reluctant administrator pause: “Whereas we formerly received information from the Governor and Company of Merchants in London Trading with the West Indies that one Henry Every … had under English colours committed several acts of piracy upon the seas of Persia. … We do hereby command all His Majesty's Governor Commanders … to seize and apprehend the said Henry Every.”Footnote ²³

By this document, the Board of Trade was in effect sharing the burden of Every's capture with the colonial governors. The governors, however, responded universally that they had no knowledge of Every or any of his men. In the ensuing months only a handful of the Fancy's crew would be found in colonial ports, and nearly all were subsequently acquitted by sympathetic colonial juries.Footnote ²⁴ Likewise, despite their own promise to assist in the pursuit, the East India Company added little aside from a note from one of its officers that Every had passed through Johanna, in Africa, some weeks before. Nor did the Admiralty, whose prerogative included the pursuit of English pirates, produce any results.

Ultimately, the only agency to succeed in capturing any of the hunted miscreants was the sheriff's office of Mayo County, Ireland. Over the course of several weeks, six of Every's crew were arrested while attempting to land on the Irish coast.Footnote ²⁵ By early fall of 1696 it was becoming increasingly clear that if Every were found, it would not be soon. Every did sail for the Bahamas, where he had heard from other pirates that there was a sympathetic governor, Cadwallader Jones. He arrived at New Providence in March 1696, where the new governor, Nicholas Trott, indeed welcomed him. The Board doubted the willingness of the governors to cooperate. In the absence of the star defendant, it was resolved to try the few men rounded up thus far: Joseph Dawson, Edward Forsythe, William Bishop, James Lewis, John Sparkes, and William May. A date was fixed at the Old Bailey for October 1696, and depositions were taken from two other members of Every's crew who had agreed to testify against their shipmates. While the decision to commit these men to trial was scarcely surprising, nearly every aspect of that trial—choice of venue, of presiding justices, of reportage—would be deliberately selected to further specific political ends.

The Trial as Dominant Narrative

A criminal trial under the common law serves many functions, some explicit, others not. On its surface, it is a means whereby the guilt or innocence of the accused is determined by a rigidly formalized process of interrogation and evidence, culminating with the decision rendered by twelve jurors, “a jury of one's peers,” as the Magna Carta stipulates. Yet by its very design, the rituals that give it its shape, a criminal trial already represents a multiplicity of motives. First is the necessity not merely to do justice but to appear to do so, thus satisfying the historical record that the trial was fair. Second, a trial may also serve to bring to light certain misdeeds, providing a perpetual record of them. Third, the trial may serve as a cathartic experience for victims, allowing them an open forum to speak of the horrors they experienced. The corollary to this comes at the trial's end, when these victims receive the satisfaction of seeing justice done. Fourth, and most particularly in cases of great national significance, the trial may be a way of reckoning with the past: the deliberate creation of a historical memory. The trial becomes not only a record of the past, but a way of interpreting it. Sometimes this is done intentionally; sometimes it is the natural result of the accumulation of evidence and the ad hoc decisions during the trial of which evidence to present and which to hold. That is a point which applies equally to all the above purposes: they may be explicit or implicit, but in every great criminal trial we find elements of each.Footnote ²⁶

This was certainly the case, as we shall see, in the trials of pirate Henry Every's crew, conducted over two separate sessions in the fall of 1696. The crown had a deliberate agenda representing a multiplicity of motives and, indeed, audiences. First, the trial's stated purpose was to do justice to the victims of Every's crime: the Great Mughal and his people. Relations with India needed to be restored, and the trial (and execution) of the pirates was the only means of securing that end. Second, the Board of Trade, acting through the justices, was eager to use the mechanism of trial to better understand the problem of piracy throughout the Atlantic colonies. The mechanism of the trial—witness examination—was an effective tool for achieving this end. Thus it is not surprising that the trial record reveals an extraordinary amount of apparently irrelevant dicta: where Every sailed, whom he met, what colors his fellow pirates flew, whom their friends were in the colonies, and so forth. In fact we find in the trial record many of the same questions asked of defendants that had been asked (and would be again) of colonial investigators like Surveyor General Edward Randolph.

Overlaying all these motives was the central purpose of the trial: creating a dominant historical narrative of piracy. Political circumstances gave their own shape to this aim: England had been accused of pirate sponsorship by one of its key trading partners, and revelations of colonial patronage were cropping up everywhere at once.Footnote ²⁷ Thus the crown and its Board of Trade had an image crisis. England was perceived as a “nation of pirates” and was now learning (to its chagrin) that this charge was true, at least in the colonies.Footnote ²⁸ Of paramount importance, superseding even the enormity of doing justice to Every's men and reestablishing relations with the Mughal, was to use the trial as a means for making the government position crystal clear: pirates were hostis humani generi, “enemies of the human race,” a legal term tracing back to Cicero meaning that they were not merely enemies of England but of the entire world. It placed the Every pirates in the highest echelon of international criminals and committed the English state to regarding their eradication as a first priority.

This message was not only intended for the Great Mughal and the recalcitrant colonial governors but also for the English public as a whole. In fashioning their narrative of piracy, the Lords Justices had to contend with a resilient counternarrative: the pirate as popular hero. Not only was this attitude deeply ingrained in the public psyche, but by 1696 it had found a new champion: Henry Every himself. By the date in which the first piracy trial commenced, 19 October 1696, Every had become a folk celebrity. The first word of Henry Every and his piratical career came from his own hand—allegedly. Just weeks after his mutiny at La Coruna in 1694, a ballad was published in London by Theophilus Lewis, entitled A Copy of Verses, Composed by Captain Henry Every, Lately Gone to Sea to seek his Fortune.Footnote ²⁹ The ballad came with a story: Every, having seized control of the Charles and renamed the ship Fancy, enclosed this missive with one of the crew who remained loyal to the Houblons, the ship's owners. The crew member then carried it back to London and, for reasons lost to history, arranged for it to be published. The ballad opens with a clarion call for recruits, couched in terms both patriotic and pecuniary:

Come all you brave boys, whose courage is bold,

Will you venture with me? I’ll glut you with gold.

Make haste unto Coruna: a ship you will find,

That's called the Fancy, will pleasure your mind.

Captain Every is in her, and calls her his own;

He will box her about, boys, before he has done.

French, Spaniard and Portuguese, the heathen likewise,

He has made a war with them until that he dies.Footnote ³⁰

Every's verses fell within a rubric of similar pirate narratives stretching back over a century.Footnote ³¹ Seeking to restore his good name, Francis Drake had published the first of these in 1589. Early in the seventeenth century, Sir Henry Mainwaring provided another. As recently as the 1670s, Henry Morgan published his own account of the raid on Panama, largely to correct the misstatements and exaggerations (as he saw them) of Alexander Esquemelin's more popular version. In 1684 Morgan's shipmate published a similar account entitled The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Bartholomew Sharp, which not only defended Morgan but also related how he, Sharp, had put his buccaneering talents to the service of his country by protecting the colonies from Spanish attack.Footnote ³² By the end of the century, pirate narratives were a small but crucial niche in the publishing world.

Among the most famous of these was the account of William Dampier, a sometime hydrographer and full-time pirate who, in early 1697, published A New Voyage Around the World. Dampier drew as his model, not surprisingly, the circumnavigation related by Drake. His account of his voyages was wildly popular, running into several editions and making Dampier a household name both in England and the colonies. Yet Dampier also sought to conceal close ties to another, even more notable, pirate: Henry Every. Dampier had been among the men at La Coruna in 1694 and had either chosen not to join Every or been unable to do so (Every was aboard the Charles, Dampier aboard the James). Dampier was also called upon as a witness by the defendants in the first piracy trial, though since no record of those proceedings exist, we can only speculate as to what he said.Footnote ³³

Dampier was understandably reluctant to join his name to Every’s. Historian Joel Baer identifies a “missing years” gap stretching from 1694 to 1696, covering the time between Coruna and the highly publicized Every trials. No mention is made of Every in any part of A New Voyage: evidence, according to contemporary John Masefield, that “before going to press, he [Dampier] worked over his old journals with minute and loving care, expanding and compressing and excluding, till he had wrought the matter in his mind.”Footnote ³⁴ Yet Dampier's account of his piracies—part swashbuckling narrative, part travelogue, and a third part scientific discovery—told much the same story that Every's verses attempted. Both presented a patriotic vision of piracy, and of the pirates themselves. Far from hostis humani generi, they were Englishmen abroad, bringing with them both the courage and nose for profit that exemplified the early imperial spirit.

Until the second decade of the eighteenth century, when both English attitudes toward pirates and pirates’ attitudes toward England had radically changed, the pirate's account of himself was invariably one in the model of Francis Drake.Footnote ³⁵ It should not be surprising, then, to find the English public (and, as we shall see, English juries) sympathetic to the pirates’ cause. Compounding that sympathy was the fact that Every, along with nearly all the pirates of the late seventeenth century, kept his word: only very rarely were English ships molested and then often by accident. The piracies complained of, for all their detrimental effects on trade and foreign relations, occurred (to paraphrase Chamberlain) in a faraway place between peoples of whom the English people knew almost nothing. What the public did know titillated them: Mark Hanna has written recently that Every's piracy “appealed to a general Anglophone orientalist fetish during the late seventeenth century,” all the more so as it became mythologized.Footnote ³⁶

Exactly how cognizant the English government was to this attitude among its people is difficult to gauge. Yet there can be no question that it had included them within the intended audience of the Every trials. In almost every aspect, the trials were stage-managed to a degree seldom found in English justice. The first indication that something unusual was afoot was the choice of venue. The trial record begins with the declaration:

the Sessions of Oyer and Terminer, and Goal-Delivery, held for our Sovereign Lord the King, for the Jurisdiction of the Admiralty of England, at Justice-Hall in the Old-Baily, in the Suburbs of the City of London, on Monday the 19th Day of October, in the Eighth Year of the Reign of our said Sovereign Lord King William the Third, over England, &c. before the … Commissioners for Executing and Exercising the Office and Place of Lord High Admiral of England, respectively assigned and deputed; the Right Worshipful Sir Charles Hedges, Kt. Dr. of Law, Lieutenant in the High Court of Admiralty of England, Commissary-General of Our Sovereign Lord the King, and President and Judge of the said Court; the Right Honourable Sir John Holt, Kt. Lord Chief Justice of the King’s-Bench; Sir George Treby, Kt. Lord Chief Justice of the Common-Pleas; Sir Edward Ward, Kt. Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer; Sir Tho. Rookeby, Kt. and one of the Justices of the Kings-Bench. Footnote ³⁷

A cast of legal luminaries had thus been assembled under the aegis of the Admiralty, not only from the Admiralty courts but from every other judicial branch as well. Read carefully, what we find in the Every trial is something quite unusual: a trial with a common-law jury yet under Admiralty jurisdiction. This fusion of Admiralty and common law reflected a little-known compromise following a centuries-long conflict between the two courts over piracy. Blackstone relates that “formerly [piracy] was only cognizable by the admiralty courts, which proceeded by the rules of civil law. But it being inconsistent with the liberties of the nation that any man's life should be taken away, unless by the judgment of his peers, or the common law of the land, the statute 28 Hen. VIII c.15 established a new jurisdiction for this purpose, which proceeds according to the common law.”Footnote ³⁸ The compromise, which Sir Edward Coke described in detail in his Institutes, was that piracy would remain a civil law crime, under Admiralty law, yet pirates themselves would be remitted to the common-law courts for trial. While upholding the prerogative of the common-law courts, Coke recognized that piracy was not, by definition, a common-law crime. It did not emerge from English case law but, rather, from the civil law regarding international commerce and relations. Its precepts, likewise, were transnational in character, most especially pirates’ status under law as hostis humani generi.Footnote ³⁹ While piracy shared criminal elements with domestic felonies, it would be regarded under law not as a felony but as if it were one. “Before this statute,” Coke wrote, referring to 28 Hen.VIII c.15, “piracy was no felony, for that it could not be tried, being out of all towns and countries, but was only punishable by the civil law. This statute did not alter the offence … but giveth it a means of trial in the common law, and inflicteth such pains of death as if they had been attainted of any felony done upon the land.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Coke reinforced this distinction by referring to Butler's Case, where it was held that since piracy was not a felony under common law, there could be no felonious accessories to the crime.Footnote ⁴¹

Coke was aware of the delicate balance this definition posed. In the fourth Institute, Articuli Admiralitatis, he tried to preempt inevitable criticism by structuring the section dealing with Admiralty law as an interrogative between himself and a hostile interlocutor. The dialogue between them reveals the deep divisions between civil and common law, which in turn reflect divisions between king and parliament. Among the issues raised by his fictitious opponent was the complaint “that whereas the connaissance of all things done upon the Sea belongeth to the Admiralty jurisdiction, the same are made triable at the common law.”Footnote ⁴² Coke was presentient: this complaint was articulated in 1663 by jurist Richard Zouch. Zouch's pamphlet, The Jurisdiction of the Admiralty in England Asserted against Sir Edward Coke's “Articuli Admiralitatis,” argued that piracy cases, among others, properly belonged in Admiralty court. “The Lord Admiral,” wrote Zouch, “may hold connaissance of things done in ports and navigable rivers … and other things done beyond the sea relating to Navigation and trade by sea … as touching damage done to persons, ships and goods.” This right was routinely abrogated by the common-law courts, which “do intermeddle with and interrupt the Court of Admiralty in cases properly belonging to that court.”Footnote ⁴³

This legal tussle was nowhere apparent in the Every proceedings, which indicate a willingness of all parties to compromise for the greater good. By granting the Admiralty its “special” jurisdiction, the crown recognized the severity of Every's crimes and the threat they posed to the English nation as a whole; by holding a jury trial under common-law procedure in the famous precincts of the Old Bailey it opened the proceedings to the general public. There was also an awful majesty to criminal trials: ritual and form underscored the primacy of the government and its right to impose judgment. In a civil trial the sides are balanced equally on opposite sides of the judicial scale; in a criminal trial, the government is both participant and referee. It sets the rules, imposes them, provides the forum, and determines the course. The lopsided nature of this contest is reflected even in the nomenclature: all criminal trials in England up to the present day are classified Regina vs. X, implying that the queen, her ministers, and the country itself stand on one side of the aisle, the accused on the other. The right to pass judgment is also implied in the setting: the accused stands alone, separate from the rest of the court, while the judge sits on an upraised dais. Old Bailey courts were and are richly appointed—it is no accident that such courts are often referred to as “palaces of justice.” Symbols of the nation abound in heraldic crests, flags, even inscriptions. A useful means of conceptualizing a criminal trial is to imagine it as a play. The stage direction, dialogue, and the stage itself all are designed to reinforce a particular theme: the dominance of the state. The accused is relegated to the role of a captive spectator, a secondary part at best.

In a seventeenth-century trial this inequality was even more pronounced. While the prosecution was in the hands of professionals, the accused were their own counsel. They could petition the court to submit evidence or call witnesses but often were unaware of these rights.Footnote ⁴⁴ The “language of the law” is a lexicon so complex that only its practitioners may understand it.Footnote ⁴⁵ Thus the role of the lawyer is one of translator as well as advocate: taking the client's story and rephrasing it into proper legal parlance. In 1696, however, the accused pirates had no translator. Sometimes this led to situations that were almost comical, as the pirates groped for what they believed might be an acceptable legal argument. Yet even stumbling upon one often did little to further their case. “This man is a prisoner for piracy, my Lord,” one of Every's crew shouted, when a particular witness was introduced. It was a reasonable complaint; most of the witnesses were ex-pirates who had traded their testimony for their lives and were desperately anxious to assist the crown.

But the crown was not persuaded. “What if he be?” Justice Holt asked.

This seemed to intimidate the prisoner, who answered, “I do not understand Law, I hope your lordship will advise us.”

“I will do you all right,” the judge told him. “If he be so, that is no objection against him; he may be a good witness for all that.”Footnote ⁴⁶

The government was not without its handicaps, however. Despite the weight of the crown and majesty of the law, there is nevertheless an element of unpredictability to a common-law trial: the jury. Juries may decide contrary to the evidence or ignore evidence altogether. As most criminal trials were jury trials, the machinery of the law relied on a shared understanding of what constituted a crime between both government and subjects. Cases of ordinary homicide or highway robbery rarely presented difficulties: the jurymen, who might be victimized themselves, were as unsympathetic as the crown.Footnote ⁴⁷

Piracy was a different case. Here the victim was half a world away and a foreigner. Trade relations and diplomatic niceties were a hard sell to a group of stolid Englishmen. In the first Every trial, which opened on 19 October 1696, we find one of the most self-conscious attempts in legal history to present a dominant narrative of piracy and a precedent that would resound around the world. Perhaps sensing trouble ahead, the government did all it could to ensure swift conviction. Prosecutor Sir Robert Newton chose to frame the government's case in nationalistic terms. Rather than obscure the fact that the chief victim was Indian, he made the Great Mughal's wrath the centerpiece of his argument, warning the jurors of terrible repercussions from rampaging Indian armies if the six were acquitted. Every and his men were not merely troublemakers, they were traitors: their actions, said Newton, might well bring about “the total loss of Indian trade, and thereby the impoverishment of this kingdom.”Footnote ⁴⁸

Newton relied on two star witnesses, John Dann and Philip Middleton. Both were members of Every's crew captured in Ireland, along with the men in the dock. In depositions taken earlier, Dann and Middleton eagerly provided details of Every's piratical career and implicated their own cohorts. But they did not stop there. For the first time the Board of Trade received actual testimony verifying Edward Randolph's claims that colonial administrators were condoning piracy. Dann told his interrogators, “[Every] sent a letter to Nicholas Trott, governor of Providence, to propose bringing their ship thither if they might be assured of protection and liberty to go away, which he promised them. They made a collection of 20 pieces of eight a man and the Captain 40, to present the Governor with, besides elephant's teeth and some other things to the value of about £1000. Then they left their ship which the governor had and 46 guns in her.”Footnote ⁴⁹

It was a damning piece of evidence against a sitting governor, and the circumstances—which Dann could not know, but the Board of Trade was well aware of—made it doubly so. For Nicholas Trott had been appointed with the express task of rooting out pirate patronage. His predecessor, Governor Jones, whom Every had rightly suspected of being a friend to the pirates, was brought down by his own Council just weeks before Every's arrival at the island. The exchange of courtesies that Dann had testified to was reiterated by the second of Every's crew held in custody, Phillip Middleton: “A letter was writ to Mr. Nicholas Trott, Governor of Providence, which letter this Deponent saw and heard it read, and declareth that the contents were that, provided he would give them liberty to come on shore and depart as they pleased (or words to this purpose), they promised to give the said Governor twenty pieces of eight and two pieces of gold a man and the said ship, and all that was in her.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Trott, according to Middleton, wrote back to Every “in very civil terms, assuring Captain Every that he and his company should be welcome (or words to this purpose) which said assurance was made good to them by Governor Trott after their arrival in Providence as effectually as they could desire.”Footnote ⁵¹

The pirates’ depositions were introduced as evidence and read into the record, and then the men themselves were produced. They obligingly cataloged the entire history of the Fancy's voyage, from the mutiny at La Coruna to the capture of the Ganj-I-Sawai to Every's supposed disappearance in Ireland. Having presented its case, the government rested. The jury retired to consider their verdict. When it returned several hours later, the jury unequivocally acquitted the six accused pirates on all counts.

The Battle for Meaning

The crisis this posed for the government was multilayered. First, it was a crippling blow to its attempts to bring closure to an embarrassing international incident. Second, it was a personal blow to the East India Company, whose trade would continue to suffer. Newton was not far wrong when he prophesied the “impoverishment” of the English state should Every's men not get the rope. Third, and more subtly, it indicated that something was seriously misaligned in English attitudes toward piracy. The Board of Trade, having recently been informed by Surveyor General Edward Randolph that the colonies were actively harboring and sponsoring pirates, was now forced to the realization that colonial attitudes were not unique. England still loved its pirates, a century after Drake and a decade after Morgan's death. Newton had tried to depict the Every piracies in one nationalistic light; the jury responded with a different, older variety.

Acquittal would confirm the Great Mughal's worst fears: that England was indeed a nation of pirates. It would also provide open notice to the colonies that their sympathies were shared by their English cousins. For the crown both were catastrophes of the first magnitude. The government sought help from the most unimpeachable source: Sir Charles Hedges, Chief Justice of the High Court of Admiralty. Hedges, working anxiously with his fellow justices over the course of two days (presumably trying to stave off the dissemination of word that the pirates had been acquitted) succeeded in formulating a new list of charges, all stemming—not from piracy—but from the act of mutiny on board the Charles.

As an act of legal legerdemain it was brilliant. The mutiny had been almost entirely glossed over during the first trial, partially because it paled in light of Every's later atrocities and second because a civil dispute involving the Charles's owners, the Houblon brothers, was still ongoing.Footnote ⁵² Indeed, evidence of piracy raised during the Every trial was intended to be introduced into the civil proceedings to exonerate James Houblon. Given the facts and the possible justification provided by Houblon's breach of contract, mutiny was much harder to prove than piracy. Yet, whatever the procedural difficulties, Hedges and the others had achieved one significant change: by recasting the trial as one for mutiny instead of piracy, the victim was transformed from the Great Mughal (an unlovable character) to the English people. Thus the greatest impediment to conviction, the dichotomy between attitudes on piracy, would be circumvented.

This did not prevent Sir Charles Hedges from offering his own definition of piracy, however. In fact the trial record is replete with his views on the subject. As this was a trial for mutiny, such expressions would normally be so much dicta. Yet here they served a crucial purpose. The firm of John Everingham of Ludgate Street had been commissioned by the crown to print a trial record of the first Every trial for widespread distribution. Naturally, when the men were acquitted, the contract was rescinded. Now, fully conscious that his words would be taken down for posterity and disseminated throughout the English empire, Hedges interspersed his own commentary on piracy throughout the proceedings. These expressions were not solely intended for the jury but rather for all those in England, the colonies, and elsewhere who wished to know the government's position. Hedges made it clear. Dismissing the unique and transnational character of piracy, which might otherwise lend it spurious legitimacy as an act of war, Hedges attempted to recast it in analogous terms to ordinary felony: “Now Piracy is only a Sea term for Robbery,” he began, “Piracy being a Robbery committed within the Jurisdiction of the Admiralty; if any man be assaulted within that Jurisdiction, and his Ship or Goods violently taken away without a Legal Authority, this is Robbery and Piracy.”Footnote ⁵³

Piracy as “sea robbery” was not entirely original: Coke had once compared the taking of a vessel at sea to stealing a horse and maintained in his third Institute that a pirate was “a robber on the sea.” These comments had been made to bring piracy more closely in line with common-law felonies, and a similar attempt was being made here. By adopting an almost homey, popular understanding of pirates’ activities, no different from highwaymen ashore, pirates lost both the majesty and menace traditionally accorded them under the law. Yet the contrast between Hedges's definition and the weight of precedent was glaringly apparent even when compared with the first Every trial. Opening for the crown just one week earlier, Sir Robert Newton had said of the defendants, “But they are now brought hither on their Tryal, and if the Matters, they are Charged with, shall be proved, to receive that Judgment from you, their Crime deserves; and that is Piracy, which by so much exceeds Theft or Robbery at Land; as the Interest and Concerns of Kingdoms and Nations, are above those of private Families, or particular Persons: For suffer Pirates, and the Commerce of the World must cease.”Footnote ⁵⁴

Newton was articulating a legal doctrine almost two thousand years old: hostis humani generi, pirates as enemies of the entire world. Having been formulated first by Cicero, it had considerable legal gravitas. Yet Hedges, opening the second trial as chief justice, flatly contradicted this notion. Hedges then went on to attempt an even more tenuous stretch of logic, branding mutiny as a species of piracy: “If the Mariners of any Ship shall violently dispossess the Master, and afterwards carry away the Ship it self, or any of the Goods, or Tackle, Apparel, or Furniture, with a felonious Intention, in any place where the Lord Admiral hath, or pretends to have Jurisdiction; this is also Robbery and Piracy; the intention will, in these cases, appear, by considering the end for which the Fact was committed, and the end will be known, if the Evidence shall shew you what hath been done.”Footnote ⁵⁵

If its legal basis was shaky, the reasons for this definition were paramount: a trial for mutiny, on its own facts, would not satisfy the Great Mughal, nor would it articulate the crown's new, hardened policy toward piracy. Yet under the doctrine of double jeopardy the six pirates could not be tried for the same crimes twice. Thus if mutiny were recast as piracy, then the evidence of subsequent piracies could be introduced into evidence under the radar, so to speak. This reclassification of mutiny led to much confusion, principally among the pirates themselves. Having only just been acquitted, they now stood again, dumbfounded, in the same dock, listening to the same judge read what sounded suspiciously like the same indictment for piracy. The apparent duplication (and duplicity) led to exchanges such as this:

While the chagrin of the pirates is understandable, Hedges's job was not an enviable one. In 1696 the government wanted to fashion a trial that would put the world on notice that England was cracking down on its pirates. Yet both the law and the trial refused to cooperate. Even the court record published after the fact contains some unintended irony that underscores the crown's legal predicament: “The Jury, contrary to the expectation of the Court, brought in all prisoners Not Guilty, whereupon the session was adjourned to Saturday the 31st of October, and the prisoners were committed upon a new warrant for several other piracies.”Footnote ⁵⁷

Given a tough task, Hedges made the best of it. In his opening statement to the jurors, three aims were discernible. First, he wanted to present viable legal grounds for a new trial on new grounds (which nevertheless could still be termed “piracy,” hence the tortuous analogy of piracy and mutiny); second, Hedges had to provide a written record for posterity of the crown's position on piracy, now and henceforth; third, and most crucially, he must ensure a guilty verdict, while simultaneously appearing to uphold the best traditions of English justice. Addressing the newly sworn-in jurors, he began by apologizing to them for the inconvenience. It would not have been necessary to summon them at all, he said, were it not for the waywardness of their predecessors.Footnote ⁵⁸ Thus setting the tone by figuratively pulling on the black cap, Hedges concluded by offering the jury a unique set of instructions. The presumption of innocence was not needed here, he said. “You are not obliged in all cases to require a clear and full evidence, but only to exercise till you find, and are satisfied in your consciences, that there is sufficient and just cause to put the party accused upon his trial.”Footnote ⁵⁹

With the first and third of his aims satisfied, there remained only the second: providing a written record for posterity and dissemination. Here Hedges spoke past the jury and directly to the colonies (that “nest of pirates,” an expression that was coming into favor to describe the entire eastern seaboard) and the Great Mughal himself. What would happen if justice were not done to the pirates in the dock? Hedges asked rhetorically. He answered himself: “The barbarous Nations will reproach us as being a Harbour, Receptacle, and a Nest of Pirates, and our Friends will wonder to hear that the Enemies of Merchants and of Mankind, should find a Sanctuary in this ancient Place of Trade. Nay, we our selves cannot but confess, that all Kingdoms and Countries who have suffered by English Pirates, may, for want of Redress in the ordinary course, have the pretence of Justice, and the colour of the Laws of Nations to justify their making reprisals upon our Merchants wheresoever they shall meet them upon the Seas.”Footnote ⁶⁰

If Hedges's vision sounded apocalyptic, it was no more than the Indian government had threatened. Though he might not have liked hearing himself referred to as king of a “barbarous nation,” the Great Mughal could not help but be mollified by the judge's words. Hedges clearly articulated the crisis England was facing, and the jury was well aware of the stakes. Now that they could be in no doubt as to what was expected of them, Hedges closed piously: “I hope that what has been said on this unexpected occasion will not be looked upon as intended to influence the Jury; I am sure it is far from being so designed. Religion, Conscience, Honour, common Honesty, Humanity and all Laws forbid such methods.”Footnote ⁶¹ With that in mind, the indictment was read aloud.

As a piece of theater, the trial had been choreographed down to the smallest detail. But such stage management could not account for the unpredictability of witnesses. The first witness appeared and duly swore that he had served on board the James, companion ship to the Charles, and observed firsthand Every's machinations at Coruna. One of the pirates rose at once and demanded if the witness had seen him in Every's company. No, came the response. One by one the pirates rose and asked the same. It soon transpired that the witness had seen none of them: “It was so dark that we could not see them.”

Moving on, the Court called one David Creagh, the second mate of the Charles/Fancy who had resisted Every's attempts at mutiny and later departed with Captain Gibson. He was quite prepared to swear that he had seen each of the six men in Every's company. Unfortunately Creagh's career after leaving the Charles had been dubious. One of the accused pointed out that Creagh (like John Dann and Phillip Middleton, the other witnesses) was shortly to be tried for piracy, and thus his witness testimony was suspect. The justices dismissed the objection (in the cutting remark quoted above) but a shadow had passed over Creagh and over the trial as well.

Another exchange produced surprising testimony. Depositions taken from Philip Middleton and John Dann had already implicated Nicholas Trott, governor of the Bahamas, in conspiring to protect Henry Every. When defendant William May took the stand and maintained that he had been compelled to enter Every's service (“They were all compell’d,” one of the justices muttered darkly), Justice Hedges sought to catch him out. Asking if, as a “compelled” man, May had ever bothered to present himself to local magistrates on arrival in an English port, he received the startling answer that May had presented himself at once in Virginia and at New Providence in the Bahamas.Footnote ⁶² Neither colony had reported the presence of any of Every's men; indeed, both had flatly denied it.

At the opening of the trial Justice Holt had asked the clerk of the court if any of the former jurors had been returned. “If you have returned any of the former Jury,” Holt snapped, “you have not done well, for that verdict was a dishonour to the justice of the nation.”Footnote ⁶³ But this time it was a new jury, and whether convinced by the charges or cowed by the Justices, they did as instructed. All six defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. The record of the trial concludes: “According to the sentence, Edward Forsyth and the rest were executed on Wednesday, November the 15th, 1696, at Execution Dock, that being the Place for the Execution of Pirates. finis.”Footnote ⁶⁴

It was not “finis” at all. The trial, having begun with the intention of settling the issue of piracy, ultimately raised far more problems than it disposed. It is worthwhile at this juncture to briefly consider the government's aims in the Every trials, and how well they succeeded. First, the capture and prosecution of Henry Every had been pledged by the East India Company to the Great Mughal as a necessary condition for the resumption of trade. Every was still not caught, but the trial of six of his men was intended to be the first among many similar trials as his crew were rounded up in the colonies. Here there was a double disappointment: Every would never be found, and never again would any of his crew appear in the Old Bailey. The colonies proved adept at harboring and concealing the crew of the Fancy, an additional blow to the crown. The plethora of pirate cases supposedly engendered by this one, with a few notable exceptions (Captain William Kidd's being the most notable of all), would not appear for another twenty years.

Second, the crown desperately needed an exercise in retributive justice to demonstrate, both to its allies and its colonies, that England would not tolerate piracy. But the mechanics of English law prohibited summary execution, which in any event might placate the Mughal but would inflame popular opinion in England all the more. This brings us back to the contention that states must not only do justice, but be seen to do so. The trial of Every's crew was an opportunity for the state to define piracy on its own terms, to create a dominant narrative of the crime that dispelled the gray morass of privateering commissions and came down solidly on the doctrine of hostis humani generi. When that failed, in the first trial, the justices turned to a second and far more dubious line of argument: pirates as ordinary criminals, no different than a street corner thug. Yet this definition was starkly contrary to the growing realization—which Henry Every helped bring to light—that piracy was anything but an ordinary crime. It threatened trade like nothing else could, and it exposed the deep divisions not only between England and its colonies but (as the first Every trial demonstrated) between the English crown and its subjects. Sir Robert Newton was correct in his description of piracy as a crime “which by so much exceeds Theft or Robbery at Land; as the Interest and Concerns of Kingdoms and Nations, are above those of private Families.”Footnote ⁶⁵ Treating it as a common felony might, and did, ensure conviction, but it undermined the central purpose of the trial. Thus, as an exercise in an articulation of crown policy, the trials were likewise a failure.

Third, the Every trials were intended to demonstrate that England was not, and never would be, a nation of pirates. More than conviction, the mechanism of a jury trial would send a message that England (all of it, crown, colonies, subjects) stood on one side of the aisle, and pirates on the other. A successful trial would serve as a counterweight to accusations of pirate brokering in the colonies, as well as the more serious charge from Emperor Aurengzeb that the crown itself looked the other way. Yet here we see the dangers of employing jury trials to bolster government positions: by surrendering the power of judgment to a jury, the government gambled on the result. In the first trial the gamble failed. The narrative of pirates as a threat to English trade and foreign relations was flatly rejected by a jury composed entirely of Englishmen.

The second trial, though it resulted in convictions, was in other ways also a failure. Aside from the thin legal reeds on which it leaned, it also came up short in providing the proper “story” of piracy. Despite the best efforts of both the prosecution and the justices to create a narrative and maintain it throughout the proceedings, the trajectory of the case is marked with myriad digressions and (for the crown) regressions. The pirates were given the opportunity to defend themselves and they did so, fervently. They challenged the credibility of witnesses and revealed more than the crown wanted to know about the helpfulness of certain governors. The testimony of John Dann and Philip Middleton in both trials, while crucial to proving the charges of mutiny and piracy, also exposed the degree of assistance awarded to the pirates by sympathetic colonies and their administrators. Rather than a dispositive image of a united nation waging war against a renegade band of criminals, the trial record revealed instead a composite picture of a divided nation where the illegality of piracy was anything but certain, where colonial governors granted commissions to known pirates and harbored others, and where even an English jury would knowingly acquit the brigands in spite of all evidence of their guilt. Compared with this, the image of six pirates dangling from the gallows was small recompense indeed.

The crown had one remaining chance to disseminate its own version of the story before myth and legend overtook it and cemented Henry Every's stature as a popular hero. This was the trial record. The career of Every and the trials of his crew sparked competing images in a burgeoning print culture. On one side was the crown's battered narrative of pirates as common enemies, on the other was the traditional image of pirates as renegade heroes, and at stake was the future of English piracy around the world. Prior to the Every trials, piracy cases were treated like any other action before the courts, filed away in compendious volumes by the High Court of Admiralty. Their manner of documentation clearly indicates a readership limited to legal scholars. One such action convened by special session of Oyer and Terminer in 1680, for example, began with a long preamble on property rights, then segued abruptly into Latin.Footnote ⁶⁶ But as the purpose of the Every trials was more than administration of justice, another medium was needed.

Justice Hedges and his colleagues self-consciously reached out to a broader audience than the twelve jurymen, framing their addresses to encapsulate the whole of the pirate problem and translate it into language that any layman could understand. Equally important, however, was the issue of how the trial would appear in print. For this, the government contacted the firm of the Everinghams, Seven Stars of Ludgate Street. The Everinghams were among the largest printers and booksellers in London, publishing dozens of titles each year, including travel narratives, popular sermons, learned treatises on “the vanity of arts and science,” and the largest collection of Bibles available in England. Not surprisingly, their special niche was religious works, especially jeremiads and reprints of the Book of Common Prayer. At first glance they might seem a strange choice for the government to present their narrative of piracy, but it was a canny one. The Everinghams’ impeccable background in religious works lent them an air of gravitas and almost canonical authority that a government anxious to narrate its own version of piracy might well wish to appropriate. Nor was John Everingham unfamiliar with jury trials: in May 1694, according to Old Bailey records, he appeared as a juryman in the trial of Elizabeth Stafford on the charge of grand larceny (Stafford was found guilty and branded on the arm).Footnote ⁶⁷

The government faced a daunting challenge in presenting its own narrative and superseding the others. The Every ballad was so popular that by 1696 it had run into three revised editions. The trial record would attempt to replace myth and fantasy with cold, hard fact. The details of the trial record are excerpted above, but there are two additional points worthy of note. First, Everingham had been contracted before the trial occurred; hence he was anxiously instructed not to report the first, unsuccessful piracy trial. This presented something of a challenge for the printers, as the trial record of the second case made no direct mention of the first, yet Hedges interlaced his comments about the iniquity of the first jury throughout. Also, readers might wonder why there was so little evidence of piracy, compared with the less exciting case of mutiny. Already, before it had begun, the crown's narrative appeared to founder. Everingham compromised with a brief statement at the outset, excerpted above, which obliquely disposed of the unsuccessful first trial in three sentences, along with a snippet from Sir Robert Newton's speech for the crown. That would be the only record of the first Every trial. None appears in the High Court of Admiralty proceedings, nor anywhere else in print. The crown, desperate to achieve its own narrative of the trial, virtually expunged it from existence.

Close study of the trial record reveals a second ghost buried in the dicta, but this one was deliberate. Immediately following Justice Hedges's scathing indictment, in which he spoke of “barbarous Nations” reproaching England “as being a Harbour, Receptacle, and a Nest of Pirates,” there appears a sudden and seemingly inexplicable digression: “Then the Witnesses being sworn in Court, the Grand Jury withdrew to hear their Evidence. And in the mean time T. Vaughan and I. Murphey, Tim. Brenain, were Arraigned, whom the Keeper of Newgate, by Order, brought to the Bar.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Who were T. Vaughan, I. Murphey, and Tim Brenain? Why should they suddenly appear in a show trial on piracy? The subsequent record reveals little. Vaughan and the others were accused of high treason, to which they pleaded not guilty. Clearly this was not an ordinary case: charges of high treason only concerned matters of the gravest import. Yet after taking their pleas the court disposed of them, and they disappeared as quickly as they had arrived: “Then T. Vaughan, and I. Murphey, and T. Brenain, had Notice to prepare for their Tryals on Friday next, at two of the clock in the afternoon. Then the Grand Jury came into Court.”Footnote ⁶⁹

In fact, the appearance of Vaughan and the others was carefully calculated, a sort of “teaser” for future trials. Thomas Vaughan was a pirate. The charge of high treason sprang from the fact that Vaughan, an English subject living in Boulogne, had accepted a commission from the Duke d’Anville to engage and plunder the vessels of his former nation. The French commission directed Vaughan to “set her out to Sea, in a Condition to sail and cruise upon the Pirates, and others without Commission, as also upon the Subjects of His Catholic Majesty, the Estates of the United Provinces, the Favourers of the of the crowns of England and Scotland, and other Enemies of this Estate, in what Places soever he can meet them.”Footnote ⁷⁰ Vaughan pursued his commission doggedly, in the company of a crew composed both of Frenchmen and renegade Irishmen, until captured by the English in early 1696.

While the facts of the case could hardly be more different, a similar purpose prevailed: just as with the Every trials, the crown was anxious to provide a counternarrative to the prototype patriotic English pirate. Vaughan played into their hands by fighting hard and unsuccessfully to prove he was a Frenchman:

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of the Vaughan trial, and the reason it surfaced so incongruously, lay in the note that appeared at the top of the trial record:

The tryal and condemnation of Capt. Thomas Vaughan for high treason in adhering to the French-king and for endeavouring the destruction of His Majesties ships in the Nore who upon full evidence was found guilty at the Sessions-House in the Old-Baily, on the 6th of Novemb. 1696.

Printed by John Everingham of Seven Stars, Ludgate Street, London. Footnote ⁷²

It was not a coincidence that Everingham had been contracted yet again, nor that the trial was held on the same day, 6 November, the Fancy crewman Edward Forsythe was tried for additional piracy charges. The English government not only wished to do justice, but be seen to do so. It had promised the Great Mughal that the Every trials would presage a crackdown on English piracy around the world. The near-simultaneous prosecutions of Every's men and Thomas Vaughan, though arising out of circumstances as different as could be imagined, served that end. The crown could justifiably claim that it was bringing all its pirates to justice, a fitting counterpart to the ongoing Every manhunt. Moreover, the Vaughan case—coming hard on the heels of the “loyal Englishmen” of Every's crew—might also have helped tarnish the pirates’ reputation as loyal subjects of the crown, if only by their association in print with Irish renegades.

To what extent did the crown succeed in supplanting the heroic narrative of piracy with its own legal one? The initial prospects looked promising. Everingham's trial record circulated throughout England and the Atlantic world, where it was reprinted and republished.Footnote ⁷³ Today copies survive in over forty libraries. Timing also worked in the crown's favor: the proclamation against Henry Every that went out to every Atlantic colony had prepared the ground, being published in many colonial newspapers. Captain Josiah Daniell's letter to Governor Markham of Pennsylvania begins with the statement, “I read in last July's Gazette a proclamation the apprehension of Captain Every and his crew, and hear that some of them are in your province.”Footnote ⁷⁴ By the time the trial record arrived, most of the literate world knew that Henry Every was the most hunted Englishman on earth. Taken in conjunction with each other, the proclamation, trial record, and ongoing manhunt (in addition to the Vaughan trial) appeared to present a reinvigorated and determined crown. The subtext to this was that each of its branches was contributing its own and working in harmony with the others: the judiciary managing the trials, the king and Board of Trade issuing proclamations, reminding governors of their obligations, and coordinating the manhunt with the aid of the East India Company and the Admiralty. The picture of the government machinery working smoothly toward an end, the eradication of piracy, was a compelling one.

Yet allowing the pirates to speak directly to the public, even through the controlled environment of the trial, was a gamble. Readers were free to make their own conclusions about what the Every trials meant, and evidence suggests that not all read it as the crown intended. There was no corresponding surge of enthusiasm for the Every manhunt: the colonies remained apathetic or openly contemptuous of the crown's efforts. Neither the proclamation nor the trial record seemed to rebut the presumption of Every as a popular hero, which in itself may not be surprising, considering that the first trial revealed sufficient murkiness even among the jury. The one undisputed effect of publishing the Every case might well have been the opposite of what the crown had intended: for the first time, both the English public and the colonies had a complete account of the full extent of English piracy. Far from discrediting the notion that England was a nation of pirates, the trial seemed to reinforce it.

The other means of determining the success of the crown's attempt at media manipulation would be to examine subsequent literature for evidence of a change in perception. Does the crown's narrative of pirates as hostis humani generi surface again in popular literature? The answer is yes, but in the most expected format: future piracy trials in England and the colonies. A similar depiction of pirates also found expression in the sermons of Cotton Mather and the writings of Daniel Defoe.Footnote ⁷⁵ Yet none of these would appear until the second decade of the eighteenth century, over thirty years after the Every trials. It would be hard to establish a direct correlation between the two, with so much intervening time between them. On the contrary, the more likely source for these attitudes was the sea change that occurred following the Treaty of Utrecht, when pirates abandoned any pretense to patriotism, cruised the waters off the Atlantic coast, cared little whose ships they attacked, and thus came far closer to the legal definition than Henry Every.

As for the battle of meaning over Every himself, it was a resounding failure for the crown. The trial record did nothing to deter the canonization of Every as a folk hero, and perhaps even aided it by providing a full account of the pirate's career for subsequent hagiographies to draw from. A brief consideration of subsequent depictions of Henry Every emphasizes this point. The ballad verses continued in print well into the next century, eventually becoming one of the most famous sea ballads of all time. In 1709, long after the manhunt had been called off, a fictitious Dutchman named Captain Adrian van Broek published The Life and Adventures of Captain John Avery. Highly romanticized, Every is revealed as a gallant swashbuckler who falls in love with an Indian princess on board the captured Ganj-i-Sawai and marries her. He returns, not to the Bahamas, but St. Mary's Island, where the tribesmen elect Every their king. His bride “soon forgot the Pleasures of her Grandfather's court in the Joys of her own,” and Every determines that all his crew should share in his happiness, allotting each of them a “dusky” bride from among the native population. The story ends, as any good romance should, with everyone living happily ever after.Footnote ⁷⁶

Here was oriental fetishism at its best (or worst). The depiction of St. Mary's was of an Eden distinguished by sexual promiscuity and permissive miscegenation, and Every as a wise and good king. Both themes resonated strongly with the reading public.Footnote ⁷⁷ Four years later, playwright Charles Johnson brought this vision of exotic splendor to the stage in The Successful Pyrate. Johnson no less than Van Broek played on the image of Every as pirate king but chose to emphasize another aspect of his mythical character: Henry Every as empire builder. Every is a tough but effective monarch, supervising the construction of roads and defenses for his new kingdom. His crew recognize his greatness and bask in it:

With me they made a Circle round this World,

Disclaim’d Relation, Country, Friendship, Fame.

They toil’d, they bled, they burnt, they froze, they starv’d. …

When, in this Isle, our shatter’d Barks found Rest,

With Universal Voice, they call’d me King.Footnote ⁷⁸

Perhaps the most telling example of how Henry Every was interpreted in popular culture were the visual representations of him. No contemporary portrait was ever made, so lithographers let their imaginations run free. Their choices were revealing. In Charles Johnson's Histories and Lives of All the Most Notorious Pirates, a work attributed to Daniel Defoe under pseudonym, Every is shown in military garb, sword held aloft over his shoulder, marching proudly down the Madagascar beach. A native servant follows reverentially behind him with a palm leaf to shield him from the sun, and a fortress bearing the skull and crossbones rises in the background. Henry Every is clearly master of his surroundings, more potentate than pirate. Nine years later, in Alexander Smith's General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen … and Pirates, Every is shown standing on a beachhead supervising the battle between the Fancy and the Ganj-i-Sawai. Once again he is dressed martially, but now clean shaven with a proper gentleman's wig. Without the caption to identify it, the image is indistinguishable from the scores of similar representations showing English naval captains heroically engaging the enemy.Footnote ⁷⁹

In the end, Every's stunning success as a pirate provided its own dominant narrative, which the published trial record did nothing but augment. Much as Captain Thomas Tew's Red Sea adventures had ignited a new generation of pirates not long before, the legend of Henry Every proved among the most durable and potent lures for piracy well into the eighteenth century. Here the trial record and accompanying manhunt again achieved the reverse of their aim. In 1701 the crown issued a blanket pardon for all pirates who willingly surrendered themselves. The only exception was Henry Every. This, as with the rest of the crown's unsuccessful attempts at capturing Every, cemented his reputation as a maritime Robin Hood and shed an unfavorable light on the crown's ability to control piracy. It was not only the Great Mughal who wondered at the limitations of England's ability to restrain its subjects: the mythology of Henry Every would provide its own counter to the crown's prerogative in combating piracy even when the crown became more successful. As late as 1721, when pirate Walter Kennedy sat in a Wapping jail awaiting execution, his favorite pastime was hearing and recounting tales of Henry Every.Footnote ⁸⁰ Even Every's own crew seemed inclined to subscribe to the myth. Writing to Robert Houblon (the former owner of the Charles), one outraged observer claimed he heard several of Every's men in a Philadelphia pub regaling their fellow patrons with the tale of how they took an Indian princess captive, whom Every spirited away for himself, and left his men with several bags of gold apiece. “They brag of it publicly over their cups,” the colonist concluded bitterly.Footnote ⁸¹

If the trial record and its publication failed to change attitudes in the colonies, it nevertheless cannot be doubted that it achieved at least one of the crown's purposes: it put the colonies on notice of a hardening of attitudes among the Lords Commissioners. The Board of Trade underscored this message by writing in almost identical language to Governor Stoughton of Massachusetts and Governor Cranston of Rhode Island. To Stoughton they warned, “In the trial of Every's crew there was too frequent mention of New England as the place from which pirates are fitted out and where they are entertained.”Footnote ⁸² To Cranston they were even more specific: “Upon occasion of the late trials of some of Avery's crew here, several informations have been transmitted to us, wherein mention is made of Rhode Island and a place where pirates are ordinarily too kindly entertained.” The letter specifically cited the names of pirate captains Want and Wake, both Rhode Island men implicated by John Dann's testimony.Footnote ⁸³ The governors of the Carolinas, the Bahamas, and Pennsylvania all received similar letters. That same year Parliament passed the Navigation Act of 1696, which provided for the first vice-Admiralty courts in America convened specifically to try piracy cases. The net effect would have been to force the colonial governors’ hand, but one year later no less a legal authority than Sir Charles Hedges declared the courts invalid under English law. In response, the Board of Trade pressed Parliament to enact a second statute that would reinstate the colonial courts under common, rather than Admiralty law. The continued recalcitrance of the governors to bring pirates to justice, and the Board of Trade's increasing disenchantment with them for so doing, culminated in 1701 with the proposed Reunification Bill that, if passed, would have revoked all colonial charters and instituted direct royal rule. Historian P. Bradley Nutting traces the motivation for the bill to three root causes: “charter government, piracy, and the India trade.” All of which, he adds, were first brought to the Board's attention by Henry Every.Footnote ⁸⁴

The trial also marked a pivotal shift in the English government's use of print culture. As an early foray into media manipulation it was not a resounding success, but it did demonstrate, as nothing else could, how the crown's narrative of piracy could be transmitted rapidly to a worldwide audience. If it did not change the attitudes of its readers, it at least left them in no doubt over the government's own. The trial and its publication sent a message to both the colonies and the Great Mughal that England stood squarely on the side of its trading relationships and had no hidden agenda with the pirates. While the Every case would not produce the spate of prosecutions for which the government fervently hoped, it did—both as an exercise in jurisprudence and print culture—prove a crucial precedent for the second great piracy trial of the age, that of William Kidd. Indeed, following Robert Ritchie's groundbreaking work on Kidd, most historians have relegated the Every trials to a footnote on the far more famous events of 1701. For them, the turning point from toleration to extermination of pirates came in the mid-1690s with the establishment of the Board of Trade. “The English government,” Ritchie writes, “moved on a broad front to bring order to the empire.”Footnote ⁸⁵ One critical element of bringing that order was to turn ruthlessly on the pirates, who had by now become a serious embarrassment to the state: “The roistering buccaneer,” Ritchie writes, “did not suit the hard-headed merchants and imperial bureaucrats, whose musty world of balance sheets and reports came into violent conflict with that of the pirates.”Footnote ⁸⁶ While Ritchie and others identify 1696 as the watershed year, few give more than a passing mention to the Every trials and their role in signaling this shift. Perhaps one reason is that they were, as we have seen, largely a failure in pressing the government's agenda. There can be no doubt that the government was far more successful in its use of media manipulation at the time of Kidd's execution. Yet when one considers how closely aligned the governments’ attempts at “media manipulation” were in both the Every and Kidd trials, it is not much of a stretch to suggest that without the Every failure, there could not have been the Kidd success.

“Suffer pirates,” Sir Robert Newton told the jury of the first Every trial, “and the commerce of the world will cease.” The jury was unconvinced. In 1696, as the English government hesitantly moved toward a modern bureaucracy, the Every trials laid its limitations bare before the reading public and, indeed, the entire world. They exposed not only the deep fissure between popular attitudes to piracy and those of the crown but also the vagaries within English governance itself that led colonial governors to protect Every's crew and the outraged Great Mughal to castigate “a nation of pirates.” Yet the trials also revealed something even more extraordinary: the government's willingness to enter the public sphere and present their own case, metaphorically and actually, for pirates as enemies of the English state. Hence, both as a precedent for the crown's use of print culture and a marker for the seismic shift in its antipiracy policy, the Every case is crucial indeed.