pirates to trial before the evidence was ready, and
of using other evasions to insure their acquittal."[480] On the
following 20th January another proclamation was issued by James to
insure the co-operation of the governors with Sir Robert Holmes and his
agents.[481] The problem, however, was more difficult than the king had
anticipated. The presence of the fleet upon the coast stopped the evil
for a time, but a few years later, especially in the Carolinas under the
administration of Governor Ludwell (1691-1693), the pirates again
increased in numbers and in boldness, and Charleston was completely
overrun with the freebooters, who, with the connivance of the merchants
and a free display of gold, set the law at defiance.

In Jamaica Lieutenant-Governor Molesworth continued in the policy and
spirit of his predecessor. He sent a frigate to the Bay of Darien to
visit Golden Isle and the Isle of Pines (where the buccaneers were
accustomed to make their rendezvous when they crossed over to the South
Seas), with orders to destroy any piratical craft in that vicinity, and
he made every exertion to prevent recruits from leaving Jamaica.[482]
The stragglers who returned from the South Seas he arrested and
executed, and he dealt severely with those who received and entertained
them.[483] By virtue of the king's proclamation of 1684, he had the
property in Port Royal belonging to men then in the South Seas forfeited
to the crown.[484] A Captain Bannister, who in June 1684 had run away
from Port Royal on a privateering venture with a ship of thirty guns,
had been caught and brought back by the frigate "Ruby," but when put on
trial for piracy was released by the grand jury on a technicality. Six
months later Bannister managed to elude the forts a second time, and for
two years kept dodging the frigates which Molesworth sent in pursuit of
him. Finally, in January 1687, Captain Spragge sailed into Port Royal
with the buccaneer and three of his companions hanging at the yard-arms,
"a spectacle of great satisfaction to all good people, and of terror to
the favourers of pirates."[485] It was during the government of
Molesworth that the "Biscayners" began to appear in American waters.
These privateers from the Bay of Biscay seem to have been taken into the
King of Spain's service to hunt pirates, but they interrupted English
trade more than the pirates did. They captured and plundered English
merchantmen right and left, and carried them to