ng
interrogatories (doc. no. 183). Their testimony, taken down in written
depositions, constitutes much the largest class of documents in this
volume. Most narratives of privateering or of piracy are found in the
form of depositions. Reports of trials, embracing proceedings and
documents and testimony, are found in docs. no. 128, no. 143, and no.
165; sentences or decrees of the judge in docs. no. 143, no. 150, and
no. 155; inventories of prizes in docs. no. 33 and no. 161; an account
of sales in doc. no. 186.

If a party to a prize appealed from the sentence of the vice-admiralty
court (docs. no. 151 and no. 196), he was required to give bond (doc.
no. 152) for due prosecution of the appeal in England. From 1628 to
1708 such appeals were heard by the High Court of Admiralty; after
1708 they went to a body of privy councillors specially commissioned
for the purpose, called the Lords Commissioners of Appeal in Prize
Causes (see doc. no. 151, note 1). A specimen of a decree of that
tribunal reversing the sentence of a colonial vice-admiralty court is
in doc. no. 195.[4]

[Footnote 4: For a report of these commissioners _approving_ the
sentence of the court below, see Stokes, pp. 325-326.]

Piracy being from its very nature a less formal proceeding than
privateering, there are fewer formal documents to present as essential
to its history. In the seventeenth century, there are instances of
trials for piracy by various courts: _e.g._, the Court of Assistants
in Massachusetts in 1675 (doc. no. 41, note 1) and the Massachusetts
Superior Court in 1694 (doc. no. 56, note 2). But the regular method,
which came to prevail, was trial by special commissions appointed for
the purpose, similar to those which were appointed for the trial of
pirates in England by virtue of the statute 28 Henry VIII. c. 15
(1536). We have such a colonial commission, appointed by the governor,
in doc. no. 51 (1683). In 1700 the statute 11 and 12 William III. c. 7
extended to the plantations the crown's authority to appoint such
commissions (see docs. no. 104, note 1, no. 106, note 1, and no. 201).
A curious signed agreement to commit piracy will be found in doc. no.
50; indictments for that crime in docs. no. 56, no. 119, and no. 120;
partial records of trials in docs. no. 112, no. 113, and nos. 119-122.
A full account of an execution, explicit enough to satisfy the most
morbid curiosity, is presented in doc. no. 104. Nos. 123 and 124 are
formal bills