and Gentlemen of the Jury, hopeing
the Lord will Cleare up my Innocency as to the matter of Factt, I
being Conscious to my owne Innocency. So desiring the Lord to direct
you In your Proceeding that Right may take place, not att all
doubtting butt thatt your Honors will soe dilligenttly search in to
the Cause thatt the Innosent may Bee Cleeared and the Guilty Suffer,
according to merritt, so wishin you all happienes, And for the
Continewance of which I shall ever Pray, etc., Subscribe my Selfe your
Faithfull Subjectt and Searvantt In all Hummillitye

EDWARD YOUREING.[8]

Boston the 24th of May
1675.

[Footnote 8: Of one of the Dutchmen concerned in this episode of
piracy, Cornelius Andersen, Hutchinson relates, quoting a contemporary
letter, that, being under sentence of death for piracy, but pardoned
on condition of enlisting in King Philip's War, "He pursued Phillip so
hard that he got his cap and now wears it. The general, finding him a
brave man, sent him with a command of twelve men to scout, with orders
to return in three hours on pain of death; he met 60 Indians hauling
their canoes ashore: he killed 13 and took 8 alive, and pursued the
rest as far as he could go for swamps, and on his return burnt all the
canoes ... and a short time after was sent out on a like design and
brought in 12 Indians alive and two scalps." _History of Massachusetts
Bay_, I. 263.]

BRANDENBURG PRIVATEERS.

_43. Seignelay to Colbert. May 8 (N.S.), 1679._[1]

[Footnote 1: British Museum, Harleian MSS., 1517, fol. 232. Probably
an intercepted letter. Colbert was the great prime minister of Louis
XIV.; Seignelay, Colbert's eldest son, was minister of marine. The
document has a curious interest as showing perhaps the first instance
in which the (Brandenburg-) Prussian navy, or privateer marine,
touches American history. The Great Elector, Frederick William, had
for some time cherished ambitious designs, respecting the creation of
a navy and the establishment of colonies, but it was not till late in
1680 that he possessed a war-ship of his own, in 1681 that he began a
little establishment on the West African coast, in 1682 that he
founded his African Company. In this year 1679 he had a few ships
hired from a Dutchman, and it appears from this letter of the watchful
French minister that two others were being prepared for his service in
Zeeland. For five years he had been at war with France. His
allies--England, the Dutch, the