ued, July 18, declaring Henry Every
and his crew pirates, ordering colonial governors to seize them, and
offering a reward of L500, which the East India Company agreed to pay,
for their apprehension; _Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial_, II.
299-302. Several of the crew were apprehended, tried, and hanged in
November; their trial is reported in Hargrave's _State Trials_, V.
1-18. Others found a refuge in the colonies, despite the proclamation,
Governor Markham of Pennsylvania in particular being loudly accused of
connivance; _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial_, 1696-1697, pp.
613-615. Every (or Avery) was one of the most famous of the pirates.
His history is told in Captain Charles Johnson's _General History of
the Pyrates_ (second ed., London, 1724), pp. 45-63. Two popular
ballads respecting him are in Professor Firth's _Naval Songs and
Ballads_, pp. 131-134. We print first the documents which first
brought knowledge of his misdeeds, but the whole story in a
consecutive order is better found in the examination of John Dann,
document no. 63, _post_. The case is only partly American, but
ramifies, as will be seen, over much of the globe.]

To their Excellencyes The Lords Justices of England in Council,

The humble Petition of the Governour and Company of Merchants of
London trading into the East Indies

Most humbly sheweth

That the said Governour and Company have lately received certain
Intelligence That Henry Every, Commander of a Ship called the
_Fancy_, of 46 Guns, is turned Pirate and now in the Seas of India or
Persia, who with divers other Englishmen and Forreigners to the number
of about 130 (the names of some of which are hereunto annexed) run
away with the sa[id Ship], then called the _Charles_, from the Port of
Corona[2] in Spain and that the said Pirate ha[vin]g ... at the Island
of Johanna[3] had left there the following Declaration: vizt.:

[Footnote 2: Coruna.]

[Footnote 3: The chief of the Comoro Islands, in the Mozambique
Channel, northwest of Madagascar. The document which follows is also
printed, from a manuscript in the India Office, in the Hakluyt
Society's _Diary of William Hedges_, II. cxxxviii-cxxxix, where are
other extracts concerning Every.]

To all English Commanders, let this satisfie, That I was riding here
at this instant in the Ship _Fancy_ Man of War, formerly the _Charles_
of the Spanish Expedition,[4] who departed from Croniae the 7th of May
1694 Being (and am now) in a Ship