59 575

201. Notes on Commissions for Trying Pirates. Mar. 10,
1762, Aug. 26, 1772 577

202. Articles of Agreement; the _Mars_. June 23, 1762 581

203. Certificate of a Negro's Freedom. June 26, 1762 586

PRIVATEERING AND PIRACY
IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD

PROVIDENCE ISLAND.

_1. Commission from the Providence Island Company to Governor
Nathaniel Butler as Vice Admiral. April 23, 1638._[1]

[Footnote 1: Public Record Office of Great Britain, C.O. 124:1, p.
118. This document and the next take us back to an almost-forgotten
colonial experiment of the English Puritans, contemporary with their
undertakings in New England but far removed from them in locality. Old
Providence Island--to be distinguished from New Providence (Nassau) in
the Bahamas--is an isolated little island in the western Caribbean
lying off the coast of Nicaragua. It now belongs to Colombia, and is
often called Santa Catalina. In 1630 a company of English investors,
desiring to found a Puritan colony, and also to oppose Spain in the
Caribbean, obtained from Charles I. a patent for a large area
including Providence and other islands. John Pym was their leading
member. The history of their colony is interestingly recounted in
Professor A.P. Newton's _The Colonizing Activities of the English
Puritans_ (New Haven, 1914). The colony became merely a base for
privateering against the Spaniards, who conquered and suppressed it in
1641. Thomas Gage, who passed by the island in a Spanish ship in 1637,
says, "The greatest feare that I perceived possessed the Spaniards in
this Voyage, was about the Island of Providence, called by them Sta.
Catarina or St. Catharine, from whence they feared lest some English
Ships should come out against them with great strength. They cursed
the English in it, and called the Island the den of theeves and
Pirates." _The English American, or A New Survey of the West-India's_
(London, 1648), p. 199. For the whole matter of West Indian
buccaneering, see Miss Violet Barbour's article, "Privateers and
Pirates of the West Indies", in the _American Historical Review_, XVI.
529-566.]

Commission to Captain Butler[2] for the Admiraltie of the Island.

[Footnote 2: Nathaniel Butler, third governor of Providence Island,
sent out with a considerable expedition in April, 1638, had earlier
been governor of Bermuda and then a member of