B.

BALTIMORE. 1884.

PEABODY PUBLICATION FUND.

COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION.

1884-5.

HENRY STOCKBRIDGE,
JOHN W. M. LEE,
BRADLEY T. JOHNSON.

PRINTED BY JOHN MURPHY & CO.
PRINTERS TO THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
BALTIMORE, 1884.

CAPTAIN RICHARD INGLE,

THE MARYLAND "PIRATE AND REBEL."

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the American colonies,
from Massachusetts to South Carolina, were at intervals subject to
visitations of pirates, who were wont to appear suddenly upon the
coasts, to pillage a settlement or attack trading vessels and as
suddenly to take flight to their strongholds. Captain Kidd was long
celebrated in prose and verse, and only within a few years have
credulous people ceased to seek his buried treasures. The
arch-villain, Blackbeard, was a terror to Virginians and Carolinians
until Spotswood, of "Horseshoe" fame, took the matter in hand, and
sent after him lieutenant Maynard, who, slaying the pirate in hand to
hand conflict, returned with his head at the bowsprit.[1] Lapse of
time has cast a romantic and semi-mythologic glamor around these
depredators, and it is in many instances at this day extremely
difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. The unprotected situation
of many settlements along the seaboard colonies rendered them an easy
prey to rapacious sea rovers, but it might have been expected that the
Maryland shores of the Chesapeake bay would be free from their
harassings. The province, however, it seems was not to enjoy such good
fortune, for in the _printed_ annals of her life appears the name of
one man, who has been handed down from generation to generation as a
"pirate," a "rebel" and an "ungrateful villain," and other equally
complimentary epithets have been applied to him. The original
historians of Maryland based their ideas about him upon some of the
statements made by those whom he had injured or attacked, and who
differed from him in political creed. The later history writers have
been satisfied to follow such authors as Bozman, McMahon and McSherry,
or to copy them directly, without consulting original records. To the
general reader, therefore, who relies upon these authorities, Richard
Ingle is "a pirate and rebel" still.[2]

A thorough defence of him would be almost impossible in view of the
comparative scarcity of records and the complicated politics of his
time. In a review of his relations with Maryland, however, an