182. Warrant to try Prizes. June 5, 1756 524
_LA VIRGEN DEL ROSARIO Y EL SANTO CRISTO DE BUEN VIAGE_
184. Libel of Richard Haddon. Mar. 9, 1757 529
185. Deposition of Francisco Raphe. Mar. 31, 1757 533
187. Deposition of Don Felipe Ybañez. Sept. 2, 1758 535
188. Libel of Felipe Ybañez. Sept. 27, 1758 542
189. Certificate of Captain-General Cagigal. Nov. 4, 1758 554
190. Deposition of William Haddon. Nov. 16, 1759 556
191. Declaration of Don Gerónimo de Medrano. Nov. 19, 1759 560
192. Declaration of Don Joseph de la Vega. Nov. 19, 1759 561
193. Declaration of Domingo de Armas. Nov. 20, 1759 563
194. Declaration of Elizabeth Berrow. Nov. 22, 1759 564
195. Reversal of Sentence by Appellate Court. Dec. 19, 1760 567
196. Appeal of Miller and Simpson. July 7, 1761 569
198. News of Privateers. May 19, 1757 571
199. Letter of William Smith, jr. Apr. 8, 1757 573
200. Letter of Stephen Hopkins. Jan. 15, 1759 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
_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.]