ENGLISH PRIVATEERS – PART 3: CAPTAIN HENRY MAINWARING ON PIRATES

(This post is a continuation of English Privateers – Part 2: John Smith on Pirates. If you haven’t done so already, it’s probably best to read that post before continuing on here.)

The problem of out-of-work privateers turned pirate plagued England for years. King James I tried sending out naval ships to track them down and destroy them—with no real success. He then resorted to offering pardons to pirate captains. The idea behind this was simple: if you can’t beat them, entice them over to join your side instead. The King had some success with this. He had even more success when he took this process a step further and engaged some of the pardoned pirate captains as pirate hunters—a version of ‘it takes a thief to catch a thief.’

One of these pardoned pirate captains turned pirate hunter was Captain Henry Mainwaring.

Captain Mainwaring (1586-1653) led a varied life. Born into a wealthy and influential English family (his maternal grandfather had been Vice-Admiral of Sussex and a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I), he was educated at Oxford, became a lawyer, and then served aboard one of the naval vessels employed unsuccessfully by King James to hunt down pirates. He soon quit that, however, and turned pirate himself. Though his career as a pirate captain was short—1612–1615—it was quite spectacular, especially considering that he was only 26 when he began it. After three years, he negotiated a royal pardon, eventually ending up a knight and a Gentleman of the Royal Bedchamber. In later years, he was employed by King James as a pirate hunter and served in a number of official posts, including Lieutenant of Dover Castle and Deputy Warden of the Cinque Ports. He also served as Surveyor of the Navy and sat in the House of Commons for a year (1621–1622). He was a royalist during the English Civil War. As a result, he ended up in exile in France, where, for the first time in his life, he apparently ran out of options and died in poverty.

There is no doubt that Mainwaring gained his pardon and the various offices and ranks he held in large part because of his family connections. He was also, however, an intelligent, capable man. And he could write. He is perhaps best known now for his discourse on English piracy—Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates. Completed around 1617, it was never actually published in book form in Mainwaring’s day. Instead, Mainwaring presented a handwritten copy to King James I. Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates is relatively short—only 40 printed pages—but it covers considerable ground: the origins of post-Elizabethan English piracy, the reasons men became pirates, the methods such pirates used at sea, details about the ports and harbors around the world used by pirates, and how to suppress and prevent piracy.

Mainwaring—recipient of a royal pardon as he was—is perhaps most famous for the ironic fact that his advice for how to stop piracy was to not grant pardons to pirates. He did indeed argue this, but it was part of a larger, more nuanced proposal: first provide a decent livelihood for men who would otherwise be drawn to a life of piracy, and then after that punish severely those who chose to become pirates.

The following excerpt contains Mainwaring’s suggestions for eliminating piracy in “Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Piracy.” I have modernized some of the archaic words and spellings to make the sense clearer.

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I think the best and surest way, and that which might much advance the wealth and glory of our State, were to devise some more universal employment than now we have, by which men of that spirit [i.e., ex-privateers] might not complain, as they now do, that they are forced for lack of convenient employment to enter into such unlawful courses [as piracy]. The proof of this is plain, for since your Highness’ reign there have been more pirates by ten to one than there were in the whole reign of the last Queen.

There being now no voyages to speak of but to Newfoundland, which they hold too toilsome, or to Newcastle, which many hold too base, or to the East Indies, which most hold dangerous and tedious, and as for your Highness’ Ships [i.e., the Royal Navy], the entertainment is so small, and the pay so bad that they hold it a kind of slavery to serve in them. I speak of the private sailor not the officer. In this I must say to myself Ne sutor ultra Crepidam [Let not the cobbler judge beyond his last] and leave the project to your Highness’ singular judgment, only I must emphasize this, that it is an ill policy which provides more for the punishing than the preventing of offenders.

Next, to take away their hopes and encouragements, your Highness must put on a constant immutable resolution never to grant any pardon, and for those that are or may be taken, to put them all to death, or make slaves of them, for if your Highness should ask me when those men would leave offending I might answer, as a wise favorite did the late Queen, demanding when he would leave begging, he answered, when she would leave giving; so say I, when your Highness leaves pardoning. And in the little observation I could make in my small travels, I have noted those countries best governed are where the laws are most severely executed; as for instance in Tunis, where no offence is ever remitted, but is instead strictly punished according to their customs and laws.

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King James I did not follow Captain Mainwaring’s advice, and the problem of English pirates continued on in one form or another for many years.