Note 4 — ADMIRAL BENBOW AND HIS TREACHEROUS CAPTAINS.

This story of the Moors’ heads derives considerable countenance from the following circumstance related in Owen and Blakeway’s “History of Shrewsbury.” It appears that a Mr. Richard Ridley married Elizabeth Benbow, a sister of the admiral. Their daughter, Sarah Ridley, married Richard Briscoe, and Helen Briscoe, great granddaughter of this marriage, married John Powell, of the Castle Foregate, Shrewsbury; and in his possession might be seen a curious kind of cup or punch-bowl edged with silver, on which was engraved “The First Adventure of Captain John Benbo, and Gift to Richard Ridley, 1687.” On close inspection this cup was found to consist of cane very closely matted together, and coated on both sides with varnish. The vessel was evidently such a covering for the head as is in use among the Moors, so that it might have been worn by one of the thirteen pirates who boarded the Benbow frigate.