Note 1 — CASE OF WILLIAM COWARD.
Reading edition
Suffolk Court Files, no. 2540, paper 6. The case is reported in Records of the Court of Assistants of Massachusetts Bay, I. 319-322. Coward (a sailor of H.M.S. Rose) and others were indicted for a piratical attack on the ketch Elinor in Nantasket Roads, November 21, 1689. They were tried in January, 1690, and condemned, but reprieved. See Andros Tracts, II. 54. The trial occurred in the interregnum between the deposition of Governor Andros in 1689, and the arrival of Governor Phips and inauguration of the new charter in 1692. Therefore Coward pleads to the jurisdiction, Andros's commission as vice-admiral being void.