Note note 1 — PREFACE

[1] Charleston, Records of the Court of Vice-admiralty of South Carolina, vol. A-B. The document is spread upon the records of the court for Nov. 27, 1716, at the beginning of the day's proceedings. This commission is a peculiar one. As has been explained in note 2 to doc. no. 51 and in note 1 to doc. no. 104, the act 28 Henr. VIII. ch. 15 (1536) provided for the trial of piracy by commissions specially appointed for the purpose, and with a jury, but did not extend to the oversea plantations, while the act 11 and 12 Will. III. ch. 7 (1699-1700) extended to those dominions the crown's authority to appoint such commissions. Before the passage of the latter statute, colonial governors had as vice-admirals appointed such commissions, which had then proceeded under the civil (Roman) law, and not under the statute. But South Carolina had in 1712 expressly adopted the act of 28 Henr. VIII. (Cooper, Statutes at Large, II. 470) and here we have a commission issued by the deputy governor and council, under authority of the proprietors of Carolina, for trial under the act of 1536, though action could have been taken under that of 1700. The accused persons for whose trial the commission was issued were acquitted. For the whole subject of piracy in or near Carolina, where it was rife in these years, see S.C. Hughson, "The Carolina Pirates and Colonial Commerce", in Johns Hopkins University Studies, XII. The most famous case was that of Major Stede Bonnet, but the original records of that case are fully printed in State Trials, ed. Hargrave, vol. VI.