Note note 1 — PREFACE

[1] Suffolk Court Files, no. 1390, paper 1. This case appears in the Records of the Court of Assistants, I. 34-39, 42. The chief originator of this episode of piracy was a Dutch captain from Curaçao, Juriaen Arentsen. In 1674, when a state of war existed between France and the Netherlands, he captured the French forts at Castine and St. John, and took possession of the region as "New Holland." Then, "at the Bear in Boston," he gave some sort of commission to another Dutchman or Fleming, Peter Rodrigo or Rodriguez, to John Rhodes of Boston, and others, under which they proceeded in the piratical manner described in documents 41 and 42. The Court of Assistants had now, by a law passed in December, 1673, been fully authorized to act as a court of admiralty (which hitherto it had done without formal authorization); sitting as such, May 17-June 17, 1675, it condemned Peter Rodrigo, Dutchman, John Roads, late of Boston, Peter Grant, Scotchman, Richard Fowler and Randolph Judson, Englishmen, for piracy, and sentenced them to be hanged. All were however pardoned subsequently. Records of Massachusetts Bay, V. 40, 54, 66. Mitchell and Uring were whipped for complicity, of which there was evidence contradicting their testimony here presented. For the background of the whole story, see C.W. Tuttle, Captain Francis Champernowne, the Dutch Conquest of Acadie, and other Historical Papers (Boston, 1889), pp. 137-150, 349-399.