Governor Lilburne to the Lords Proprietors of the Bahamas

[sans date mais écrit avant la fin de l'année 1683]

In March 1683 one Captain Thomas Paine, with a ship of eight guns and sixty men, was at the Bahamas, with a commission from Sir Thomas Lynch to take pirates. He met there Captain Conway Woolley, Captain Markham, John Cornelison, commander of a brigantine from New York and Brashaw, a French privateer, who was waiting to fish for silver from a Spanish wreck. The four entered into a conspiracy to take St. Augustine's, and listed themselves under Paine. They landed under French colours, but finding the Spaniards ready for them abandoned St. Augustine's and plundered some small places round. Paine, Markham, and Brashaw came to Providence, where the Governor attempted to seize Paine's and Markham's ships, but failed for a want of a force. Paine then went wrecking, but a strong ship coming in shortly after, the Governor manned it and went off to the wreck himself, but Paine and the rest had already sailed.

The Governor on this represented to the Council the danger of allowing these weak islands to be made a place for pirates to assemble in and start from in their depredations against the Spaniards. He then made an Order in Council that all masters of vessels coming with men over and above their sailing company should, within twenty-four hours, give security that neither he nor any of his men would supply pirates in or near the Colony. A captain who came out shortly after, and refused to give this security, was imprisoned, since which all others have quietly complied. The Spaniards still take English vessels wherever they meet them, and are strong enough to do it. There are also many pirates whom the Governor is powerless to suppress without a man-of-war, and he begs for a man-of-war lest the pirates should seize upon some place and make it a second Algiers.