Eight years after Edward Thache’s murder, his pecuniary and politically-motivated assassins – likely Edward Moseley, Maurice Moore, Jeremiah Vail, with John Porter, the Swanns, Davises, Drys, Allens, Lillingtons, and other wealthy and well-connected families of the organized cabal known as the Family – attempted to steal the Lords Proprietors’ land in the Lower Cape Fear of North Carolina. We have to understand that – to these Englishmen originally from a crowded island nation – there existed few more valuable treasures than land. According to South Carolina’s Rev. Francis Le Jau, these land-hungry men attempted “A New Settlement bounding on this and on North Carolina, but under neither, nor any Government.”[1] The Family tried to carve out their own feudal slave-driven agricultural domain in the Lower Cape Fear. Surely, this was yet another act of treason, as seen in eighteenth-century context! Criminality in America was alive and well long after Blackbeard and is still here today! Still, the robbery did not take place at sea, so it was not technically “piracy” – as my historian colleagues will say – simply “theft.” Again, the only difference is in the “getaway” vehicle used. It could be said that the Family perhaps stole land better than they dealt with pirate competition – as their previous interrupted business association with the pirate-merchant Edward Thache showed.
Another record from South Carolina
shows further criminal behavior about the same time – not unlike that of the
smuggler John Hancock and other founders of the future “Pirate Nation” of
America! This incident involved the crime of smuggling – a ubiquitous and
consistent maritime crime – just after Francis Nicholson became their governor.
It also involved the future Admiralty Judge of North Carolina, Edmond Porter.
Porter was an Albemarle resident who had recently lived in the Bahamas where he
wed Elizabeth Peterson, the daughter of wealthy Bahamian planter Richard
Peterson. Porter and his wife had many
dealings with and even resided part time in South Carolina. Edmond Porter appeared
much more progressive than his younger brother John, malcontent Family member
from that “nest of pirates” in the still private and fractured colony of North
Carolina. Both men were sons of the Quaker political dissenter John Porter who
died in British exile in 1712.
Nicholson seemed to rely on
Edmond Porter to keep abreast of happenings in his northern Carolina neighbor, then
a veritable cesspool of rampant corruption – owing in no small part to the
Family. Porter sailed in his 35-ton Moll
to visit his brother in North Carolina with another merchant of Sussex,
England, who had come to the Bahamas when Woodes Rogers supposedly de-pirated
the island in 1718. One could say that he simply took over their business. Also
sailing from there for four years as master of sloops Hardtimes and Bonetta was
another recent Bahamian settler, James Wimble. Wimble, a future founder of the
Family’s Brunswick Town business rival, the port of Wilmington, North Carolina,
and certainly no friend of the Family, first purchased land along the southern
shores of the Albemarle Sound that same year – part of that land from Edmond’s
brother John Porter:
[In 1723], He applied for
and obtained a grant for 640 acres on the “Scuppernong” River, in Tyrrell
County, near present-day Columbia. He purchased another 640 acres from Dep.
Gov. Thomas Harvey that same year, obtained another grant of 530 acres in 1728,
and 500 acres from John Porter in 1731.[2]
Edmond Porter and James Wimble
had known each other, since their days sailing from the Bahama Islands. Porter
was responsible for bringing Wimble into North Carolina, who, in only seven
years, began disrupting the Family’s business affairs at Brunswick Town. Porter
and Wimble together were sent to inquire about a shipment of tobacco that had
arrived in Charles Town without papers showing clearance. It came on a ship
owned by Family in-law William Rhett, Jr., son of Col. William Rhett, who had recently
hunted and captured Stede Bonnet in Cape Fear River.[3]
Yes, North and South Carolinians, as well as Barbadians and Jamaicans, etc. had
many important gentlemanly connections – both familial and business. Porter and
Wimble had been alerted because the vessel landed in Charles Town in March 1720
on Rhett’s sloop Mary, John Palmer,
master, from Port Roanoke in the Albemarle. The investigation turned up details
of possible smuggling – again, like John Hancock at Boston – and the
anti-corruption reformer Nicholson had Col. William Rhett and his son arrested.
Porter returned to Charles Town by February 6, 1723 to make his report. The
crime of smuggling was essentially maritime tax evasion, but generally more
significant considering the time period and that nearly all merchandise was
then carried by ship.
Later that April, Edmond Porter
testified to Nicholson that he inquired as to the North Carolina record books
of Port Roanoke and Port Currituck Collecter William Reed, who was collector in
March 1720, but had died before Porter arrived and was replaced by Deputy
Collector John Lovick. Porter said that, on the 4th of February,
when he asked Mr. Alexander Cockburne about the former collector’s books, Cockburne
told Porter that they were locked up in a scritore
(lockbox for papers) and that he did not have the key. Porter then crossed the
Albemarle River to Naval Officer and Deputy Collector – and recent
co-conspirator with Gov. Charles Eden in the Blackbeard affair – John Lovick’s,
“who I knew to be an Artfull Sly Gent, therefore was the more exact in my
business.”[4] Porter sought the entry
made by Reed for this tobacco. The Deputy Collector John Lovick, and recent
Secretary for Gov. Charles Eden, stalled Porter’s inquiry – like the Trump
Administration today – by refusing to make a copy of either the duty or
clearance books for Porter in his own hand. It’s not entirely clear why Lovick
stalled this inquiry – perhaps he had inherited the profits from Reed’s
official business. Lovick’s interference with the investigation made Porter
suspicious. “I was Induced to tell [Lovick],” he said. “I thought it was the
Duty of every Officer to help in sorting out the Truth in things that appeared
in the least design of fraud in the King’s Customes.”[5] As Porter concluded, his
efforts proved ineffectual against such arrogant and deceitful men. Like today,
however, such arrogance only created a temporary protection from criminal
liability.
Porter went back to
Cockburne, who must have feared being caught up in Lovick’s crimes. He finally
seemed to be in a most helpful mood – a “whistleblower,” of a sort. Cockburne,
without a key, busted the lock and copied the entries himself, with an added
letter to corroborate. Porter wanted to speak to the ascribed witness, Samuel
Swann the younger, Edward Moseley’s nephew and soon to be collector at Port
Brunswick in Cape Fear, but he was away in Virginia at the time. Neither was
the President of the Council, William Reed – one of many William Reeds of North
Carolina – who had taken the office of Thomas Pollock (d. 1722), available to
apply the colony’s seals, as he was in Core Sound and not available. Porter
returned and offered the evidence, which showed no entry or duty paid on any
tobacco and submitted them as Exhibits “A” and “B.” They read:
11 March 1720: Scooner Mary
of South Carolina Jos. Palmer, Square Sterd., 15 tons, South Carolina Built,
1715, Registered at So. Carolina August 17th, 1719 [one year after
Col. Rhett’s hunt for pirates Vane and Bonnet in Cape Fear River], Wm. Rhett
Junr. Owner, her Cargo on Board viz: 872 bushls Indian Corn, 13 Barrels Pork
and two Barrls of Soape bound for South Carolina.[6]
The clearance book, Exhibit
“B,” showed precisely the same entry as Exhibit “A” and a letter from the
current Collector Alexander Cockburne assured Gov. Nicholson that Palmer must
have hidden the tobacco from them – no doubt to Palmer and Rhett’s mutual
profit. Porter said that “I found myself in a Sea of Difficulty” and he had
heard of the death of the father Col. William Rhett (1723), whom “I apprehended
was the person your Excly. Distrusted had a principle part in Covering the
fraud of the said tobacco.”[7] Thus, Porter hit another
wall in the future “pirate nation.” Presumably, there was a vocal remonstrance
at best – the king’s revenue had still been smuggled as a result of a criminal
conspiracy! Could Palmer have made a deal with Reed and Lovick, the naval
officer whom Porter referred to as the “Artfull Sly Gent” to validate their
false claims on the North Carolina books? Investigating the affair like Congressman
Adam Schiff, serving as Chairman of the U. S. House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence, Porter probably thought as much.
Concerning John Lovick’s character, interim governor of North Carolina Richard Everard, about the same age as Edward Thache and born in Langley, Much Waltham,
England, commented in a letter to the Bishop of London on April 14, 1729, just
before the admiralty investigation, that Lovick represented something of the
character of many a modern profiteering politician today, deceptively using
Andrew Carnegie’s prescription in The
Gospel of Wealth (1889) to fool the people and pad his wallet:
I was, in Order to the
laying the Foundation chose Church warden as one Mr. [Edward] Moseley we had Several meetings to
consult about building it but could not agree being always hindred by our
Secretary one Mr. Jo. Lovick a man of no Religion Fears nor
God nor man believes neither seldom seen at any place of devine worship his
mony is his God ridicules all Goodness whilst such a man is in Power no good
can be expected.[8]
Still, the delinquency of
North Carolina cannot be wholly blamed on John Lovick, as the new interim
governor Everard quickly suggested. William Byrd II’s Secret History of the Dividing
Line (between North Carolina and Virginia) gives a much more graphic
representation of Lovick’s acquaintance Christopher Gale, both of whom came to North Carolina in Gov. Edward Hyde’s extravagant,
gilt-covered voyage on HMS Kinsdale.[9] In passing, Byrd said that
the supposedly respectable Gale was a “brother to the late Dean of York, and if
his Honour had not formerly been a Pirate himself, he seem’d intimately
acquainted with many of them.”[10] Byrd may have referred to
Gale’s late appointment as Chief Justice of the Bahamas by Woodes Rogers and
his residing amongst ex-pirates. Still, Byrd consistently demonstrated much
contempt for anyone having to do with his reviled “Lubberland,” or North
Carolina.
Lovick, whom Byrd referred to sarcastically as “Shoebrush,” owing to his
alleged capacity as valet for Gov. Hyde, spent a great deal of time, while
supposedly surveying the dividing line with Virginia, searching for houses that
“promised good Cheer,” as Byrd phrased it. “Good cheer” apparently referred to
women like Robin Hix and Mary Izzard and, of course, to alcohol. Byrd seemed to
regard Gale and Lovick as irresponsible and delaying the
expedition with their childish antics. As a Virginian, he was certainly biased
against North Carolinians and this may have tainted his account somewhat. He
said “Surely, there is no place in the World where the inhabitants live with
less Labour, than in N. Carolina. It approaches nearer to the Description of Lubberland than any other.”[11]
Sounding very much like the
alleged “grabbing women by the privates” depravity related by today’s Republican
President Donald J. Trump to Billy Bush in 2016 and his long-term multiple
sexual harassment allegations – even alleged rape and pedophilia – an incident
that deserves attention here was the affair of the “Tallow-faced wench” on the
night of March 12, 1728 in the home of one Mr. Balance in Currituck Precinct. This involved a woman – likely the daughter or wife of Mr. Balance –
who had sprained her wrist, quit her labors, and sat down to drink with the
surveyors and commissioners on the expedition. She became expecially
intoxicated and the men “examined all her hidden Charms, and play’d a great
many gay Pranks.” One commissioner “pick’d off” of the woman “several Scabs as
big as Nipples, [allegedly] the Consequence of eating too much Pork.”[12] Apparently, “One of the
representatives from North Carolina,” left the house with the woman at about midnight.[13] The narrative does not say
whether this man was Lovick or Gale, but apparently they both
had a turn in “handling” the perhaps injured and apparently infected young
woman (most likely, pork did not cause her scabs). They came to the surveyors’
camp and “were so very clamorous” that they had awoken Byrd, who wished
Lovick’s “Nose as flat as any of his Porcivorous [or pig-like] Countrymen
[again, North Carolinians, in Byrd’s words].”[14]
As commissioners were
drawing the dividing line with William Byrd II in 1728, the Crown appointed
Edmond Porter Admiralty Judge for North Carolina. George Stevenson, biographer
for Gale, writes:
[Chief Justice Christopher
Gale's] General Court became first a political tool in the hands of Gale and
his faction, then an object of contempt in the province. Similarly, the Court
of Vice-Admiralty in the hands of Edmond Porter (who had been one of the
attorneys for Eden's heirs-at-law) became a tool of political opposition
against Gale's faction. The responsibility for the jurisdictional fight that
broke out between the two courts must be shared in large part by Gale.[15]
Note that Stevenson regarded Porter as a “political
tool” being used against “Gale’s faction,” as though they were seen by North
Carolina historians as equals – not viewed as an inveterate British patriot
versus an American criminal.
A little more than a year
into Edmond Porter’s term as judge and owing most likely to the Albemarle
political cabal of Gale, Lovick, Little, Reed, and who knows how many others,
someone literally took a shot at the new Admiralty Judge! Perhaps Gale – like
Donald Trump at a rally of his fans – let it be known that he would curry favor
to anyone who had committed violence to Judge Porter. Trump had casually alluded
to the usual punishment – being death – for traitors, hoping that the
“Whistleblower” against him – whom he styled a “traitor” – in the 2019 Ukraine Affair
might be the victim of such an obedient and violently-inclined fan of Trump’s.
The details are indistinct,
but Judge Edmond Porter received word that there would be such an attempt – on
January 7, 1730 – and he prepared for the worst. An hour before three o’clock,
when court was scheduled to meet, Porter put a mock judge and jury in the
courthouse. Armed men on horseback had, indeed, appeared. They rode past the
courthouse, shooting through the windows, hoping to hit Judge Porter. No one,
however, was hurt.[16]
Judge Porter suspected confederates
of Lovick, Reed, Little, and Chief Justice Gale, but he could not prove
anything. That summer, Porter presided over the July 1730 case which exposed
Lovick’s crimes during the previous decade, in the case titled The King v. John Lovick. These crimes,
however, did not include punching Gov. Richard Everard, which Lovick had done
two years earlier. One of Porter’s first acts as Admiralty Judge was to
prosecute John Lovick for his abuse of office and cover-up of crimes, his coup de grace over the “Artfull Sly
Gent.”
Collector William Reed, one time President of the Council and Acting Governor of North
Carolina, since deceased in 1721, and John Lovick, then promoted as Collector of Port Beaufort were both investigated in 1730 (immediately after Crown
resumption of North Carolina’s private charter in 1729). Porter also then looked into the “unjust
practices” of “a very wicked, but awkward, Rake” who also accompanied Gale,
Lovick, Swann, Moseley, Byrd and others in 1728 to survey the North
Carolina-Virginia line – and also married Gale’s daughter - the Attorney
General and Receiver General William Little. In the July 1730 case of The King v. John Lovick, they were
accused of theft regarding impounded ships and their cargoes from eight-ten
years earlier, just prior and adding to Porter’s investigation of 1723, during
the administration of Gov. Eden and possibly interim-governor Thomas Pollock,
who lived only a few months after Eden. Porter found Lovick guilty and immediately
fired him, replacing him with Ebenezer Harker. The ships were condemned and
sold along with their cargoes, including Barbados rum and sugar from one, in
Vice-Admiralty courts held in Edenton, the
capital of the colony, named for the recently deceased governor and supposed
ally of the pirate Edward Thache.[17] Nicholson and Porter’s
efforts in America did not stop criminals – they only slowed them down a bit. For
North Carolina in particular, John Lovick’s amorous “wing man” from 1728,
Christopher Gale, his highly-placed family, and other officers of the colony,
including an acting governor, continued to oppose reform in the new royal
colony for decades following its final resumption in 1729.
Perhaps notable in the
Trump-Lovick-Gale comparison, John Lovick had married Penelope, the wealthy
daughter of Gov. Charles Eden and cheated on her repeatedly, while also
corruptly filling his coffers. Penelope Eden Lovick was the heir to the family fortune. It must have
been large, for her mother – also named Penelope – had been married three times
– a common way for colonial “gentlemen” to build their fortunes. First she
married a “Mr. Golland,” who lived on the Bertie County side of the Chowan River –
possible on recently vacated Tuscarora land. Then, around 1710, she married
Gov. Charles Eden, who died in 1722. Most recently, she had survived her third husband,
William Maule, a Scot mariner and surveyor living on his plantation of
“Caledonia,” also in Bertie. He died in 1726. Lovick had inherited these properties
due to some manipulations of the will which, consequently, disinherited Eden’s grandchildren and enriched Lovick. This property included “Eden House,” the former home of the
governor. Legal action ensued, based upon the admiralty issues, which generated
the records now found in the archives in Raleigh.[18]
Part of the immediate
admiralty case for abuse of office against Lovick involved three separate vessels:
one large sloop of the West Indies trade amounting to “near £500,” the Hopewell of Virginia, Joseph Jones, master, and the William
& John, John Vere, master, valued at £600, with “produce and
Manufacture of Europe.”[19] These vessels were
impounded and their cargoes of manufactured goods, pork, skins, sugar, cocoa,
molasses, rum, and tobacco were sold by Lovick.
The worst of Lovick’s crimes stemmed from similar use of the “tenths of Whale Oyl &
Bone” collected by his wife’s former husband Gov. Charles Eden, who also
profited from his appointment, like Donald Trump today.[20] Again, the king did not
see his 1/10th portion, Lovick having “applyed & Converted
[the money] to his own use.”[21] Gov. Eden collected this tax for over ten
years from “Capt. John Ricords, Capt. Thomas & Others” without distributing
it to the king, having “applyed the same to his own Proper use until the Day of
his Death,” in 1722.[22] Eden left over £2,000 of this money in
his will to “Vice-Admiral[ty Judge]” Lovick along with the benefits of £4,000
value sterling in estates, supposedly to be distributed to his heirs. There was
no trust among thieves, however. In the eight years preceding this accusation,
Lovick had not “So much as paid or Accounted for the
Legacies left to the Relations of the said Eden, But Intending to Defraud not only them but His Majesty likewise.”[23]
Figure
1: Union Jack modification for colonial privateers – use of the
standard Union Jack was a violation of recent legislation that required the use
of different flags to distiunguish colonial merchants and privateers from the
Royal Navy. Unauthorized use of a Union Jack, especially for non-military
ships, showed disrespect for government authority, much like firing a salute on
the Pretender’s birthday as a sign of Jacobite disaffection. This, however, was
a direct affront to the king’s authority that did not necessarily arise from
Jacobite concerns. Source: The 89th instruction given by the Crown
to Francis Nicholson on assuming the governorship of South Carolina in 1721,
"South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671-1977," images, FamilySearch.org : 21 May 2014), Charleston >
Miscellaneous record, 1696-1729 > image 141 of 301; citing Department of
Archives and History, Columbia.
Another criminal who likely
gave Edmond Porter an ulcer was Miles Gale, son of Christopher Gale, in
particular, a young merchant who, as owner and occasional master of the sloop Two Brothers, made regular runs from
North Carolina to Boston – and a frequent defendant in the Admiralty Judge’s
court. Several months following the assassination attempt on Judge Porter, in
October 1730, another altercation between Miles Gale’s ship master, James
Chamberlain, and officers of the Admiralty, including Thomas Snowden’s son,
Samuel, occurred in Edenton Harbor. These events began over a perceived insult
from the new royal government – North Carolina had, of course, undergone
resumption in 1729. Similar to the vengeful South’s use of the Confederate flag
to warn that they intended to “rise again,” or perhaps Richard Tookerman in
Port Royal Harbor, Miles Gale used a flag to protest his discontent with the
new government rule.
On October 4, 1730, the
sloop Two Brothers had recently
offended acting governor Richard Everard when Gale’s vessel "lately at
Several times in a very insulting manner, wore the Union Jack; pendant in the
Harbour and Port of Edenton; has also in a Dareing Manner fired Guns and
Hoisted up an Union Jack or Flag at Mast Head at three Several times (vizt)
first on or about the last of August, and on the 18th and 19th of September
last in the Harbour aforesd."[24] The governor told Judge
Porter that Miles Gale had been cautioned about this insult to the
"Jurisdiction of the Admiralty," but continued it nevertheless.
Gov. Everard explained the
alleged breach: Gale's actions, he said were also "contrary to the holsom
Orders and Ordinances of the Treaty of Union [1 May 1707] and the Queens [Anne]
Proclamation in pursuance thereof our Merchant Ships or Vessels, wearing
Flaggs, Jacks, or any Pendants whatsoever, without particular warrant from the
Lord High Admiral or the Lords Comrs. of the Admiralty." Everard,
"conceiving the Offense to be attended with ill consequence" demanded
on October 4th a citation be issued for Miles Gale to appear in Vice-Admiralty
Court.[25]
Soon after, Samuel Snowden,
Marshall of the Admiralty and son of Thomas Snowden who had recently passed
away (1728), went with his deputy in a small boat one afternoon to the sloop,
laying at anchor just off Edenton. Snowden carried the citation for Miles Gale,
sole owner of the vessel Two Brothers
from Judge Porter. Miles Gale's crew again insulted the authority of Porter’s
admiralty officers.
As Snowden and his deputy approached
Two Brothers from astern, crossing
the calm cool waters of Albemarle Sound before the docks of Edenton. James
Chamberlain, then master of Two Brothers
and another man saw their approach, ducked into the cabin, and brought out
muskets. Chamberlain told Snowden that if "he came one foot farther, he
was a dead man." Before Snowden could negotiate, Chamberlain fumbled
eagerly for a match to fire the cannon, forcing Snowden to retreat back to the
shore.[26] Capt. Joseph Kidder, whose
vessel Mary Anne was anchored nearby
when Snowden and deputy approached Two
Brothers, confirmed Marshall Snowden's testimony and added that Chamberlain
at first presented a small arm that he had on his person before ordering the
muskets to be brought up.[27]
Samuel Snowden testified
shortly afterward, on October 16, 1730, Gale, Chamberlain, and three of their
men came on shore, armed with pistols and cutlasses. They swore that "they
valued the Govr. no more than they did the Judge of Admty." Gale claimed
that Porter had no authority over him, that admiralty jurisdiction, he claimed,
was "His Father's business." And, he added that "no man else had
any thing to do wth such things or things of that nature but his Father
[Christopher Gale]."[28] Since most all business in
the eighteenth century involved maritime traffic, it was as if Miles Gale saw
his father as virtual dictator over North Carolina!
Edmond Porter ordered Gale
and his men to appear in court on the 24th to answer these further charges. The
records, however, surprisingly end on this note. Porter and Gale both survived
this encounter, which, like most of Richard Tookerman’s protests, fell into the
category of vengeful political discontent. Like the protests of the pirate
Tookerman, the discontent of the local population of North Carolina against
British progressive reform - designed to reduce corruption “beyond the line” in
America, or the South against the Union in 1861, easily compare to those
against Jacobitism or against a rogue modern American president! Like Francis
Nicholson in multiple colonies and Edmond Porter in Carolina, all their efforts
at reform and justice seldom received mention in American history – same as the
actual true history of Edward Thache.
Furthermore, in only two years’ time, the great reformer and protégé of
Nicholson, Edmond Porter was replaced as Admiralty Judge by Christopher Gale’s
West-Indian merchant brother Edmund Gale! Apparently it was a bit of privileged
corruption in the name of nepotism – again, like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and his
sons or U. S. President Donald Trump’s filling his White House with family:
daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and faking security clearances to
allow such indulgences![29]
Admiralty cases extend
throughout the colonial period, demonstrating significant levels of corruption
on the part of Admiralty officers and even judges. One collector in Port
Brunswick, Edward Moseley’s nephew Samuel Swann, impounded a ship and allowed
his friends to use it for a year before the judge in faraway Edenton demanded
that he hold its trial! Swann never showed at court and was eventually fined
for contempt and removed. Still, the man who replaced him, John Elliot
committed precisely the same illegalities. This was certainly the reason for
King William III’s proclamation of 1689-90: “An Act to punish Governors of
Plantations in this Kingdom for Crimes by them committed…”
Crimes and Offences
committed out of this His Majesties Realme of England whereof divers Governors
Lieutenant Governors Deputy Governors or Commanders in Chiefe of Plantations
and Colonies within His Majesties Dominions beyond the Seas have taken Advantage
and have not been deterred from oppressing His Majesties Subjects within their
respective Governments and Commands nor from committing severall other great
Crimes and Offences not deeming themselves punishable for the same here [in
England] nor accountable for such their Crimes and Offences to any Person
within their respective Governments….[30]
All colonies operated
corruptly. Still, corrupt private colonies like the two Carolinas and their
sister colony of the Bahamas continued to operate as virtual
criminal states during the Golden Age of Piracy – many long after resumption
into the Crown – extending well into the United States of America following the
American Revolution. North Carolina was little different than South Carolina
before its resumption to the Crown in 1719. This is probably why Family land thief
Maurice Moore and his kinfolk decided to move to the remote Lower Cape Fear in North
Carolina in the next few years, where they could continue to conduct their business
affairs “as usual” – under lax proprietary rule. These colonial conservatives essentially
had few liberal counterparts in America – unless you count the unenfranchised
majority toiling in the fields and slopping hogs. The Family and their ilk ideologically
backed further away from British authority with each reform measure. About
Family and other North Carolina conservatives in particular, historian Paul D.
Escott asserts that North Carolinians are still subjects of these
hierarchical forces of inequality that “belied the seeming equality of a poor
state.”[31] The domination of Stuart
conservative Tories took strong hold of and blended easily into American
conservatism of first, the Democratic Party until the Civil War, and second,
the Republican Party after Reconstruction in the Industrial Age. The glistening
of treasure is usually hard to ignore for one whose family had long been
pirates and criminals. They dominated American politics throughout our history
– changing identity when necessary to maintain power!
As the criminal actions of
the wealthy Lovick, Gale, and the Family indicate, the king’s own officials in
these proprietaries could not be trusted. Their many crimes began with embezzling
or smuggling of cargo to avoid duties to land theft from the proprietors and
the king himself – they continuously robbed him blind! Modern bigotry and
misogyny accompanied a male-dominated feudal rise of plantation economy. And, let’s
not forget the slavery! Again, the general populace might be blamed for the
bigotry, but these poorer sort cannot be blamed for the massive land theft,
wholly attributable to upper class citizens: officials and wealthy merchants,
like Vice Admiralty Judge John Warner in Port Royal, ex-slaver Col. William
Rhett in Charles Town, or Edward Moseley and Maurice Moore and their Family in
the Lower Cape Fear of North Carolina. The majority of colonial residents,
those that usually composed pirate crews or grew corn and raised hogs, just
went along, hoping for what scraps trickled down to them in this colonial
version of Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of
Wealth of 1889 or its descendent, “Trickle-Down” Reaganomics in the 1980s.
As Mark Hanna and Douglas Burgess have suggested, all American
colonies experienced wholesale corruption and developed essentially criminal methods
couched in the rhetoric of “unregulated individual freedom” with few rules. Calling
these criminal behaviors “piracy” of the Golden Age, as we do today, does
nothing to change their inherent “genetic” makeup. “Crimes” in the modern sense
at this time were essential to the capture and domination of Spanish property. Crimes,
including piracy, were by no means discouraged in America for generations until
after Britain enforced their anti-pirate decrees – and, these were only
temporarily effective. Britain may not have seen these early colonial methods
as legal, but they were certainly allowed “beyond the lines of amity” or in the
“Commonwealth of Pyrates!”
Carolina and its Southern
brethren, long after the supposedly “notorious” Edward Thache’s demise in Ocracoke Inlet, and even after the legislative reforms instituted by Gov. Francis
Nicholson and other British progressives, particularly excelled at such blatantly corrupt “criminal freedom,” or
smuggling, bribery, and extortion. In less than a century, these unrestrained
violent feudal ideologies of the South would result in a Civil War against
their surprisingly liberalizing abolitionist cousins to the north, a reflection
of the old battle against Stuart conservatives. Until that bellicose future time,
a few Carolina men, like Admiralty Judge Edmond Porter, remained as dutiful to
the king as Col. Robert Quarry or Francis Nicholson. And, as the admiralty
records show, the British Eden himself was certainly no saint. Col. William
Rhett of Charles Town and Lt. Gov. Alexander Spotswood of Virginia were little
better, as was the opportunistic, but much maligned, Lord Archibald Hamilton of
Jamaica – who never forgot the wealthy “landed” voters – many of whom were
pirates – who ousted him from his governorship.
[1] Brooks, Brunswick
Town and Wilmington, 10.
[2] Baylus C. Brooks, Captain
James Wimble of Hastings, Sussex County, England: American Merchant, Founder,
and Privateer (Greenville: Baylus C. Brooks, 2015), 8; Wilmington was aided
by Wimble, for Gov. Burrington and in direct opposition to the Family’s
Brunswick Town.
[3]
William Rhett, Jr.’s sisters had married Family
members from the Lower Cape Fear: Eleazer Allen and Roger Moore – both
originally from Goose Creek, South Carolina.
[4] "South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes,
1671-1977," image 159 of 301, pages 94-95 in old book; Lovick was
secretary of the colony and it was his home that Edward Moseley and Maurice
Moore broke into for evidence against Gov. Charles Eden’s trading with
Blackbeard.
[5]Ibid.
[6]Ibid., image 160 of 301.
[7]Ibid.; Note that Col. William Rhett died facing these charges
and an active investigation by Gov. Nicholson and his investigator Edmond
Porter, looking into Rhett and his son’s smuggling and other illegal activities
- Rhett today is considered a great hero by Americans, despite his obvious
corruption.
[8] Cain, ed., Church
of England Records,
317; "Wealth", more commonly known as "The Gospel of
Wealth", is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in June of 1889. It
details the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made
rich, the progenitor of the failed modern "Trickle-Down" Economic
Theory. Like Ronald Reagan and many Republicans since, Carnegie proposed that
the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for
the wealthy to utilize their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner
– the wealthy would essentially govern the people’s lives, completely negating
the responsibility of government. The greed of the wealthy, however, seldom
allowed for this. Although charged with supplying wealth to the lower classes,
re: Trickle Down Economics, Carnegie’s wealthy colleagues probably desired
rather to swindle the people. Carnegie’s even proposing such a ridiculous idea
seemed suspicious in and of itself.
[9] Herbert R. Paschal, Jr., “Hyde, Edward” (1988), NCPedia, http://ncpedia.org/biography/hyde-edward (accessed 21 June
2013).
[10] Kevin Joel Berland, ed., The Dividing Line Histories of William Byrd II of Westover (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013),
359.
[11] Ibid., 105.
[12] Ibid., 365; scabs did not come from eating pork – likely, it
was Smallpox, Impetigo (staff infection), or Herpes
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.; “Transcript: Donald Trump’s Taped Comments About
Women,” New York Times (8 Oct 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html;
“I did try and fuck her. She was married… I moved on her like a bitch. But I
couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s
now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look… You
know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them.
It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they
let you do it. You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do
anything.”
[15] George Stevenson, “Christopher Gale” (1986), NCPedia,
http://ncpedia.org/biography/gale-christopher (accessed July 30, 2016).
[16] “Edenton Mob - Mock Jury” (7 Jan 1730), Vice-Admiralty Papers, Vol. I.
[17] “Richard Everard to Edmond Porter” (2 Jul 1730), North
Carolina State Archives, Vice-Admiralty
Papers, Vol. I: 1697-1738, CCR-142.
[18] Marshall Delancey Haywood, “Governor Charles Eden,” North Carolina Booklet,
Vol. 3 No. 8 (Dec. 1903), 5-24; the “legal trouble” is given by Haywood, who
defended Lovick’s actions: “Yet at a meeting of the Provincial Council
of North Carolina during the
administration of Governor Burrington, on July 31, 1724, a petition was presented on behalf
of Roderick Lloyd and Anne, his wife, together with Margaret Pugh (daughter
of Mrs. Lloyd by a former marriage), averring that Mrs. Lloyd was "only
sister and heir" of Governor Eden; that John Lovick, "by pretext of a pretended will made by the said
Governor," had fraudulently possessed himself of the Eden estate as
executor; that the will had been procured in an unlawful and indirect manner,
and was not signed and witnessed, as the law required. Mr. Lovick, as executor, made due answer to this petition; and,
while not denying that Mrs. Lloyd was next of kin, proceeded to show that
Governor Eden had made and
signed his will in due form and that it was also attested by the number of
witnesses necessary; that said will had been duly proven in open court, and
afterwards recorded, as the law required.”
[19] “Richard Everard to Edmond Porter” (23 Jul 1730), Vice-Admiralty Papers of North Carolina, Vol. I.
[20]Ibid.
[21]Ibid.
[22]Ibid.
[23]Ibid.; concerning King
v. Little.
[24]“Richard Everard to Edmond Porter” (4 Oct 1730), Vice-Admiralty Papers of North Carolina, Vol. I.
[25]Ibid.
[26] “Deposition of Capt. Joseph Kidder, master of Mary Anne” (20 Oct 1730), Vice-Admiralty Papers of North Carolina, Vol. I.
[27]Ibid.
[28] “Deposition of Samuel Snowden, Marshall of Admiralty”
(17 Oct 1730), Vice-Admiralty Papers of North Carolina, Vol. I.
[29]
Would it be a surprise to find that part of
Kushner’s personal empire included a building at 666 Fifth Avenue? Christopher
and Edmund were the sons of Anglican minister Miles Gale - as Blackbeard was
the grandson of Anglican minister Thomas Thache, both highly-educated and
wealthy men.
[30] "William III, 1698-9: An Act to punish Governors
of Plantations in this Kingdom for Crimes by them committed in the Plantations.
[Chapter XII. Rot. Parl. 11 Gul. III. p. 3. n. 11. 3.]," in Statutes of
the Realm: Volume 7, 1695-1701, ed. John Raithby (s.l: Great Britain Record
Commission, 1820), 600; “Order by Edmund Gale, V.A. Judge to take Samuel Swann
of Cape Fear into custody” (7 Jul 1732), Vice-Admiralty Papers of North Carolina, Vol. I.
[31] Paul D. Escott, Many Excellent
People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 2;
Baylus C. Brooks, Dethroning the Kings of
Cape Fear: Consequences of Edward Moseley’s Surveys (Greenville: Baylus C. Brooks, 2010).
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