Captain Richard Ingle The Maryland "Pirate and Rebel," 1642-1653

Excerpt

CAPTAIN RICHARD INGLE,

THE MARYLAND “PIRATE AND REBEL.”

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the American colonies, from Massachusetts to South Carolina, were at intervals subject to visitations of pirates, who were wont to appear suddenly upon the coasts, to pillage a settlement or attack trading vessels and as suddenly to take flight to their strongholds. Captain Kidd was long celebrated in prose and verse, and only within a few years have credulous people ceased to seek his buried treasures. The arch-villain, Blackbeard, was a terror to Virginians and Carolinians until Spotswood, of “Horseshoe” fame, took the matter in hand, and sent after him lieutenant Maynard, who, slaying the pirate in hand to hand conflict, returned with his head at the bowsprit. Lapse of time has cast a romantic and semi-mythologic glamor around these depredators, and it is in many instances at this day extremely difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. The unprotected situation of many settlements along the seaboard colonies rendered them an easy prey to rapacious sea rovers, but it might have been expected that the Maryland shores of the Chesapeake bay would be free from their harassings. The province, however, it seems was not to enjoy such good fortune, for in the printed annals of her life appears the name of one man, who has been handed down from generation to generation as a “pirate,” a “rebel” and an “ungrateful villain,” and other equally complimentary epithets have been applied to him. The original historians of Maryland based their ideas about him upon some of the statements made by those whom he had injured or attacked, and who differed from him in political creed. The later history writers have been satisfied to follow such authors as Bozman, McMahon and McSherry, or to copy them directly, without consulting original records. To the general reader, therefore, who relies upon these authorities, Richard Ingle is “a pirate and rebel” still.

A thorough defence of him would be almost impossible in view of the comparative scarcity of records and the complicated politics of his time. In a review of his relations with Maryland, however, and by a presentation of all the facts, some light may be thrown upon his general character, and explanations, if not a defence, of his acts may be made.

Richard Ingle’s name first appears in the records of Maryland under date of March 23rd, 1641/2, when he petitioned the Assembly against Giles Brent touching the serving of an execution by the sheriff. He had come to the province a few weeks before, bringing in his vessel Captain Thomas Cornwallis, one of the original council, the greatest man in Maryland at that time, who had been spending some months in England. Between the time of his arrival and the date of his petition Ingle had no doubt been plying his business, tobacco trading, in the inlets and rivers of the province. No further record of him in Maryland this year has been preserved, but Winthrop wrote that on May 3rd, 1642, “The ship Eleanor of London one Mr....