Liberty Chronicles

In 1716, pirates regularly declared war on all nation-states, they tested the extreme limits of life and death, and quite literally challenged God to dare pass judgment over an angry pirate. If the Lord knew what was good for him, he would mind his own damned business and move along. A true pirate had no home but Hell.

“The Legend of Libertalia” on Libertarianism.org

Captain Charles John, A General History of the Pirates, Volume One and Volume Two

Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Boston: Beacon Press. 2004.

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In his 1743 memoir, “The Infortunate,” Moraley detailed his sad circumstances and vague notions of bettering them in the Americas. In what appeared to him a chance encounter, an unknown man encouraged this flight of fancy and signaled that he would join William in Pennsylvania. After plying young Moraley with pints and sweet stories about American abundance, the two prepared and signed William’s indenture contract of five years. Once aboard ship, the recruiter disappeared to lull another fool into the trap.

Klepp & Smith, eds. The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant. Penn State University Press. 1992.

Reid-Maroney, Nina. Philadelphia’s Enlightenment, 1740-1800: Kingdom of Christ, Empire of Reason. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. 2001.

Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin Books. 2001.

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The Salem trials were largely the result of a combination of personal animus, avarice, and cruelty within a deeply occultist culture. New England courts executed nineteen witches and subjected many repented convicts to purifying torture. One thing only ended the feverish trials: accusers gradually turned on the affluent and influential after using up the easier targets of marginalized and poor women.

Further Readings/References:

Godwin’s Lives of the Necromancers series

Godwin’s chapter on Salem

Marshall, Peter. William Godwin: Philosopher, Novelist, Revolutionary. PM Press. 2017.

Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Boston: Beacon Press. 1954.

Trevor-Roper, H. R. The European Witch-Craze of the 16th and 17th Centuries. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 1969.

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By the mid-1630s, the English and Native populations were roughly equal in number and power. Parity meant all sides had a practical interest in peaceful coexistence, at least in the real experiences of daily life. The first generation of settlers could show little more force than occasional raids on Indian villages, burning the cornfield here and there, and other small-scale acts of violence. Waves of new settlers throughout the 1630s tipped the frontier balance of power toward the Puritans. John Oldham, a wealthy local fur merchant, patiently traded while the New English settled the frontier and hedged in the natives. He did not share the Puritan missionary mentality, but his death helped inaugurate the Pequot War and consolidate Puritan control of the coast.

Further Readings/References:

Bourne, Russell. The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675-1678. New York: Oxford University Press. 1990.

John Easton, A Narrative of the Causes Which Led to Philip’s Indian War, Albany: J. Munsell. 1858. Originally Published: 1675.

Nash, Gary. Red, White, and Black: The People of Early North America. Upper Saddle River (NJ): Prentice-Hall. Fifth Edition. 2006.

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Few contemporary or historical accounts of Bacon’s rebellion agree in every particular about the movement’s motivations and outcomes. For the Jacksonian Democrat, George Bancroft, Virginians had enjoyed free government for three generations on the edge of the wilderness. For Bancroft and nationalist historians, this was the prelude to the American Revolution—it was the people seizing their government, its policy-making apparatus, and its legitimacy so that the popular interest might once again govern Virginia. However, Twentieth-century historians with a more global perspective on British imperial activity recognized Bacon’s Rebellion as a racialized conflict against the Indians which transformed into a vehicle for the expression of popular discontent.

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The Antinomians did not just push for religious and political freedoms in the American colonies. Their ideas traversed the Atlantic and influenced groups in Britain, as well. During the upheaval of the English Civil War, the British Antinomians seized the opportunity to shape their world, creating a slew of new religious denominations and fighting for their liberty.

Rediker & Linebaugh. Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press. 2000.

Woodhouse, ed. Puritanism and Liberty, being the Army Debates (1647-9), University of Chicago Press. 1938.

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The Trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637), Transcript

Thomas Morton’s Observations of the Puritans

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Peter Linebaugh received a PhD in Early Modern British history from the University of Warwick in 1974, where he studied under EP Thompson, one of the most important and influential historians of the 20th century.

Linebaugh is the author of a good many hugely important articles and books, among which are The London Hanged, Magna Carta Manifesto, and Stop Thief! Linebaugh is also the co-author of The Many-Headed Hydra.

Thomas Morton’s Mayday

Morton’s “New World Bacchanal”

Peter Linebaugh’s latest May Day article, “Omnia Sunt Communia: May Day 2017”

Peter’s author page at PM Press

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Richard’s Frethorne’s Letters to Mother and Father

Sir Thomas Dale, “Articles, Law, and orders, Divine, Politic and Martial for the Colony in Virginia” (22 June 1611)

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