The Pirate History Podcast · Matt Albers

Episode 358 - Live Free or Die

·40 min·2 clips

John Quelch was recruited by Captain Daniel Plowman, then the crew lingered at Marblehead and the captain wrote, "It will not do".

1. The Pirate History Podcast episode 358, "Live Free or Die," uses John Mason’s 1610 land grant to frame the history of New Hampshire. 2. Matt says Mason was commissioned by King James I to reclaim the Hebrides, later convicted of piracy by a Scottish court, and then granted land that became New Hampshire. 3. The episode asks why New Hampshire mattered so much during the timber trade, the Mason claim, and Queen Anne’s War. 4. Matt explains that John Mason sold and leased land after receiving the grant, which made the original deed politically valuable to settlers and landholders. 5. The Dominion of New England under Edmund Andros declared those Mason claim rights "null and void" in 1686. 6. New England revolted in 1688, ousting Edmund Andros and restoring the landholders’ position for the moment. 7. The Jacobite uprising of 1689 in Scotland pushed thousands of displaced Jacobites toward North America. 8. Matt places many of those immigrants in Virginia, Carolina, and especially New Hampshire. 9. He also links the same period to the Salem witch trials and to Jacob Leisler’s rebellion in New York. 10. Benjamin Fletcher’s administration and the Board of Trade’s letter about pirates at St. Mary near Madagascar show how colonial politics and piracy overlapped. 11. William Phipps died, the Earl of Belmont replaced him, and Belmont’s arrival triggered new rebellions among pirates, displaced officeholders, and Jacobites. 12. Joseph Dudley appears as the politically skilled figure who supported the Salem witch trials, returned to England, and later became lieutenant governor and governor. 13. Matt says Dudley spent much of his early office life trying to get the Massachusetts Bay Colony to pay him a salary. 14. Dudley complains that America was filled with men who "love not the crown and government of England to any manner of obedience." 15. The war at sea becomes the opening for Dudley to commission privateers against French targets off Newfoundland and Acadia. 16. The episode explains that stealing codfish from French ships mattered because cod fed both French and English naval forces. 17. The ship Charles, commanded by Captain Daniel Plowman and crewed by John Quelch, is introduced as the key case. 18. Plowman writes warning letters from Marblehead, then the Charles departs under disputed circumstances, with later testimony suggesting he was thrown overboard. 19. The ship sails to Brazil, captures nine Portuguese ships, and later returns to Marblehead with an estimated 10,000 pounds sterling in plunder. 20. Matt says John Quelch and part of the crew are arrested in Boston and will face an Admiralty court there, the first English pirates tried outside England.

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