Part 29

The Governor desired French, Dutch, and English to send vessels in search of the pirate, that by her capture the fact might be ascertained as to who really was responsible. The French and Dutch hesitated to comply, and the readiness of the English to go on this service served somewhat to abate the hostility entertained against them.

Sir John Gayer, as General of the Company’s affairs, wrote to the Mogul to assure him that the Company were not only ignorant of the existence of such a pirate, but were ready to employ two of their ships completely armed to convey the pilgrims to Jedda, if he would grant that all the English but the Company should be debarred from trading in his dominions. The Mogul answered “that the English, French, and Dutch must go to sea in search of the thieves, but that the embargo he had placed on all trade must continue till the innocence or guilt of the English Company was proved.”

Mr. Bruce does not name John Avery as the pirate, but this must be the case spoken of in his Life. It will be noticed that the dates do not accord. The capture of the pilgrim vessel took place in the winter of 1693-4, and, according to Johnson, it was not till after the Peace of Ryswick, 10 September, 1697, that Avery made the capture, and it was in consequence of this treaty that he was able to get hold of the vessels. From the date 1693 the pilgrims were annually conveyed to Jedda by ships of the Company, so that Avery could not have captured one of them after that date. Charles Johnson must have blundered in his facts.

The sum demanded by Avery for the release of the pilgrims was three hundred thousand pounds, and he got it.

He had already established himself at Perim, and levied toll on all vessels passing in and out of the Red Sea, but after this affair, when large rewards were offered by the Company and by the British Government for his capture, he deemed it advisable to change his quarters and establish himself in Madagascar.

As the four vessels were steering their course, he sent on board each of the sloops, desiring the captains to come to his vessel and meet in council. They did so, and he told them that he had a proposal to make. The treasure of which they were possessed would not be sufficient for all; they might be separated by bad weather, in which case the sloops, if either of them should fall in with any large armed vessels would be taken or sunk, and the treasure on board lost as well. As for himself, he and the _Duchess_, his consort, were strong enough to hold their own against any ship they were likely to meet on the high seas, and he proposed, therefore, that all the spoil should be put on board his ship, each chest sealed with three seals, whereof each was to keep one, and to appoint a rendezvous in case of separation. This proposal seemed reasonable and was agreed to, and the treasure was conveyed on board Avery’s vessel, and the chests sealed. They kept company that day and the next, the weather being fine; and during this time Avery tampered with his men. “What should hinder us,” said he, “from going to some strange country where we are not known, and living on shore all the rest of our days in plenty?” They understood his design, and all agreed to bilk their new allies in the sloops and other vessel. Accordingly they took advantage of the night, changed their course, and next morning the sloops and _Duchess_ found themselves deserted in mid-ocean. Avery and his men resolved to make the best of their way to America, and there change their names, and purchase settlements, and spend the rest of their days at ease.

The first land they made was the island of Providence, then quite recently settled, and there they disposed of their vessel, under the pretence that the _Duke_ had been fitted out as a privateer, but that having met with no success, Avery said that he had received orders from the owners to dispose of her to the best advantage. He soon met with a purchaser, and immediately bought a sloop. In this vessel he and his mates embarked. They touched at several ports, where no one suspected them, and some of the crew went on shore and dispersed about the country, and with the dividends given them by Avery, settled there.

At length he arrived at Boston, in New England, and there again some of the crew left to establish themselves, and no doubt founded there some of the Bostonian families now flourishing. Avery advised those who remained to sail for Ireland. He had concealed and kept for himself a great store of diamonds that had been secured in the ship of the Mogul, and which his present comrades had not known how to value. These he could not dispose of in New England, but hoped to realize in Ireland.

On their voyage they avoided St. George’s Channel, and sailing north, put into one of the northern ports. There they disposed of the sloop and separated; some went to Dublin, others to Cork. Some afterwards obtained their pardon from King William.

Avery was afraid to dispose of his diamonds in Ireland, lest inquiry should be made as to how he had come by them. He therefore crossed over to England, to Bideford; and knowing of a man in Bristol who was an old acquaintance, and whom he thought he could trust, he sent to appoint a meeting in Bideford. The man came, and after consultation the friend advised that the jewels should be entrusted to certain Bristol merchants, who being men of wealth and credit, no suspicion would be aroused if they disposed of them. No better plan could be devised, Avery consented, the merchants were communicated with and came to Bideford, where they received the diamonds, undertook to sell them and remit the money to Avery, reserving to themselves a commission; and to this he consented. He now changed his name and took up his residence at Bideford, attracting no notice, but communicating with some of his relations. After a while his money was spent, and not a word reached him from the merchants. He wrote to them, and they sent him a supply of money--not much, doled out from time to time. At last he could endure this no longer, and went to Bristol to see the merchants, who coolly told him that if he troubled them any further they would disclose to the authorities who he was; “so that our merchants were as good pirates on land as he was at sea.”

Whether alarmed at their threats, or that he fancied he had been seen and recognized by some old comrades in Bristol, is not known; but he crossed into Ireland, where he remained till destitute. Then in despair he worked his way over before the mast in a trading vessel to Plymouth, and thence made his way on foot to Bideford, where a few days later he fell ill and died without so much money in his pocket as would buy him a coffin.

In the meantime, the companions in the _Duchess_ and the two sloops when deserted by Avery, finding that they were running short of provisions, made their way to Madagascar. On their course they fell in with a privateer sloop, commanded by Captain Tew, who had just captured a large vessel bound from India to Arabia, with three hundred soldiers on board besides seamen. By this prize his men shared £3000 apiece. Tew and the crew of the _Duchess_ and the sloops agreed together to form a settlement in Madagascar. According to (_b_) the pirates established themselves on the east coast, lat. 15° 30′, where there was a bay and an island before it.

Probably Antongil Bay is meant. They built a fort, finding the natives divided up into clans under their several chiefs, who were incessantly at war with one another--“So,” says Johnson, “they sometimes joyned one sometimes another; but wheresoever they sided, they were sure to be victorious; for the Negroes here had no Fire arms; so that at length these Pirates became so terrible to the Negroes, that if two or three of them were only seen on one Side, when they were going to engage, the opposite Side would fly without striking a Blow. By this means they not only became feared, but powerful; all the Prisoners of War they took to be their slaves; they married the most beautiful of the Negro women, not one or two only but as many as they liked. Their Slaves they employ’d in planting Rice, in Fishing, Hunting, etc. Besides which, they had abundance of others, who lived, as it were, under their protection. Now they began to divide from one another, each living with his own Wives, Slaves and Dependants, like a separate Prince; and, as Power and Plenty naturally beget Contention, they sometimes quarrelled with one another, and attacked each other at the Head of their several Armies. But an Accident happened, which oblig’d them to unite again for their common Safety. They grew wanton in Cruelty, and nothing was more Common than, upon the slightest Displeasure, to cause one of their Dependants to be tied to a tree, and shot thro’ the Heart.[18] This occasioned the Negroes to conspire together, to rid themselves of these Destroyers, all in one Night; and as they lived separately, the Thing might easily have been done, had not a Woman, who had been the Wife or Concubine of one of them, run nearly twenty Miles, in three Hours, to discover the Matter to them. Immediately upon the Alarm, they ran together as fast as they could; so that when the Negroes approached them, they found them up in Arms, and retired without making any Attempt. This Escape made them very cautious from that Time.”

Thenceforth they fortified their dwellings and converted them into citadels.

“Thus Tyrant-like they lived, fearing and feared by all; and in this situation they were found by Captain Woods Rogers when he went to Madagascar in the _Delicia_, a ship of forty guns, with a Design of buying Slaves in order to sell them to the Dutch at Batavia or New Holland. He happened to touch upon a part of the Island where no Ship had been seen for seven or eight Years before; here he met with some of the Pyrates, when they had been upon the Island above 25 Years, having a large motly Generation of Children and Grandchildren descended from them, there being, at that Time, eleven of them remaining alive.... Thus he left them as he found them, in a great Deal of dirty State and Royalty, but with fewer Subjects than they had. One of these great Princes had formerly been a Waterman upon the Thames, where having committed a Murder, he fled to the West Indies, and was of the number of those who run away with the Sloops; the rest had been all foremast men, nor was there a Man amongst them, who could either read or write.”

Such is Captain Charles Johnson’s account. There are several difficulties about accepting his narrative about Avery. From whom could he have obtained the story? Possibly a part of it from the pirates who obtained their pardon from William III, but not as to the end of John Avery.

The story as told in (_c_) is quite different. According to Adrian van Broeck, Avery did not desert the _Consort_, the _Duchess_, nor the sloops, but all together went to Madagascar and settled there. In that settlement, his wife, the daughter of the Mogul, bore him a son, and died of a broken heart.

The second in command was a M. de Sales, who after a while, impatient at being second, organized a revolt among the Frenchmen who were there, captives from a French vessel taken by the pirates. As soon as the watch-bell sounded they were to seize the principal fort, and not spare any man, woman, or child. One of de Sales’ crew, named Picard, betrayed the plot to a Cornishman named Richardson, who told it to Avery, and precautions were taken to surround the French on parade, and make all prisoners. Avery had every man impaled who had been engaged in the conspiracy.

Avery was anxious to obtain his pardon, and wrote a letter to Captain Pitt, Governor of Fort St. George, near Madras, which he was to transmit to England, but the East India Company would not present it to the Government.

Avery next attacked and destroyed Fort Ste. Marie of the French East India Company on the north of Madagascar.

Adrian van Broeck managed to make his escape from the settlement on board an East India Company vessel; and with that the narrative abruptly terminates.

The two narratives are irreconcilable, and where the truth lies is impossible to determine. It is conceivable that after van Broeck’s visit--if it ever took place--Avery may have made his way to England to dispose of his jewels, but we have no dates in the Dutchman’s narrative, and no dates, and no authority quoted by Johnson for his account of the last days of Avery. No reliance whatever can be placed on Defoe’s _Life and Adventures of Captain John Avery_, “the King” in Madagascar, 1720. Consequently the end of Avery remains, and probably will remain, a mystery unsolved. Andrew Brice in his _Geographical Dictionary_, published in 1759, under the heading of “Madagascar,” says: “Pirates have had stations in these Harbours, among whom was Avery, so much talked of 40 or 50 years ago.” Had Avery died at Bideford, Brice as a Devonshire man would most likely have heard of it. Salmon, in his _Universal Traveller_, 1759, says: “What became of Avery himself I could never learn; but it is probable he is dead, or remains concealed in the Island of Madagascar to this time; for he can expect no Mercy from any of the Powers of Europe, if he should fall into their hands, but as to being in such circumstances, as to lay the Foundation of a New State or Kingdom in this Island, this report possibly deserves little Credit. We should have heard more of him after so many years elapsed, if he had made any figure there.”

According to Captain Johnson’s account, as we have seen, a Captain Wood Rogers of the _Delicia_, a ship of forty guns, touched at Madagascar with a design of purchasing slaves, and came on the settlement of the crews of the two other vessels, but did not meet with Avery himself.

JOANNA SOUTHCOTT

The life of this impostor or self-deluded woman is not pleasant to write or to read, and it is only because in such a collection including Devonshire oddities and unworthies she could not be excluded that her story is here given.

Joanna was a native of Gittisham, the daughter of William and Hannah Southcott, respectable people, the father a very small farmer. She was baptized at Ottery St. Mary, on 6 June, 1750. There was nothing remarkable in her during the first forty years of her life. She was in domestic service, and then moved to Exeter, where she entered the household of an upholsterer, in 1790.

What turned her head was the visit of a revivalist Methodist preacher, who, combining the most fiery evangelic preaching with laxity of morals, lived in adultery with her mistress, and endeavoured to seduce the daughter. But his ministrations in the pulpit were acceptable. He shrieked and threatened till sometimes the whole congregation fell flat and rigid on the floor, when he would walk in and out among them and revive them by assuring them they had received pardon for all their sins, were elect vessels, and that their election was sealed in heaven. He would declare that there never was a man so highly favoured of God as himself, and that he would not thank God to make him other than what he was, unless he made him greater than every other man on earth, and placed supreme power in his hands; and he boasted, when he heard of the death of a man who had derided his mission, that he had prayed this man to death.

All the servants in the house were afraid of this preacher; but Joanna affirmed that he had no power over her, and that she was wont to think that the room was full of spirits when he was engaged in prayer. But though she fancied this man had no power over her, he certainly had, and turned her into a fanatic, intoxicating her with his own spiritual pride.

When first she went to Exeter, she attended the services in the cathedral, but she left the Church and joined the Wesleyans in 1791, as she affirmed, by Divine command, for she was already beginning to see visions. The ministers of the sect frequented her master’s shop, and took a good deal of notice of Joanna, and this encouraged her to launch forth in the course she afterwards pursued. In 1792 she stated that she had had a vision of the Lord, and a meeting of Methodist preachers was summoned to discuss her spiritual condition. It concluded by their signing a paper to the effect that her calling was of God.

One of the Methodist preachers in Exeter was named Pomeroy, and he at first more than half believed in her mission. She gave him a number of sealed packets, which she told him contained her prophecies, and desired him to keep them till a time she mentioned, when they were to be opened and would prove the truth of her claim to inspiration.

The minister received the precious papers; but afterwards, when Joanna publicly announced that he was a believer and a recipient of her prophecies, he got frightened, and committed the unopened predictions to the flames. “From that time,” says Southey, “all the Joannians, who are now a considerable number, regard him as the arch-apostate. He is the Jehoiakim, who burnt Jeremiah’s roll; he is their Judas Iscariot, a second Lucifer. They call upon him to produce those prophecies, which she boldly asserts, and they implicitly believe, have all been fulfilled, and therefore would convince the world of the truth of her mission. In vain does Mr. Pomeroy answer that he has burnt these unhappy papers: in an unhappy hour for himself did he burn them! Day after day long letters are dispatched to him, sometimes from Joanna herself, sometimes from her brother, sometimes from one of her four-and-twenty elders, filled with exhortation, invective, texts of Scripture, and denunciations of the law in this world and the devil in the next; and these letters the prophetess prints, for the very sufficient reason--that all her believers purchase them. Mr. Pomeroy sometimes treats them with contempt; at other times he appeals to their compassion, and beseeches them, if they have any bowels of Christian charity, to have compassion on him and let him rest.”

Meanwhile, the falling away of this believer was abundantly compensated to Joanna by the accession of other adherents, both lay and clerical. Among the persons of superior station in the world who became ardent disciples was the Rev. T. P. Foley, incumbent of Old Swinford, in Leicestershire, who should have written his name Folly, not Foley.

In 1792 she had a serious illness, and went to Plymtree to recruit. When she was recovered she set to work again with renewed vigour. She pretended to have found, whilst sweeping the house, a die with J.S. on it between two stars, and this she used henceforth for sealing her prophecies and her passports to heaven.

But she had other disappointments, beside the defection of Mr. Pomeroy. One of his elders, Elias Carpenter, of Bermondsey, after going a certain way with her, fell off. This, however, was later. He was followed by six others. Thereupon she wrote and printed five letters of denunciation and woe to the back-sliders.

By the sale of her sealed passports to heaven Joanna obtained a very respectable revenue, and from being a poor working drudge she blossomed out into a woman of substance. Her followers in Exeter were recognized by the peculiarity of their dress, somewhat in the fashion of that of the Quakers, the men being particularly distinguished by wearing a long beard at a time when beards were not generally adopted.

In 1798 she moved to Bristol, and in 1801 began to publish books of prophecies and warnings, which were eagerly purchased by her followers. In 1802 she moved to London, where she was patronized by Sharp, the engraver, and had other influential friends, Brothers, the fanatic, who had proclaimed himself the promised Messiah, and a certain Miss Cott, whom he admitted to be the daughter of King David and the future Queen of the Hebrews. But Richard Brothers was sent to Bridewell, and those who had believed in him, amongst others an M.P., Mr. Halhead, member for Lymington, were drifting about in quest of some new delusion. Joanna suited them to a nicety, and they rallied about her.

The books which she sent forth into the world were written partly in prose, partly in rhyme, all the prose and most of the rhyme being given forth as the direct words of the Almighty. It is not possible to conceive that any persons could have been deluded by such rambling nonsense, did one not know that human folly is like the Well of Zemzem that is inexhaustible. Joanna’s handwriting was illegibly bad; so that at last she found it advisable to pretend that she had received orders from heaven to discard the pen, and deliver her oracles verbally, and the words flowed from her faster than the scribes could write them down. Her prophecies were words, and words only, a rhapsody of texts and vulgar applications; the verse the vilest doggerel ever written, and the rhyme and grammar equally bad. She made a pretty penny, not only by the sale of her books, but also by her “Certificates for the Millennium,” and her “Sealings of the Faithful,” passports to paradise. Of these she sold between six and seven thousand, some at twelve shillings, but most at a guinea; and she continued the sale until a woman, Mary Bateman, a Leeds murderess, who had poisoned a Mrs. Perigo, and had attempted to poison Mr. Perigo, was hanged in 1809, and it was ascertained that this poisoner had been furnished by Joanna with one of her passports to paradise.

In 1813, she first announced that she was to become the mother of Shiloh, that she was the Woman spoken of in the Apocalypse as having the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; the twelve stars were twelve evangelists or apostles whom she sent abroad to declare her revelations. In herself, she asserted, the scheme of redemption would be completed, by woman came the fall of man, and by woman must come his restoration. She was the Bride, the promised seed who was to bruise the serpent’s head. The evening-star was placed in the firmament to be her type. The immediate object of her call was to destroy the devil; of this Satan was fully aware; and that it might not be said he had foul play, a regular dispute of seven days was agreed upon between him and Joanna, in which she was to be alone; the conditions were that if she held out her argument for seven days, Satan should retire from troubling the earth, but if she yielded, then his kingdom was to stand. Accordingly, she went alone into a solitary house for this contest. Joanna on this occasion was her own secretary, and the _procès verbal_ of the conference was printed from her manuscript. She set down all Satan’s blasphemies with the utmost frankness, and the proficiency he displayed in vulgar language and Billingsgate abuse is surprising.

Of all Joanna’s books this is the most curious. The conference terminated like most theological disputes. Both parties grew warm; but Joanna’s tongue was more lightly slung on its pivots, and she talked Satan out of all patience. She gave him, as he complained, ten words to his one, and allowed him no time to speak. All men, he said, were already tired of her tongue, and now she had tired the devil.

This was not unreasonable; but he proceeded to abuse the whole sex, which would be ungracious in any one, but in him was peculiarly ungrateful. He said that no man could tame a woman’s tongue; it were better to dispute with a thousand men than with one woman.

Once she declared that she had scratched the devil’s face with her nails, and had even bitten off one of his fingers, and that his blood tasted sweet.