The extraordinary circumstances of this case probably induced the General Court to draw up the law that was enacted on October 15, 1673. By it piracy became punishable by death according to the local laws. Before then a kind of common law was in force in the Colony based upon Biblical law as construed by the leading ministers. Of course the laws of England were theoretically respected, but Massachusetts, in the wilderness, separated from England by three thousand miles of stormy water, in practice actually governed herself and made her own laws. In 1675, the Court of Assistants found John Rhoade and certain Dutchmen guilty of piracy on the Maine coast and they were sentenced to be hanged "presently after the lecture." Just then, King Philip went on the warpath and all else, for the time, was forgotten in the fearful danger of the emergency. Before long the condemned men were released, some without conditions and others were banished from the Colony. It is fair to say, however, that politics and commercial greed were sadly mixed in this trial. A bloody fight occurred at Tarpaulin Cove, near Woods Hole, in October, 1689, between a pirate sloop and a vessel sent out from Boston in pursuit. The pirate was taken and after trial the leader, Capt. Thomas Pound, late pilot of the King's frigate _Rose_, then at anchor in the harbor, Thomas Hawkins, a well-connected citizen of Boston, Thomas Johnston of Boston, "a limping privateer," and one Eleazer Buck, were sentenced to be hanged. When they were on the gallows Governor Bradstreet reprieved all save Johnston--"Which gave great disgust to the People; I fear it was ill done," wrote Judge Sewall. The same day one William Coward was hanged for piracy committed on the ketch _Elinor_, while at anchor at Nantasket Road. The capture in Boston in 1699, of William Kidd, Joseph Bradish, born in Cambridge; Tee Wetherly, James Gillam, and other men concerned with the Madagascar pirates, created much excitement, but these men were tried in England and gibbetted at Hope Point on the Thames.