During the Civil War the town was visited by the plague, but in the reigns of Charles II and James II it appears to have progressed steadily if slowly. Its history, however, during that time is chiefly made up of the ordinary events of a seaport of the kind and does not contain anything of much note. The sympathies of the inhabitants during the Monmouth Rebellion were distinctly in favour of the duke and against James II, but, fortunately, as events turned out, Poole escaped the terrible retribution which visited all towns which had taken an active part in the ill-starred venture of the “Protestant” duke, and although, as in other towns, the heads and quarters of rebels hanged at Poole were set up as grim memorials, there is no reason to suppose that they were necessarily those of natives of the town. In the last years of the seventeenth century the port became once more famous for the commercial enterprise and naval gallantry of its inhabitants. In 1694 one Captain Peter Jolliffe, the owner of a small vessel named the _Sea Defender_, witnessed the capture of a Weymouth fishing boat by a French privateer in Studland Bay. The gallant captain, regardless of odds, forthwith went boldly to the rescue, although the privateer was at least three times his strength and size, and not only made the freebooter abandon the prize, but evidently so harried him that he ran ashore near Lulworth, where the vessel was seized by the inhabitants and the crew made prisoners. Captain Jolliffe was presented with a handsome gold chain and medal from the King as a reward for his gallant exploit. In the following year another Poole seaman, William Thompson, master of a fishing boat which was only manned by himself, one seaman, and a boy, attacked and captured a privateer sloop hailing from Cherbourg, carrying no less than twenty men, and brought her in triumph into the harbour. One of the most romantic portions of the history of Poole during the last two centuries is connected with the many smugglers who dwelt in the town and neighbourhood. During that period smuggling formed the livelihood of many fishermen and seaboard dwellers along the whole of the south coast. Numerous attempts were made to put down the contraband trade in consequence of a petition presented to the House of Commons by legitimate traders, who stated in it that home manufacturers were greatly decayed by reason of the quantities of goods run, and entreated the House to attempt to deal with the evil. However, notwithstanding the many endeavours on the part of the navy and coastguards to suppress smuggling, the latter was in many parts of the county of Dorset so organized and carried on with such daring that all efforts to put it down were defied, and a state of absolute terrorism was created which affected not only the inhabitants of the neighbourhood where the smugglers carried on their operations, but even, to some extent, the men of the preventive service themselves.