With few exceptions, the English pirates came from the American colonies. Every year, from New York, Boston, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, ships were fitted out, nominally for the slave trade, though it was no secret that they were intended for piracy in the Eastern seas. Whatever compunction might be felt at attacking European ships, there was none about plundering Asiatic merchants, where great booty was to be gained with little risk. Sometimes the Governors were in league with the pirates, who paid them to wink at their doings. Those who were more honest had insufficient power to check the evil practices that were leniently, if not favourably, regarded by the colonial community, while their time was fully occupied in combating the factious opposition of the colonial legislatures, and in protective measures against the French and Indians. The English Government, absorbed in the French war, had no ships in the Indian seas; but the straits to which English trade in the East had been reduced, and the enormous losses caused by the pirates, at last forced some measures to be adopted for coping with the evil that had assumed such gigantic proportions. [1] It appears likely that this was the John Steel mentioned by Drury as his uncle in Bengal. There is very little doubt that much of Drury's alleged slavery in Madagascar was spent among the pirates. [2] It would appear that he assumed the name of Every on taking to piracy. [3] Sir James Houblon was an Alderman of London, and a Governor of the Bank of England at the time. [4] The letter appears to have been left by Every with the natives of Johanna, who gave it to the merchant captains who brought it to Bombay. [5] The quotation is taken from Johnson's History of the Pirates. In his cruising voyage round the world Woodes Rogers did not touch at Madagascar. On that occasion (1711) he met two ex-pirates at the Cape, who had received pardons, and told him that the Madagascar settlements had dwindled to sixty or seventy men, "most of them very poor and despicable, even to the natives," and possessed of only one ship and a sloop. But, he adds, "if care be not taken, after a peace, to clear that island of them, and hinder others from joining them, it may be a temptation for loose straggling fellows to resort thither, and make it once more a troublesome nest of freebooters." [6] Elliot's History of India as told by its own historians. Muntakhabu-l Lubab of Khafi Khan. [7] Equal to £534,000 at that day. [8] According to the statement of a lascar, taken in the _Futteh Mahmood_ and carried to Madagascar, Every sailed for the Bahamas in the autumn of 1695, so that his career in the Indian seas lasted only six months. On reaching Providence, Every presented the Governor with forty pieces of eight and four pieces of gold for allowing them to come and go in safety. [9] Johnson's "General History of the Pyrates," 1724.