In 1726, Joseph Parsons, mate of the ship _Tayloe_ of Bristol, was tried in the court of Richmond County and convicted of piracy and the murder of Captain John Heard of the _Tayloe_. Parsons was sent to the "gaol" at Williamsburg. The Council in Williamsburg re-examined the case and discharged Parsons because of lack of sufficient evidence. The silver plate and other articles found in the possession of the crew were held by the authorities until the rightful owners could claim them. The crew said that they had taken the property from the _Tayloe_ "for sustinance while journeying through the colony." After Blackbeard was captured by Maynard, in 1718, piracy in the Tidewater declined. The last pirate reported in the Chesapeake was in 1807. Tales of pirates, piracy and buried treasure were told in the region for many years. _CHRISTMAS AT COLONEL FITZHUGH'S_ An account of a Christmas spent at Bedford plantation in the Northern Neck was written by Monsieur Durand, a Frenchman, who was journeying through Virginia in the holiday season of the year 1686. He wrote: "We were now approaching the Christmas Festival.... It was agreed that all should go to spend the night with Colonel Fitzhugh, whose house is on the shore of the great river Potomac.... "By the time we reached Col. Fitzhugh's we made up a troop of 20 horse. "The Colonel's accomodations were, however, so ample that this company gave him no trouble at all; we were all supplied with beds, though we had to double up. Col Fitzhugh showed us the largest hospitality. He had store of good wine and other things to drink, and a frolic ensued. "He called in three fiddlers, a clown, a tight-rope dancer and an acrobatic tumbler, and gave us all the divertisement one would wish. It was very cold but no one thought of going near the fire because they never put less than the trunk of a tree upon it and so the entire room was kept warm." William Fitzhugh, the owner of Bedford, came to Virginia in 1670. He secured a grant of land in the upper Neck, in what later became King George County. He married "little Sarah Tucker" of Tucker Hill when she was only eleven years old, and then sent her to England to be educated. Sarah and William reared a family of five sons. Colonel Fitzhugh became one of the largest landowners in the Northern Neck. At the time of his death in 1701 he owned 54,054 acres of land. _INDIAN VISITORS_ When the French Huguenot, Monsieur Durand, was in Stafford County in 1686 he described the Indians who lived along the Rappahannock River as follows: