Qualla: 1717-1718 Acts of Grace

1717-1718 Acts of Grace: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The offer sounded almost too good to be true, and many pirates suspected it was. On 5 September 1717, King George I issued a royal proclamation promising a full pardon to any pirate in the Caribbean who surrendered before the deadline. No trial, no punishment, no forfeiture of plunder -- just walk into the nearest colonial governor's office, swear off piracy, and walk out a free subject of the Crown. The catch, of course, was trusting a government that had hanged pirates who surrendered under previous such offers. In the taverns and anchorages of the West Indies, from Jamaica to New Providence, the proclamation split the pirate community down the middle.

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1717-1718 Acts of Grace: When Privateers Became Pirates

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Golden Age of Piracy did not spring from nowhere. It grew from the wreckage of the War of the Spanish Succession, which ended with the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. For over a decade, England had employed thousands of sailors as privateers -- legal pirates, essentially, licensed ...

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1717-1718 Acts of Grace: The Bargain on Paper

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Bristol's merchants, whose Caribbean trade was hemorrhaging money, petitioned King George for action. Secretary of State Joseph Addison consulted the Council of Trade and Plantations, which declared the situation urgent: the whole trade from Great Britain to those parts was in im...

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1717-1718 Acts of Grace: The Republic Divides

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nowhere did the proclamation land with more force than at New Providence in the Bahamas, the beating heart of the so-called Republic of Pirates. When Lieutenant-Governor Benjamin Bennett of Bermuda sent his son with copies of the proclamation in December 1717, the island's pirate...

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1717-1718 Acts of Grace: Blackbeard's Double Game

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Edward Teach -- Blackbeard -- heard about the proclamation in early December 1717, from the captain of a sloop he had just attacked. He was not immediately interested. By May 1718, however, about 300 of his roughly 700 men had left his company, many to accept the pardon. When the...

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1717-1718 Acts of Grace: The Pardon's Paradox

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Governor Robert Johnson of South Carolina captured the problem in a single observation: the number of pirates had tripled since the proclamation's publication. The pardon was meant to shrink the pirate population, but it also offered a kind of safety net. Pirates could raid freel...

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