The English pirates who based themselves in West Cork in the early seventeenth century did so because they had been chased out of England by the increasingly effective enforcement of King James I’s anti-pirate laws, which made trading in their home ports in the English West Country too risky. 

Less than ten years previously these pirates were respectable ‘privateers’, recruited into the English state’s service by Queen Elizabeth I, to raid the shipping and New World colonies of England’s principal, and most intimidating enemy, Spain. Many pirate captains had become gentry such was the wealth they had accumulated doing the State some service. Fortunes were made by merchants and other speculators, including Queen Elizabeth herself, who was a shareholder in many pirate expeditions.

However, Elizabeth’s death in 1603 brought a change to the privateers’ status. She was succeeded by James VI of Scotland who became James I of England and he wanted peace with Spain. He withdrew the legal instruments that had changed the pirates’ status to privateers, letters-of-marque. The privateers reverted to pirate status. The change of legal status, dubious by any analysis, did not alter the facts of privateer/pirate life. The trading networks that had supported the privateers and the dispersal of their plunder, when it was legal, did not disappear with the letters-of-marque. Neither did the demand for the goods that the privateers had supplied.

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