Abstract/Summary

This thesis focuses on the records of the High Court of Admiralty to reconstruct the history of Jacobean piracy from 1603 to 1620. By emphasising the role of the court in shaping historical evidence, it offers fresh analysis of piracy and its role in the expanding maritime world of early modern England. It takes an explicitly social approach to piracy, using elements of history ‘from below’ and social network analysis to uncover how rovers and their supporters came together to successfully plunder the seventeenth-century Atlantic. Chapter 1 focuses on the High Court of Admiralty itself, offering a new understanding of its criminal jurisdiction and process. Chapters 2 to 7 then provides a chronological approach to the rise and fall of Jacobean piracy. I identify several four clear stages in the development of Jacobean roving, and trace social genealogy that connected them to plot the coalescence and dissolution of organised roving. I show that pirates were intimately connected to the wider maritime world, as successful, sustained piracy relied on access to support and supplies, facilitated through key social links and brokers. As a result, connections emerge between piracy and wider patterns of mercantile growth and colonialism. This thesis’ closer attention to the legal records used to historicise piracy enables a more critical view of maritime depredation. I highlight the legal strategies used by pirates, their accessories, and their victims in court, and consider how these affect the historical information available to historians. Chapter 8 also applies these elements of legal history to the cultural history of piracy, re-centring law as culture and comparing portrayals of piracy in court as well as on stage and in print. Overall, Jacobean roving emerges as a vital chapter not only in the history of piracy, but in the greater history of the maritime world.