Rev'd Dr Helen Hall, Associate Professor NLS https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/law/helen-hall
Images and stories of pirates and witches pervade popular culture. Some of the recurring tropes about them bear little resemblance to what we know of historical reality. For example, accused witches did not tend to be local healers and herbalists, and pirates rarely, if ever, made their victims walk the plank. However, what many stories about pirates and witches lack in factual accuracy, they make up for in colour. This has always been the case. Lurid Early Modern woodcuts of witches dancing with the Devil exist for a reason, and whoever wrote A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates in 18th century London, was rightly confident that people would scramble to buy it. Say what you like about pirates and witches, they are not boring.
We tend to imagine both groups as active, dynamic and, by their very nature, willing to break social and legal norms. In no pirate story ever has the ship turned around so that the First Mate can get his library books back on time. Yet ironically, for two groups seen as, by definition, rule-breakers, both witches and pirates are associated with contracts. Imagined in the case of witches, and extremely real as far as companies of pirates were concerned.
In order to become either a witch or a pirate, a person entered into a contract. The narrative from political and religious elites, was that witches were individuals who made a pact with the Devil, in exchange for supernatural powers. Satan was the source of their magic. (This idea had got out into the world because quite a lot of clerics in Late Medieval and Early Modern universities and monasteries were secretly trying to do just that. The word whispered in taverns, and around cloisters, was that it you could control and enslave demons, they could bring you treasure, any lover you desired and even teach you mathematics.)
Obviously, this was understood to be a very bad thing to do. It is important, however, to appreciate that in a context of Early Modern law and society, it was even more transgressive, and an existential threat to the fabric of the community. Individuals who were not witches, bound themselves into relationships and networks that quite literally allowed the world to function, and they did this by means of solemn covenants. Marriage was, among other things, a contract. Both parties had obligations that knit the family together, a wedding was not simply a sign of commitment between the bride and groom. It was a pact that guaranteed the future of the family unit, and also land and business interests.
In a world before banks, insurance or any form of welfare, marriages cemented and sustained networks. This was not only a concern for aristocratic families seeking to further their dynastic ambitions, these principles trickled down, merchants might look to their in-laws for a loan for example. Marriages were not just concerned with the domestic sphere, they had implications far beyond it.
Equally, many crafts and trades relied on the system of apprenticeship, which again revolved under a formal, written agreement between master and apprentice. Perhaps even more fundamentally, radical Protestant churches were based upon a covenant behind members. Promises were made with what the parties understood to be both eternal and immediate consequences. If anything, this was even more keenly felt in colonial contexts, where settlements were often based on charters, or famously in the case of the Mayflower Compact, a private written agreement between the adult males about to disembark their ship.
This was a society literally built upon contractual agreements. It was also still a setting in which writing was not casual, even for the more economically comfortable. Committing ideas or agreements to paper was not only a solemn act, it required material outlay and a lot more time and energy. Writing with a pen that needs to be cut, and ink that has to be dipped is in no way comparable to jotting down lines with a biro, or even a modern fountain pen. Any form of contractual agreement was a serious undertaking, and breaching it had consequences which rippled out beyond the parties involved. An agreement committed to writing was even more solemn.
In light of all of this, individuals believed to have signed a contract with Satan, or to have make their mark in the Devil’s Book, were engaged in a transgressive parody and subversion of the social, legal and religious promises upon which everyone depended for their very security. Witches entering into diabolical pacts were therefore a source of terror and alarm. They were also, by and large, imaginary. The idea may have gained so much currency that eventually some of the accused believed themselves to have done this, but confessions of being engaged in such covenants were usually the result of leading questions put to exhausted and beleaguered people.
Pirates, however, were another matter. Pirates also rejected any agreements that they had entered into with the navy or other employers, and not infrequently made a mockery of marriage, having a reputation for licentiousness and an attitude towards consent which was shocking even by the standards of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Blackbeard for instance was reputed to have fourteen “wives”. Yet in stark contrast with this deviance in terms of socially expected covenanting, they did in fact enter into signed and sophisticated agreements with each other. Pirate crews not only operated on surprisingly democratic lines when not in a crisis situation (for obvious reasons, they did not pause a battle for a vote or a committee meeting), they also had detailed terms and conditions. Agreements were made about dividing profits, and frequently for compensating injured members of the crew.
Unlike witches, whose Satanic Pacts were essentially invented and projected, pirate contracts were very real, considered and effective. Thus, both groups were seen to reject, and even mock, the covenants upon which society functioned, and for which individuals very often sacrificed and suffered. A person tied into an unhappy marriage, abusive apprenticeship, onerous commercial obligation or even struggling with their Puritan congregation might well resent, as much as fear, someone willing to tear up such agreements and offer allegiance to the Devil instead. In rejecting religious and social duties, pirates were undoubtedly doing the latter as well.
It is true that when we think of the wild and rebellious activities of pirates and witches from a 21st century standpoint, we do not tend to focus on making contracts. Yet from the perspective of their contemporaries, this was in fact one of their most shocking behaviours.
Related Articles
“What Pop Culture Gets Wrong About Pirates” Rogue History https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuT35ud41QQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuT35ud41QQ
“Witchcraft Malleus Maleficarum” Esoterica https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIdcjeeYjaE&list=PLZ__PGORcBKy2vWrrs3WEg4NnPviN9w7j&index=2
“A General History of the Pyrates” Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40580/40580-h/40580-h.htm
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