Pietas in patriam the life of His Excellency Sir William Phips, Knt. late Captain…

Whatever Penalties they Enacted for other Crimes, there was One, for which, like that of Parricide among the Ancients, they would have promised themselves, that there should not have been Occasion for any Punishments; and that was, the Crime of Stealing from the Common-Stock of their Provisions. Nevertheless, they found their Store-House divers times broken open, and their provisions therefrom stolen, by divers unnatural ⟨p. 49⟩Children of the Leviathan, while it was not possible for them to preserve their feeble Store-House from the Stone-Wall-breaking Madness of these unreasonable Creatures. This Trade of stealing, if it had not been stopped, by some exemplary Severity, they must in a little while, by Lot or Force have come to have Cannibally devoured One Another; for there was nothing to be done, either at Fishing or Fowling or Hunting upon that Rueful Island, in the Depth of a Frozen Winter; and though they sent, as far as they could upon Discovery, they could not find, on the Island, any Living thing in the World, besides themselves. Wherefore, though by an Act, they made stealing to be so Criminal, that Several did Run the Gantlet for it, yet, they were not far from being driven after all, to make One Degree and Instance of it, Capital. There was a wicked Irishman among them, who had such a Voracious Devil in him, that after divers Burglaries upon the Store-house, committed by him, at last, he stole, and Eat with such a Pamphagous Fury, as to Cram himself with no less than Eighteen Biscuits, at one stolen meal, and he was fain to have his Belly stroked and Bathed before the Fire, lest he should otherwise have burst. This Amazing and indeed murderous Villainy of the Irishman, brought them all to their Wit's Ends, how to defend themselves from the Ruin therein threatened unto them; and whatever methods were proposed, it was feared, that there could be no stop given to his Furacious Exorbitancies, any Way but One; He could not be past Stealing, unless he were past Eating too. Some think therefore, they might have Sentenced the Wretch to Dye, and after they had been at pains, upon Christian and Spiritual Accounts, to prepare him for it, have executed the Sentence, by shooting him to Death: concluding matters come to that pass, that if they had not shot him, he must have Starved them unavoidably.

Whatever Penalties they Enacted for other Crimes, there was One, for which, like that of Parricide among the Ancients, they would have promised themselves, that there should not have been Occasion for any Punishments; and that was, the Crime of Stealing from the Common-Stock of their Provisions. Nevertheless, they found their Store-House divers times broken open, and their provisions therefrom stolen, by divers unnatural