Peter Easton had been a loyal servant of the English Crown whose ancestors had served in the Crusades and had recently distinguished themselves against the Spanish Armada.

Easton had in 1602 commanded of a convoy as a privateer with a commission from Queen Elizabeth to protect the Newfoundland fishing fleet.

Fishing vessels carry arms and small cannons during this period to protect the valuable cargo of fish from pirates and foreign vessels.

Under his commission, Easton could legally press-gang local fishermen into service for him and could also attack the ships and wharves of the enemy, especially the much hated Spanish, at his pleasure.

Peter Easton's flagship is the Happy Adventure, from which he flies the St. George's Cross at the masthead.

When James succeeded Elizabeth in 1603, the king had sued for peace with Spain and canceled all letters of commission to privateers, but Easton, who had had continued his attack on vessels as though nothing had changed, had crossed the line into piracy.

Easton attacks Spanish ships for gold in the West Indies and the Mediterranean while in the meantime demanding and receiving protection money from English ships.

He blockades the Bristol Channel in 1610, effectively controlling the shipping entering and leaving the western English ports.

For the most part, he is acting on behalf of the powerful family of the Killigrews of Falmouth, Cornwall, who finance his expeditions and share in his profits.

John Cabot had become the first European since the Vikings to discover Newfoundland (although Portuguese explorer João Vaz Corte-Real may have preceded him), landing at Bonavista on June 24, 1497.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert had on August 5, 1583, formally claimed Newfoundland as England's first overseas colony under Royal Prerogative of Queen Elizabeth.

Bristol's Society of Merchant Venturers had decided in 1607 to seek the approval of King James to establish a colony in Newfoundland.

John Guy, a merchant and member of Bristol's Common Council, who had acted as its sheriff from 1605 to 1606, had visited the island in 1608 to scout possible locations for a settlement, selecting Cuper's Cove (present day Cupids) as the site of the colony.

The privy council had accepted a petition by a consortium of London and Bristol merchants and on May 2, 1610, had issued a charter to establish the Newfoundland colony, giving it a monopoly in agriculture, mining, fishing and hunting on the Avalon Peninsula.

Guy, appointed governor of the enterprise, the London and Bristol Company, had set sail from Bristol for Newfoundland on July 3, 1610, with thirt-nine other colonists who had applied for incorporation as the “Treasurer and the Company of Adventures and Planters of the City of London and Bristol for the Colony of Plantation in New found land”.

Arriving at Cupers Cove in August of this year with grain and livestock, they will spend the winter of 1610–1611 in the colony.

The Cupers Cove colonists during Guy’s governorship build and fortify the settlement, explore the area and plant crops.

Guy returns to England in 1611 (leaving his brother-in-law in charge); he will return the next year with more livestock and female settlers.

Peter Easton, on one expedition, had plundered thirty ships in St. John's and held Richard Whitbourne prisoner, releasing him on the condition that Whitbourne go to England and obtain a pardon for Easton.

Born near Teignmouth in Devon, England, Whitbourne had been apprenticed to a merchant adventurer of Southampton, and had sailed extensively around Europe and twice to Newfoundland.

After serving in a ship of his own against the Great Armada under Lord Admiral Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, he has spent the past quarter-century in cod fishing off Newfoundland.

By the time the pardon is granted, however, Easton will have moved on to the Barbary Coast to harass the Spanish.

Henry Mainwaring had in 1610 obtained a commission from Lord High Admiral Nottingham to capture the notorious Newfoundland "arch-pirate" Peter Easton, feared to be hovering around the Bristol Channel.

This may have been just a convenient excuse for the well-armed Resistance, his small but speedy ship, to become a scourge to the Spanish.

On reaching the Straits of Gibraltar, Mainwaring had announced to his crew his intention of fighting the Spanish anywhere he found them.

He sails his fleet to Newfoundland in 1614, saying that the region is the best in which to recruit a pirate crew and reprovision his ships.

Mainwaring uses Easton's former headquarters at Harbour Grace as his pirate base and raids Spanish, Portuguese, and French ships.

In command of eight vessels off the coast of Newfoundland on June 4, 1614, Mainwaring plunders the cod-fishing fleet, stealing provisions and taking away with him carpenters and mariners.

In taking seamen, Mainwaring picks one out of every six.

In all, four hundred men join him willingly, while others are "perforstmen."

Born in Ightfield in Shropshire, Mainwaring is the second son of Sir George Mainwaring and his wife Ann, the daughter of Sir William More of Loseley Park in Surrey; his maternal grandfather is Sir William More, Vice-Admiral of Sussex; his brothers are Sir Arthur Mainwaring, Carver to Prince Henry, George Mainwaring, the defender of Tong Castle, and Sir Thomas Mainwaring, the Recorder of Reading.

The Mainwaring family is old and distinguished in England, probably having arrived in the train of William the Conqueror in 1066.

Mainwaring had graduated from Brasenose College at Oxford University, where he was awarded a B.A. in Law, at the age of fifteen, in 1602, then served as trial lawyer (admitted in 1604 as a student at Inner Temple), soldier (possibly in the Low Countries), sailor, and author (pupil of John Davies of Hereford) before turning to piracy.

John Guy, the founder of the first English colony in Canada, had returned to England in April 1613, never to return, as far as is known, to Newfoundland.

However, it was largely as a result of his able leadership that the colony had been so successful in the first three years of its existence.

Guy had become disillusioned due to the lack of support from the London merchants and had remained in Bristol though he will later receive a grant of land in Newfoundland which he is to name Sea Forest.

John Mason is appointed the second governor of the Cuper's Cove colony in 1615.

Whitbourne, who had been sent from Bristol to establish law and order in the Newfoundland colony, becomes in 1615 the first to hold a court of justice in North America at Trinity.

William Vaughn, a Welsh writer and colonial investor, had in 1616 purchased a grant of land, the southern Avalon Peninsula (from Calvert to Placentia Bay) of the island of Newfoundland, from the London and Bristol Company.

He had sent Welsh colonists in 1617 to Renews to establish a permanent colony, which he called Cambriol; it eventually failed, as the ill equipped colonists, lacking an experienced leader, had built for themselves mere shacks for shelter for the winter.

Vaughan had sent out a second batch of settlers in 1618 under the command of Richard Whitbourne, whom he had appointed governor for life of the undertaking.

Vaughan by 1619 had signed over part of his grant to Henry Cary.

Vaughan’s brother had persuaded him to also to give up a portion of his tract to George Calvert, the area around Ferryland, where Clvert had established his short-lived Colony of Avalon.

Vaughan had retained the southern portion of his tract determined by a line drawn from Renews to Placentia Bay, an area that includes Trepassey.

Further attempts at colonizing Trepassey on two occasions have also failed.

After the return of Whitbourne, Vaughan visits his colony in 1622.