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 English pirate Peter Easton is in charge of ten pirate ships headquartered at Harbour Grace by 1612.

He raids and plunders both English and foreign vessels and the harbors of Newfoundland, press-ganging fishermen into his service along the way.

Humphrey Gilbert, when claiming Newfoundland for England in 1587, had found sixteen English ships with twenty French and Portuguese vessels using the harbor of what is today St. John’s.

Settlement had developed on the north side of the harbor but there was no permanent English settler population, and Gilbert’s disappearance at sea during his return voyage had ended any immediate plans for settlement.

Easton’s plunders thirty ships in St. John's on one of his expeditions and holds Sir Richard Whitbourne prisoner, releasing him on the condition that Whitbourne go to England and obtain a pardon for Easton.

The pardon will be granted, but by this time, Easton will have moved on to the Barbary Coast to harass the Spanish.

John Guy leads a voyage into Trinity Bay in autumn 1612 in an attempt to contact and establish a fur trade with the Beothuks, the native inhabitants of the island.

Guy's party on November 6 meets with a group of Beothuk somewhere in Bull Arm, Trinity Bay, sharing a meal and exchanging gifts.

Thirty-nine colonists had spent the winter of 1610–1611 in the Cuper's Cove colony in eastern Newfoundlan, where they have built and fortified the settlement, explored the area and planted crops.

John Guy, a member of Bristol's Common Council who had been appointed governor of the first settlement at Cuper's Cove, had arrived at the settlement (now Cupids) din August of that year with colonists, grain and livestock.

Guy had returned to England in 1611 (leaving his brother-in-law in charge) and returned the following year with more livestock and female settlers.

The actions of the pirate Peter Easton persuade Guy to abandon a second colony established at Renews in the spring of this year and strengthen the fortifications at Cupers Cove.

With Mainwaring away from his main base in La Mamora, on Atlantic coast of present day Morocco, a Spanish fleet under Don Luis Fajardo, sailing from Cádiz on August 1, 1612, had reduced the town.

Mainwaring's relations with the Moors were such that he had been able to secured the release of their English prisoners.

So feared was his pirate fleet that Spain had offered Mainwaring a pardon and high command in return for his services under the Spanish flag.

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.