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.

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.

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.

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.

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.