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Episode 340 - In Service of the Devil

Episode 340 - In Service of the Devil

Released Tuesday, 30th April 2024
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Episode 340 - In Service of the Devil

Episode 340 - In Service of the Devil

Episode 340 - In Service of the Devil

Episode 340 - In Service of the Devil

Tuesday, 30th April 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
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Episode Transcript

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0:00

You're listening to an Airwave

0:02

Media Podcast. As

0:06

a longtime foreign correspondent, I've

0:09

worked in lots of places, but nowhere

0:11

is important to the world as China.

0:13

I'm Jane Perles, former Beijing bureau chief

0:16

for The New York Times. Join

0:18

me on my new podcast, Faceoff,

0:21

US versus China, where I'll take

0:23

you behind the scenes in the

0:26

tumultuous US-China relationship. And

0:28

Faceoff, wherever you get your podcasts.

1:58

I'm Gut, the Snarling. and seadog

2:30

Welcome to theO pirate history Podcast, the acting

3:33

with a world of stuffy,

3:36

stiff-necked society types. The

3:40

best of these comedies are about a man

3:42

who bucks all of those mannerly conventions, who

3:55

kind of bursts onto the scene

3:57

and disrupts the social hierarchy. All

4:01

of the polite men are befuddled, and

4:04

all of the women in the play

4:06

are a bit out of sorts whenever

4:08

the rugged mountain-man type enters stage left.

4:12

They need, you know, folding fans

4:14

and smelling salts, maybe a fainting

4:16

couch nearby. Usually

4:19

the main character will be one of those

4:21

polite men who I imagine in this case

4:23

to be Daniel Defoe, and

4:25

on the one hand he's got some sort

4:28

of strict father-type figure who I imagine to

4:30

be the archbishop, and on the

4:32

other there's this newcomer. He's

4:35

strutting about the stage and making all of

4:37

the women woozy. That's

4:39

Henry Every, and usually the moral of

4:42

the story is that the main character,

4:44

stuffy uptight, he's got to loosen up

4:46

a bit, let his hair down. And

4:49

I think these three characters, you know, not

4:51

the real people, but the caricatures

4:53

of these three historical figures would

4:56

make great characters in that play.

4:59

And then think about their wives. Just

5:02

listen to their names. Archbishop

5:05

Tennyson was married to a woman named

5:07

Anne Love. Daniel

5:09

Defoe was married to Mary Tuffley.

5:13

Henry Every, though, well,

5:15

he might show up with Mrs. Adams,

5:18

the wife of his former quartermaster

5:20

who ran off with Henry Every,

5:23

but more likely, though, I think in

5:25

the play, Every would

5:27

show up with a Malagasy princess.

5:31

After all, it was widely

5:33

believed at the time that Henry

5:35

Every had stayed on Madagascar,

5:37

set up a kingdom for himself,

5:40

married a Malagasy bride, and

5:42

ruled over Libertalia as

5:44

some kind of democratic

5:47

god-king. And

5:49

a Malagasy princess would be perfect for

5:51

a comedy of manners because you could

5:53

toss in a bit of ever-so-slightly

5:56

racist humor. Oh, she just

5:58

doesn't understand our customs, but

6:01

eventually that lack of understanding would

6:03

begin to poke holes in all

6:06

of those pretensions

6:08

that the European characters

6:10

have. I

6:12

mean, I'd watch that play, but

6:14

of course that's not what really

6:17

happened, or at least that's

6:19

not the story that's being

6:21

told by Sean Kingsley and

6:23

Rex Cohen in The

6:25

Pirate King. That

6:28

story may not be what actually

6:30

happened either, but

6:32

it's a good story, a story of

6:35

candlelit clandestine meetings in the

6:37

back rooms of a library,

6:40

of secret agents at

6:42

roadside taverns, secret

6:45

identities, fake names, narrow escapes,

6:47

and masters of

6:49

disguise. This

6:52

is episode 340, In Service of the

6:55

Devil. I've

6:59

been spending my days recently with

7:01

my nose buried in a bunch

7:03

of literature about Henry Every, those

7:07

plays and pamphlets and books that

7:09

came out shortly after he disappeared,

7:12

and there are three books in

7:14

particular that are cited as sources

7:17

in The Pirate King. There's

7:19

a chapter in there, the first

7:22

chapter about Henry Every, that talks

7:24

about his early life, and

7:26

it's lifted almost entirely from

7:29

The Life and Adventures of

7:31

Captain John Avery, who

7:33

raised himself from a cabin boy to

7:35

a king by Adrian von Broeck,

7:37

1712. And

7:41

that's a problem, because The

7:43

Life and Adventures of Captain John

7:45

Avery is a fiction. I

7:49

mean, sure, the author claims to

7:51

have been taken captive aboard the

7:54

fancy, to have heard all of

7:56

these facts from Henry Avery himself.

8:00

But Jonathan Harker claimed to

8:02

have been taken captive by Dracula,

8:04

and I mean that's a journal

8:06

entry you gotta believe that right?

8:09

It's fiction that didn't happen. The

8:12

story told in the life and

8:14

adventures of John Avery didn't happen.

8:17

But the pirate king lays

8:20

those facts down on the page

8:22

and then cites that book as

8:24

the source, it treats

8:26

it like it's a worthwhile historical

8:28

document. I

8:31

don't like that. Their

8:34

next chapter on Henry Avery,

8:36

Chapter 4, on the pirate

8:38

account, isn't much better.

8:42

That chapter begins, quote, After

8:44

making the sea his home, Henry

8:47

Avery went in search of adventure.

8:50

Such was his love of danger that friends

8:52

worried he had a death wish. His

8:55

behavior was loose, bold, and

8:57

wicked. In

8:59

these early years, according

9:02

to Henry Avery's own

9:04

later memories, he

9:06

was, and now they're quoting

9:08

these later memories, quote,

9:12

Perfectly unfit to be trusted with liberty,

9:14

for I was as ripe for any

9:17

villainy as a young fellow that had

9:19

no solid thought ever placed in his

9:21

mind could be. Education,

9:24

as you have heard, I had

9:26

none, and all the little

9:28

scenes of life I had passed through

9:31

had been full of dangers and desperate

9:33

circumstances. But I

9:35

was either so young or so stupid

9:37

that I escaped the grief and anxiety

9:40

of them. End

9:43

quote. And

9:45

that's quite a passage.

9:49

When did Henry Avery say that? Where

9:53

did he say that? Where did he

9:55

document these later memories? I don't know

9:57

anything about this, but somehow

9:59

that passage feels a little familiar.

10:02

So I flip to the back of the book,

10:04

check the notes, and come to

10:06

find out that, in fact, I've read

10:08

that passage before. It

10:11

comes from The Life, Adventures,

10:13

and Piracy of Captain Singleton

10:16

by Daniel Defoe, 1720. Now

10:20

everyone today seems to agree

10:22

that Captain Singleton, the character,

10:24

and the book is based

10:26

partly on Henry Every. But

10:30

you know how in movies sometimes,

10:32

those that are allegedly based on

10:34

things that actually happened, sometimes

10:37

they'll say based on a true story.

10:39

Now they usually do that when they

10:41

have the rights to that story signed

10:43

off from one of the people who

10:46

lived through it. But if

10:48

they don't have those rights, they have to say

10:50

something like, Based on

10:52

Real Events. Well,

10:55

Captain Singleton is not based on a

10:57

true story, but it is based on

11:00

real events. And

11:03

the character does have a lot

11:05

of similarities to the real

11:07

Henry Every. But of

11:09

course, Captain Singleton is not Henry

11:11

Every because Henry Every

11:13

shows up in the story. Captain

11:17

Singleton meets him

11:19

on Madagascar, and

11:21

that passage is Captain Singleton

11:23

talking. But you know,

11:26

maybe Captain Singleton's early life took

11:28

a lot of inspiration from what

11:30

Daniel Defoe believed to be the

11:32

early life of Henry Every. And

11:35

maybe, just maybe,

11:39

Daniel Defoe and Henry Every

11:42

talked about his early life. Maybe

11:44

they sat around a tavern drinking

11:47

mugs of ale, smoking pipes of

11:49

tobacco, and Henry Every laid out

11:51

his whole childhood, even

11:54

if that's the case. Captain

11:57

Singleton is a novel. It's

12:00

just downright irresponsible to present

12:02

the text of a fiction

12:04

like Captain Singleton as

12:07

Henry Every's actual memories.

12:11

That same chapter goes on to tell

12:13

us of the early voyages of the

12:16

young Henry Every, how he sailed for

12:18

the West Indies, spent a summer cutting

12:20

logwood in the Bay of Campeche, and

12:23

then fell in with a monstrous

12:25

band of pirates. Now

12:27

you may remember the bones of this story

12:29

because it's what we talked about when we

12:32

talked about the early life of Henry Every,

12:35

and they're pulling from the same source we

12:37

are, the King of Pirates

12:39

from 1719. The

12:42

relevant passage here from the King of Pirates

12:44

reads, quote, They carried us

12:47

on board their ship. We

12:49

found they were a worse sort

12:51

of wanderers than ourselves. Now

12:53

we were listed in the service of the devil

12:56

indeed, and like him were

12:58

at war with all mankind. Our

13:01

captain in this pirate ship was

13:03

named Nichols, but we called him

13:05

Captain Red Hand because he was

13:07

so bloody a wretch that he

13:09

scarce ever took a prize, but

13:11

he had a hand in some

13:13

butchery. End

13:16

quote. So the

13:19

King of Pirates published in 1719. Now

13:24

I'm willing to give the authors a

13:26

little bit more leeway here than I

13:28

was with their use of the life

13:30

and adventures of Captain John Avery. Not

13:33

a lot of leeway, but a little bit. Their

13:36

book is making a case that

13:38

Henry Every and Daniel Defoe knew

13:40

each other pretty well, in fact.

13:43

And if we accept that as their

13:45

premise, it helps make it

13:47

make sense that they would use a

13:49

source like the King of

13:52

Pirates or Captain Singleton as primary

13:54

sources. Daniel

13:56

Defoe, close friend and confidant

13:58

of Henry Every, is

14:00

a much more trustworthy source than

14:02

Daniel Defoe, novelist, who's

14:05

making stuff up. But

14:07

that's only if we accept their premise, and

14:11

I'm willing to do so in a

14:13

kind of devil's advocate, you know, let's

14:15

hear them out, sort of way. I

14:18

mean, there's a lot of good reasons we shouldn't

14:20

accept this premise or their use of the King

14:22

of Pirates. They tell

14:24

us about Captain Redhand, notorious pirate

14:26

captain, as though he were a

14:28

real person, and aside from this

14:31

one book published almost 30 years

14:33

after the fact, there's

14:35

not a single mention of Captain

14:37

Redhand in the historic record. No

14:40

Jamaican governor, you know, Lieutenant Beeston

14:43

wasn't writing about him, no

14:45

Cuban, nobody. There's nothing but this

14:47

one source. But even

14:49

this premise is kind of flawed. It's

14:52

not certain that Daniel Defoe even wrote

14:54

The King of Pirates. It

14:57

was published anonymously, and it's presented

14:59

as a pair of letters that

15:01

are attributed to Henry Every. What's

15:04

weird here is that The

15:06

King of Pirates says it is

15:09

the only real account of Henry

15:11

Every's life, and it

15:13

calls all the previously published

15:15

works on Henry Every, quote,

15:18

sham accounts. It

15:21

says that on the title page, and that

15:23

is so clearly a shot at

15:25

Adrian von Broek. And

15:28

the pirate king is using

15:30

Adrian von Broek and this

15:33

anonymously published work at

15:35

the same time, while they directly contradict

15:37

each other. Not just that one calls

15:39

the other a sham, but there are

15:41

points in both books that don't match

15:43

up, which is fine

15:46

when they're fictitious. But

15:48

when they are using them as your

15:51

historic source, that's the kind of thing

15:53

you might want to mention. None of

15:55

these three works, either

15:57

The Life and Adventures of Captain John

15:59

Avery, or Captain Singleton

16:02

or the King of Pirates, none

16:05

of those are good sources. All

16:08

of this makes me extremely

16:10

wary of any claims that

16:13

the authors may be about

16:15

to make in

16:17

a book where they're making some pretty

16:19

wild claims. You know,

16:21

if you're going to make this big argument

16:23

about Henry Every, I think

16:25

you'd want to make sure the

16:27

background is as iron-clad as possible,

16:30

and this is anything but

16:33

iron-clad. I

16:36

got to be honest with you guys, I

16:38

almost quit telling this story. I got extremely

16:41

frustrated by this, but

16:45

the arguments that they're about to make, the

16:48

story that they're about to tell, that's

16:51

something that's worth examining. Whether it's

16:53

true or not, and I'm leaning

16:56

towards not, I still think

16:58

it's worth talking about. Moreover,

17:01

I chose to use this story

17:03

as a vehicle to introduce Daniel

17:05

Defoe. And

17:07

to my mind, Daniel Defoe

17:10

is up there with the

17:12

most important figures in contemporaneous

17:14

pirate historiography. You know, like

17:16

a William Dampier or a

17:18

Woods Rogers or Alexander Exquimalin,

17:21

Daniel Defoe is one of the top

17:23

writers in that field at that time.

17:27

So we're going to continue on, but

17:30

I want to preface everything that's to come

17:32

by saying that we're

17:35

leaving the dry land

17:37

of verifiable history behind

17:39

and sailing out

17:41

into the deep waters of speculative

17:45

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books are sold. Everybody

18:56

shush! William Shatner has something

18:59

to say. Cat and Jethro, box of

19:01

oddities. What do you do when the

19:03

woman you love dies? Well,

19:05

of course you dig her up and you live with her. Aww.

19:07

The show is examined. Weird thing. There

19:10

are plenty of old photographs from this

19:12

time period of children out in the

19:14

streets playing in and among the dead

19:17

horse carcasses. Oh, I miss

19:19

those days. Things used to be so

19:21

much simpler. Cat and Jethro.

19:23

Then there's the urine wheel,

19:25

which sounds like a really

19:27

bad game show. We've done

19:29

weird things. We're out! Yay!

19:33

Cat and Jethro, box of oddities.

19:36

That is really mysterious. Join

19:39

Cat and Jethro Gilligan-Taun

19:41

for this strange, the

19:43

bizarre, the unexpected. As

19:46

they lift the lid and

19:48

cautiously peer inside, the

19:51

box of oddities. The award-winning box

19:53

of oddities putt ads. Say may

19:55

wave media. For

20:01

the next few chapters, the Pirate King's

20:03

coverage of Henry Every is pretty conventional.

20:06

He joins the Spanish Expedition. He

20:09

sails for Acaruna. He leads a

20:12

mutiny, sails for Madagascar, minuses the

20:14

Red Sea, captures the Gangesawai, some

20:16

bad stuff happens, and the pirates

20:18

capture the richest prize ever taken.

20:21

The fancy sails for the Bahamas, land

20:24

at Nassau, the pirates sell their ship,

20:26

and the crew disperses to the wind.

20:29

Some to New England, some to Virginia,

20:31

a few to Brazil, and a few

20:34

for England. That's

20:36

where we left Henry Every when we finished

20:38

talking about him, and that's where we're going

20:41

to leave him for now, because

20:43

I want to return to Daniel the foe,

20:45

or, as he was known at the time,

20:48

Daniel Foe. You'll

20:50

recall that Daniel Foe was

20:52

born into what we might

20:55

call a lower middle class

20:57

merchant family, but they

20:59

did well enough to send young Daniel to

21:01

school. So he got

21:03

an education, he married well, and when

21:05

his father died, he took over the

21:07

firm. But he was

21:09

never content to deal in pig

21:12

tallow candles and saddles, which is

21:14

mostly what his family had done

21:16

up to that point. No,

21:19

Daniel wanted to deal in

21:21

olives and fine wine and

21:23

male fashion accessories. But

21:26

to his credit, he did it.

21:29

He did pretty well for himself. I

21:31

mean, he borrowed heavily, but he did

21:33

earn a reputation as a seller of

21:36

fine goods. While

21:38

working in the London coffee house

21:40

scene, which is where everybody who

21:43

was anybody could be found, Daniel

21:46

Foe earned something of reputation

21:48

as a man interested in

21:51

fringe politics. Kind

21:54

of an anti-authoritarian working class

21:56

hero type. the

22:00

Pirate King speculate that it may

22:02

have been around this time that

22:05

Daniel Faux fell in with Thomas

22:07

Tennyson, which may have

22:09

led him to Scotland where he took

22:12

part in Monmouth's Rebellion. Happily

22:15

for Daniel Faux, though, he got

22:17

out of Monmouth's Rebellion before things

22:19

went really bad. He

22:22

managed to secure a pardon and

22:24

went back into business. It

22:27

was at just about this

22:29

time that William Phipps led his

22:32

expedition to La Nuestra Signora de

22:34

la Concepción. There

22:37

William Phipps found thirty-four

22:39

tons of treasure. He

22:43

found silver pieces of eight, gold

22:45

doubloons, and precious gems, not to

22:48

mention some very fine jewelry. It

22:50

was really just an amazing amount

22:52

of plunder found in a

22:54

shipwreck on the seabed. The

22:57

biggest hiccup, though, in the expedition

23:00

to La Nuestra Signora was that

23:02

they used divers. Their

23:05

divers, mostly enslaved Indian people,

23:08

always needed to come back up

23:10

for air. No matter how badly

23:12

you beat them, they just kept

23:14

needing to breathe. It was infuriating.

23:17

It really slowed the whole thing down. But

23:21

Daniel Faux made the acquaintance

23:23

of a Cornish inventor named

23:25

Joseph Williams. And

23:27

Joseph Williams had a new design for what

23:29

he termed a diving engine. Now

23:32

I can't find any details about this

23:34

diving engine, but don't picture a mechanical

23:37

device. They called all these things engines.

23:40

Whatever this diving engine may have been,

23:43

Daniel Faux thought it was the next

23:45

big thing. He

23:47

was an early and eager investor

23:49

in the business venture started by

23:51

Joseph Williams. Daniel

23:54

Faux even donated his own ship

23:56

to the enterprise, using

23:58

his ship and this new

24:00

diving engine, they were going

24:02

to plumb the depths for treasure. All

24:06

of this was part of Daniel Faux's

24:08

obsession with the ocean and the riches

24:10

that he thought it promised. He

24:13

would later go on to write, quote, If

24:15

thou reject the bounties of the sea, complain

24:18

no more of poverty. So

24:22

with diving engine and ship ready

24:24

to go, they embarked on

24:26

their very first mission, and

24:30

it failed almost immediately. See

24:33

Edmund Haley had just designed

24:35

his own diving engine. Now

24:38

that we know a great deal about. Essentially

24:41

it was just a diving bell that had

24:43

these barrels of fresh air that could be

24:45

lowered down to deliver oxygen to the divers.

24:49

And as it turned out, Haley's new

24:51

diving machine was out in full force

24:53

by the time Daniel Faux and his

24:55

compatriots got out there. They

24:58

were already plumbing all the depths.

25:02

Daniel Faux's new investment fell

25:04

apart. The

25:06

fallout from this failed venture included

25:08

a slew of recriminations tossed back

25:10

and forth between the men involved.

25:13

There were many broken promises here,

25:16

and some of those broken promises

25:18

turned into lawsuits. Before

25:20

long, Daniel Faux had both lawyers

25:23

and creditors hounding him. So

25:25

he did what any reasonable person in

25:28

a situation like that should do. He

25:31

ran away. To Scotland,

25:33

as it happened, he

25:35

knew the country from his time in

25:37

Monmouth's army, and it was just far

25:39

enough away that his creditors couldn't find

25:41

him. While in

25:43

Scotland, Faux tried to establish a

25:46

profitable cod fishing business with his

25:48

ship. But that

25:51

wasn't a great idea. The

25:54

cod fleets over in Newfoundland had

25:56

the market cornered by this point.

25:59

Daniel Faux lost his money. lost money there as

26:01

well, so he returned to England, went

26:03

back into a more traditional form of business,

26:06

and began to chip away at his debts.

26:10

But here, Daniel Faux

26:12

also started writing. It

26:15

was at this point, around 1686 or

26:18

so, that Daniel Faux began

26:21

to take on the name by which

26:23

we all know him today, Daniel

26:25

Defoe. That's how

26:28

he published everything that he put his name

26:30

to at this point. And

26:32

those writings began to earn Daniel

26:34

Defoe a following from the upper

26:36

crust. And

26:38

all of these men are men that we've talked

26:41

about before. A few of

26:43

them had been members of the Cabal Ministry,

26:45

if you remember that from way back when.

26:48

Nearly all of them were ministers to

26:50

King Charles II when he was still

26:52

alive. They were

26:55

all Dukes or Earls or Marquesses,

26:57

both Scottish and English here, but

27:00

all of these men were early

27:02

leaders of the movement that would

27:04

go on to become the Glorious

27:06

Revolution. Just

27:08

about a year and a

27:10

half after departing Monmouth's Rebellion,

27:13

Daniel Defoe was back into

27:15

revolutionary politics, which

27:18

will become relevant down the road, but

27:20

right now I'd like to focus on

27:22

another line from the Pirate King. It

27:25

reads, quote, It was

27:27

on the road, during his travels

27:30

across the south coast, that Daniel

27:32

Faux crossed paths with the equally

27:34

ambitious Henry Avery. This

27:37

was at a point when Daniel Defoe was

27:39

working mainly in Plymouth. The passage continues, They

27:42

worked the same tracks and same

27:44

contacts. Both shared

27:47

a string of personal coincidences that

27:49

made them blood brothers, united by

27:51

tragedy. Both were born in

27:53

1660. Faux's

27:56

mother died when he was ten, Avery's

27:59

when he He was just six. Rage

28:02

burnt in both their souls, each yearned

28:05

to make their mark on the world." So

28:11

if this were a play, I'd

28:14

really like that characterization. It's

28:17

a good relationship being built there.

28:19

I'd like those characters. But

28:22

this isn't a play. This

28:25

is history, and I don't know where the

28:27

authors are getting this little tidbit. Presumably

28:31

Daniel Defoe, or maybe some

28:33

author believed to be Daniel

28:35

Defoe, wrote something that suggested

28:37

it, but I can't find it, and

28:40

the authors don't cite a source. It's

28:42

not from the King of Pirates or

28:45

Captain Singleton. They do,

28:48

helpfully enough, cite the life and adventures

28:50

of Captain John Avery when they talk

28:52

about his mother, a well-to-do

28:54

aristocratic woman who died when

28:56

John Avery was six. Which,

29:00

you know, isn't what happened. So

29:04

what is this? What are they talking about?

29:08

Well, to me, it's

29:10

obvious what's happening here. I

29:13

imagine you've heard the term Mary

29:16

Sue, and that

29:18

term has a lot of different meanings

29:21

nowadays, but originally a Mary

29:23

Sue character was an

29:25

author-insert character, and

29:27

it tended to be someone who

29:30

was always just perfect, just amazing.

29:33

Everybody always loved them. And

29:36

then you look at Daniel Defoe. You've

29:38

got this kind of dorky little writer

29:40

with lank hair and a long nose.

29:42

He's just riddled with inadequacy.

29:46

And he comes across this Englishman who

29:48

would go on to become the most

29:51

famous man in the whole world for

29:53

a little while. A

29:55

man with whom he happens to share

29:57

a great deal of similar history. Because,

30:00

you know, I may be a

30:03

weak, timid little scribe who yearns

30:05

for adventure and action and the

30:07

freedom of the high seas, but

30:11

I married young and I'm in terrible

30:13

debt, so all of that is out of

30:15

reach. But

30:17

Henry Avery, while he grew

30:19

up just like me, you

30:21

know, dead mom and outcast, only not

30:25

poor. Henry Avery

30:27

grew up rich, he never had to go

30:29

to bed without his supper. And

30:32

now this guy who's just

30:34

like me, remember, he lives

30:36

a life full of adventure

30:38

and treasure. And

30:41

I wish I'd found some treasure. That

30:44

was a miserable failure, but this guy

30:47

did, and he's just like me. I

30:51

don't want to delve too deep into

30:54

the psycho-history here. Again, I don't even

30:56

know what source they're purportedly using in

30:58

The Pirate King. But

31:00

wherever Daniel Defoe may have written

31:03

something like this down, it sounds

31:06

a lot like he's making it up

31:09

to make himself feel better. Which

31:11

is kind of funny to think about for

31:14

a man who's one of the most famous

31:16

writers ever in the English language. But

31:19

of course all of that inadequacy probably led

31:21

him to be one of the most famous

31:23

writers in the English language. He

31:27

wasn't famous yet, though. However, this

31:29

period in Daniel Defoe's life proved

31:31

to be one of the most

31:33

fruitful socially and politically. Even

31:36

financially he's doing better. He's

31:38

starting to climb out of the hole he

31:41

was in with a little help from

31:43

all of those new rich, rebellious friends

31:45

of his who

31:47

are all happy to help

31:49

Daniel Defoe because of his writing. Now

31:52

his famous works like Robinson Crusoe

31:54

and Captain Singleton, the Journal of

31:56

the Plague Year, a favorite of

31:59

mine, Those wouldn't be

32:01

written for another twenty years, but at

32:03

this point, Daniel Defoe

32:06

is writing furiously. Although

32:09

none of what he's writing is anything most

32:11

of us would know about, most

32:13

of what he was doing were

32:16

these clandestine political tracts that were

32:18

being spread among the coffeehouse set.

32:22

These anonymous pamphlets were

32:25

sort of defining the opposition to

32:27

King James II. You

32:30

know, he wasn't a political philosopher, he

32:32

wasn't coming up with all of this

32:34

himself, but Daniel Defoe would listen to

32:36

the opinions and the discussions and the

32:39

debates among all of those wealthy aristocrats

32:41

opposed to the king, and

32:43

then he'd write down what they talked about.

32:47

Naturally, he'd put it in a more

32:49

beautiful prose, and he'd change all of

32:51

the names, but these

32:54

writings began to be an important

32:56

way to garner middle-class

32:58

white-collar support for the

33:00

opposition. And I think it's

33:02

likely that if Daniel

33:04

Defoe and Thomas Tennyson didn't meet

33:07

back in 1684, they

33:10

probably met here in 1686, 1687. Tennyson

33:17

was publishing his own equally rebellious

33:19

works, and he was doing so

33:21

publicly here, but he

33:23

was working closely with all of those men

33:26

who knew Daniel Defoe quite well. He,

33:28

in fact, was probably one of them. But

33:32

for now, any interaction they may have

33:34

had was under the radar. Thomas

33:38

Tennyson is at this point

33:40

just a vocally anti-Catholic Anglican.

33:43

Next time, though, Thomas

33:46

Tennyson and Daniel Defoe are going

33:48

to begin to work together very

33:50

publicly, and both men are

33:52

going to rise through the ranks. Tennyson

33:56

will be made the Archbishop of Canterbury. Daniel

34:00

Defoe is going to become what

34:02

we might consider the

34:04

High Priest of Propaganda. I'd

34:09

like to thank everybody for listening. I'd

34:11

like to thank everybody who helps to support the show,

34:14

everybody who has left us ratings or

34:16

reviews, everybody who recommends this show to

34:18

their friends or family, and all

34:20

of our patrons. And today we're

34:23

going to give a shout-out to all of our

34:25

new and not so new patrons, and we're doing

34:27

it here at the end because it's a pretty

34:29

long one because I'm the worst. So

34:31

a special thank you and a big shout-out

34:34

to Adam, Andrew, Austin,

34:37

Balthazar, Bill, Bleep

34:40

Bloop, Babam, Brennan,

34:44

Brian, Caleb, Chapman,

34:48

Curtis, Dan, Daniel,

34:52

Daniel and Katie, Donald,

34:55

Francois, Giles, Gloria,

34:59

Gordon, Haley, Harry.

35:03

Sorry about this next one. I hope I get it kind of close

35:05

to right. Provoye, Ignacio,

35:09

Hank, James, Jeremiah,

35:13

Jerry, Jess, Johnson,

35:17

Jones, Joseph, Jewish,

35:20

Keebler, Kenneth, Leavond,

35:24

Lama, Lon, Mark,

35:27

Mattias, Mike, Michael,

35:31

Nathan, Oren, Philip,

35:34

Redbirds, Richard, Rob,

35:37

Ryan, Scott, Sean,

35:40

Steve, Travis, Valentin,

35:44

Valerie, Van Jensen and

35:47

William. Also

35:49

a special thanks to our quarter masters, Baccano,

35:53

Christian, infamous Florida man,

35:56

slawlord, Zuzu, and

35:59

Adam. our Commodores. Perry.

36:03

Chase. Clayton. Tripted.

36:06

DJ Jesus 72. Eric.

36:10

Hal Voor. Crystal. Meg.

36:14

Michael. Noah. Pat.

36:17

Seth. And Stuart. You're

36:21

all amazing, wonderful people, and I'm not, but

36:23

I'm trying to get back on track. I

36:25

have a question, though. There seems

36:27

to be a whole lot more

36:30

traffic in the Nordic countries, you

36:32

know, Northern Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Norway,

36:34

and Iceland. We've always

36:36

had some listeners from that region. I think

36:38

English is pretty commonly spoken over there, but

36:40

there seems to be a lot more of

36:42

late. Did the show

36:44

get some kind of particular attention over there, or

36:46

did it just kind of grow naturally over time?

36:49

I'm just a bit curious, because it's kind of cool. The

36:52

Pirate History Podcast is a member

36:55

of the Airwave Media Podcast Network.

36:57

If you'd like to check out some

36:59

of their other fine shows, like Gray

37:01

History, who's currently doing an extended coverage

37:03

of the French Revolution, which keeps

37:06

me good company, you can

37:08

do so at airwavemedia.com. Our

37:11

theme music was, as always, The Old

37:13

Captain by the fantastic band Primik. If

37:17

you haven't checked them out yet, you can

37:19

find them on Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube, or wherever

37:21

fine music is found. After

37:23

you're done over there, why not check

37:25

out our website at piratehistorypodcast.com. As

37:29

always, most importantly, thank you

37:31

for listening. Thank you. And

38:05

I think my pain's a little better than my

38:07

mother's, I think. If

38:10

you are

38:16

a clown,

38:18

you have a tear in your eye, I'm

38:21

gonna blow the pain in the teeth.

38:25

For a part like this, for

38:28

the old captain has died, Let

38:31

him live on in legend tonight.

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