Quote:
Originally Posted by Taltarzac725
Rayon t-shirt wearing 21st Century beantown tourists looked for the spot where fire-and-brimstone preacher Cotton Mather tried to save the souls of the six survivors of the Mary Anne and Whydah Gally shipwrecks set to be executed on November 15, 1717. The tide of the Boston Harbor was the foyer of the execution place which gave the men a small hope for flight with the ocean so close. Only six of the surviving nine were hanged because the court brought in the factor that some of the survivors had been kidnapped off of prize ships when the Bellamy ship crews were looking for boatwrights, carpenters, surgeons and other highly valued tradesmen to supplement the crews.
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Cotton Mather did not
mince words about his hatred of piracy but love of attempting to save souls. He had the same attraction to witches as pirates. He
expanded his work of soul saving as dictated by the Boston area courts--common murderers, witches, pirates, traitorous soldiers, all were his game. Anyone condemned to death he saw as a fit for his need for them to find God before the noose broke their necks. He was not
humble about his special relationship to the All Mighty and had a unique
rigor in his fire-and-brimstone sermons especially those he preached to very small audiences. He even travelled to Eastham to search out "Black Sam" Bellamy's true love Marie Hallett because he had heard from the Bellamy convoy pirates condemned to death of how the Eastham community had labelled her a "witch". Her's was one more soul that must be saved by Cotton Mather. He had even heard rumors that the Devil had taken her mind from her.
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/mather.htm