Johnson, Robert

As a friend of the government, Johnson’s career became embroiled in the hothouse politics of late-seventeenth-century England and his actions rarely escaped suspicions of ulterior motives.

Most of the eight original proprietors had remained staunch supporters of the Stuart monarchy after the execution of King Charles I in 1649, and others changed sides to become key figures in the restoration of his son in 1660.

Piracy flourished on the South Carolina coast chiefly in two periods: the early proprietary years (1670–1700) and at the end of the “Golden Age of Piracy” (1716–1720).

Bonnet was a member of the planter elite until 1717, when he purchased and armed the sloop Revenge and left his family to pursue a career as a pirate. After a significant defeat, Bonnet relinquished his command of Revenge and joined Blackbeard aboard Queen Anne’s Revenge. Augmenting their flotilla with two sloops, Blackbeard and Bonnet returned to the Carolinas, arriving off Charleston in mid-May 1718. After being captured by Colonel William Rhett, he was convicted and hanged on December 10, 1718, at White Point (now the Battery, Charleston).

For three decades following the founding of Charleston in 1670, population growth in South Carolina was painfully slow. Settlement remained…