Henry Mainwaring

Henry Mainwaring
Born	1586/7 Ightfield, Shropshire, England
Died	1653 France
Piratical career
Nickname	The Dread Pirate
Type	Privateer
Allegiance	England
Years active	1610–1639
Rank	Captain
Base of operations	Newfoundland Gibraltar La Mamora
Commands	HMS Resistance
Later work	Royal Navy vice-admiral and author

Sir Henry Mainwaring (1587–1653), was an English lawyer, soldier, author, seaman and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1622. He was for a time a pirate based in Newfoundland and then a naval officer with the Royal Navy. He supported the Royalist cause in the English Civil War.

Mainwaring was born in Ightfield, Shropshire, second son of Sir George Mainwaring and his wife Ann, the daughter of Sir William More of Loseley Park in Surrey. His maternal grandfather was Sir William More, Vice-Admiral of Sussex. He graduated from Brasenose College at Oxford University, where he was awarded a B.A. in Law, at the age of 15, in 1602. He 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.

In 1610, at the age of 24, Mainwaring was given a commission from Lord High Admiral Nottingham to capture the notorious Newfoundland "arch-pirate" Peter Easton, then 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.

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