The English navy was fully employed in the Channel, in the Atlantic, and in the Mediterranean.

The Indian Ocean, meanwhile, swarmed with pirates of whose rapacity and cruelty frightful stories were told.

Many of these men, it was said, came from our North American colonies, and carried back to those colonies the spoils gained by crime.

Adventurers who durst not show themselves in the Thames found a ready market for their illgotten spices and stuffs at New York.

Even the Puritans of New England, who in sanctimonious austerity surpassed even their brethren of Scotland, were accused of conniving at the wickedness which enabled them to enjoy abundantly and cheaply the produce of Indian looms and Chinese tea plantations.
In 1695 Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, an Irish peer who sate in the English House of Commons, was appointed Governor of New York and Massachusets.