Peter Easton was an English privateer turned pirate, active from the early 1600s until around 1620. He first sailed to Newfoundland as a licensed privateer in 1602, but turned to piracy after King James I made peace with Spain and revoked wartime privateering commissions in 1603–04. By 1610 he commanded enough ships to blockade the Bristol Channel, and in 1612 he returned to Newfoundland with a fleet of about ten ships, raiding the fishing fleets from a base at Harbour Grace and recruiting or coercing as many as 1,500 local fishermen into his crews; contemporary damage to the season’s fishery was later estimated at roughly £20,400. He held the English colonial promoter Richard Whitbourne captive for about eleven weeks in exchange for help securing a royal pardon, which sources place at some point around 1612–13. Newly wealthy, Easton then sailed to Villefranche in the Duchy of Savoy, where the Duke granted him a noble title, sometimes rendered as Marquis of Savoy, along with an estate and a noblewoman’s hand in marriage. He served Savoy for several more years before disappearing from the surviving historical record around 1620. A separate, disputed account also credits him with a 1614 raid on Puerto Rico, though at least one historical source treats that episode as more legend than fact.
Peter Easton
