This is John Batchelor, a conversation with Sean Kingsley and Rex Cowan for their wonderful, not believable but all factual story, the pirate king.

Lost treasure, piracy in the Indian Ocean, spying, spycraft for the king, Scottish independence.

This is the strange adventures of Henry Avery, the pirate king, and the birth of the golden age of piracy.

Sean Kingsley here not only describes how Henry Avery was sent with the master spy Daniel Defoe to Scotland to undermine the Scottish

independence movement.

This is the early 18th century.

But also lived to tell the tale of his piracy, of his treasure.

The Golden Age of Piracy.

Very few survived, as Sean will mention.

Sean Kingsley, with his colleague Rex Cowan,

the Pirate King, the strange adventures of Henry Avery

and the birth of the Golden Age of Piracy,

much more of this tonight.

Thank you.

I think that Daniel DeFoe is a details guy. You know,

he's really good. You know, as you say, they go up to Scotland in September 1706. And this links

again to Catholicisms. Scotland in Edinburgh, there are a hotbed of Catholics, what we call

Jacobites. There's all kinds of characters coming over the

sea from France. And they're threatening, kind of like today with Scottish independence and

history repeating itself, they're threatening to break away from the English crown. And London's

not going to allow that to happen. So they send Daniel Defoe up there to basically manipulate public opinion by getting

control of people in the church, lawyers, merchants, controlling the presses. If you control what is

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