Piers Griffith: Pirate of Penrhyn

2015 | Biography

Narrative history in bite-size chunks for the general reader. Well-written with lively intrigues, family feuds, mariners' tales and insights into a pirate's soul, some sources from previously unknown Welsh manuscript poems of the Age of Queen Elizabeth I by reliable eye-witnesses: soldiers-of-fortune, lawyers, local sea-dogs and a priest. Litigation with fiery kinsmen like Sir Thomas Mostyn and the duelling Earl of Powis intensify around the hero as the shocking loss of his only son and heir of the Plague in London, 1610, all mark a downturn in the changing fortunes of Piers Griffith. Pirate's wife Margaret, previously ignored by researchers, now steps out of the shadows, heiress of the Goodman family, leading Tudor Merchants of Chester. The women around Piers provide new insights into his character: wife, sister, daughters and Lady Catherine, his mother. Elsewhere, under the grace of Elizabeth Tudor and all the glamour of Gloriana, there is much skulduggery, spiery and robbery with violence on the high seas.

At the age of 18, after arming and fitting out his ship Grace, he sailed to join Drake and Raleigh in Plymouth against the Armada, then followed them to harry the enemy upon the Spanish Main. Finally, after the collapse his marriage, it was hellish London with its theatres, taverns, old companions and money-lenders like the Middletons, Batemans and the Earl of Pembroke, that lured the outdated, freebooting ex-pirate Piers Griffith of London away from the desolate Penrhyn shore, empty of him. We may wonder at the element of imaginative speculation in this work, but most of the evidence is delved into and sifted. Primary and Secondary sources are listed at the end and references are quickly sorted for the reader as you go along. The narrative is pacey and colourfully illustrated. Classical Poems previously inaccessible to non-Welsh speakers are given readable, paraphrase translations.

Glenys Mair Lloyd (Author)