All is forgiven….Now, do you take this woman…?

“Merchants got tired of losing valuable cargoes to pirates and having to pay high insurance premiums….Governments were now charged with making the seas safe for legitimate commerce.

“When Edward Teach, who terrified sailors in the Caribbean, where he marauded as the pirate Blackbeard, turned honest, the colonial governor of North Carolina married him to his 14th wife!”

— From “The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism” by Joyce Appleby (2010)