Captain John Scott
He travelled extensively in the Caribbean, authoring a History and Description of the River of Amazones and playing a key role in determining the boundary between Venezuela and Guyana.
Shortly before or after the end of his servitude, Scott and his employer were arrested for plundering a Dutch vessel in the port of New Haven, Connecticut, a charge that was later dropped.
Scott returned to England in late 1660 or early 1661, where he became an advisor to King Charles II regarding the activities of New Netherland, the Dutch colony that occupied the western portions of Long Island.
[3] John Scott returned to Long Island by 1663, brandishing legal documents and letters filled with insignia and parading his wife Deborah in an outfit fit for royalty.
Feigning more authority than he had, John Scott persuaded the settlers of Setauket, New York to grant him control of their lands in exchange for deeds of equal size elsewhere.
He also claimed to be a representative of the Atherton Trading Company of New England engaging in the interest of Thomas Chiffinch, who entered the partnership.
John Scott was supplemented his role as advisor to the king on Long Island affairs by making decorative maps of the New England area.
At this time, sections of English Long Island were de facto governed by John Winthrop the Younger and his Puritan colony of Connecticut.
A meeting took place between the leaders of English Long Island, represented by Hempstead, Gravesend, Flushing, Newtown, Oyster Bay, and Jamaica.
At the meeting, the Long Islanders debated the looming threat of annexation and concluded by electing John Scott their leader until higher orders came from England.
Brandishing this title, Scott and a formidable force of men marched into Brooklyn and other Dutch villages, declared the inhabitants trespassers, and conducted raids purposed to lessen the population.
In August, the fleet of Richard Nicolls sailed into New York Harbor and successfully demanded surrender of the colony to the English crown.
For this task, the English forces used the reports that had been made by John Scott and Samuel Maverick, both of whom had served as royal advisors to the King on Dutch activities in North American.
While sentenced to appear at Long Island's Court of Assizes over charges of fraud in September 1665, John Scott escaped his quarters and boarded a ship for Barbados, never to return.
Assuming the rank of Major, Scott operated a small fleet of ships in the Caribbean, at that time an area of activity in the English wars against the Dutch and French.
While Scott was in disguise as a spy in 1678, a description was made: A proper well-set man in a great light [colored] periwig, rough-visaged, having large hair on his eyebrows, hollow eyed, a little... cast with his eye, full faced about the cheeks, about 46 years of age with a black hat and a [straight] bodied coat [cloth colored] with silver lace behind.
