Nicholas Trott

Who was Nicholas Trott?

Nicholas Trott was an 18th-century British judge, legal scholar and writer. He had a lengthy legal and political career in Charleston, South Carolina and served as the colonial chief justice from 1703 until 1719. He came from a prosperous English family; his grandfather Perient Trott having been a husband of the Somers Isles Company and his uncle Sir Nicholas Trott served as the governor of the Bahamas. Sir Nicholas, like his nephew, was also involved in dealings with pirates and, to avoid confusion, is often referred to as Nicholas the Elder.

Though he is best known, as recorded in Daniel Defoe's A General History of the Pyrates, as the magistrate who tried notorious pirate Stede Bonnet in 1718, he was the author of several published books including a lexicon of the psalms Clavis Linguae Sanctae, The Tryals of Major Stede Bonnet and Other Pirates and The Laws of the British Plantations for which he was awarded a Doctor of Civil Law degree from Oxford University and a Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Aberdeen. His final published work, The Laws of the Province of South Carolina, chronicled the early legal and judicial history of Charleston up until 1719.