Lundy and pirates

   
       
       
Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.
   
'A family named Marisco were long proprietors of this wild demesne, and one having plotted against Henry III., fled hither for safety.  For some years he and his comrades led a rude buccaneering life, but where eventially captured by the king's cruisers, and duly executed.  The island has also served as a stronghold for Turkish, Scotch and French privateers; and so late as the last century it was in the hands of a local scoundrel named Benson, who turned this fastness to various unlawful accounts.'

Hope Moncrieff 1895