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He eventually ended up in the small colonial town of Bath, NC, and lived in fine style after receiving a royal pardon from Governor Charles Eden. Remember this was before the Revolutionary war and we were still under British rule. He was welcomed by wealthy planters, and in return, entertained in his own home. Indeed, piracy was considered a fashionable vice during that era. He was only a threat at sea, and was, therefore, socially accepted.
Shortly after his arrival, he, the father of 13 children, married his 14th wife, and the Governor performed the ceremony. As he was already under the Governor's protection, this further suggests that they were friends, and gave credence to the existence of an underground passage way leading well away from the Governor's house. The tunnel would allow him to come and go without being seen, and also implicated the Governor in taking a share of his loot.
North Carolinians also benefited from Blackbeard, for while he terrorized all at sea, he brought a vast array of goods back to Bath which he sold at reasonable prices.
Proving just how villainous he was, though, when he wished to court the Governor's daughter, she refused him because he was engaged to another man. Blackbeard could not stand this rejection and so he murdered her fiance and cut off his hands before disposing of his body at sea. The girl pined away and died as was fashionable after a broken romance at that time.
Alas, he soon caught the attention of the wrong man, and the Governor of Virgina, Alexander Spotswood, sent soldiers and sailors to capture Blackbeard. On November 22, 1718, a group of sailors led by Lieutenant Robert Maynard, captured and killed the infamous pirate. He was beheaded and his head placed on the mast of Maynard's ship as a warning to other pirates of the fate that awaited them should they continue pirating.
Much of this is documented fact, but since he was the most notorious pirate to sail the high seas, he was also the subject of much speculation and talk became legend. Which is fact and which is fiction? You be the judge.
Sources: Text that was adapted from historian Robert E. Lee's Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of His Life and Times. Winston-Salem: John Fl Blair, 1974, and Wikipedia.