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Edward Rigby
(around 1693 - 1711) U.K.

Edward Rigby

Navy captain

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Navy captain Rigby of Leyton in Lancashire was master of His Majesty's Ship Dragon, and considered by scholars to be the first ever homosexual victim of entrapment.

Early in 1698 he had been tried for sodomy at a court-martial, at which he was acquitted. But Reverend Thomas Bray, a leading member of the Societies for Reformation of Manners, believed Rigby to be guilty, and he worked out a plan with the constabulary to entrap him using as bait the servant named William Minton, aged 19, who had previously been approached by Rigby.

Upon conviction, Rigby escaped England and fled to France, where he became a Roman Catholic and entered the enemy's service. In 1711 the French man-of-war the Toulouse was sighted by two English ships that were returning to Port Mahon in the Mediterranean. They engaged and captured her, and towed the badly damaged ship into port.

The Second Captain of the Toulouse turned out to be none other than Edward Rigby. At Port Mahon the resourceful Captain Rigby found means to get on board a Genoese ship lying at anchor in the harbour, and by that means he again escape to France. He was highly regarded in France for his marine skills, and very well paid, though his pleasures were said to have been expensive.

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Source: excerpts from: Rictor Norton. Ed. "The Trial of Capt. Edward Rigby", 1698. Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook. - http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rigby.htm

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