The Real Captain Kidd

onable to surmise that the Company received some early official intimation of what was being done on their behalf. To

ul at the continuous[106] robbery of his subjects' goods by English-speaking seamen on his coasts. The Company must have taken the keenest interest in the measures designed for the repression of this piracy. With their practical knowledge of the difficulties to be encountered, it is unlikely that they at any time regarded the advent

all pirates infesting those seas within the limits of the Company's charter and likewise empower them to erect a Court of Admiralty in those parts." This proposal except for a very excusable technical error contained in it, which if not corrected, would have enabled the Company, instead of the Admiralty, to create a Court of Admiralty, was not unreasonable. It was referred by the Admiralty to their judge, Sir Charles Hedges, who promptly reported in the following terms on the steps ne

manner as is done in the West Indies, which being established by a commission in the ordinary form, that will be sufficient to empowe

at might diminish the great ministers' chances of gain from Kidd's adventure. What seems to have happened is that the Company's petition was officially shelved for nearly four years, when Captain Warren having in the meanwhile been sent out with five men-of-war to suppress the pirates, it was referred to the committee of the House of Commons, who had then been appointed to consider further the large que

stolen properties, to assure him that the thieves had been carried to England, where it was to be hoped that some of them might in due course be convicted, and possibly hung; but that the stolen goods had in the meanwhile been appropriated by some of the King's great ministers. It was not impossible that the next demand of the Great Mogul might be[111] that these great gentlemen together with such of the directors of the Company as had acquiesced in this arrangement should at once be handed over to him to be dealt with according to their deserts. It is not, therefore, surprising to find that on the twentieth of August in that year, whilst Kidd was st

1

s petition as unceremoniously as the Admiralty had done the former one. Anxious to appease the Company, and at the same time to safeguard the rights of the adventurers, they decided at a meeting at which the Duke of Shrewsbury, one of the adventurers, was present, to send a peremptory but guarded dispatch to the governors of all the American plantations, requiring them "to take all possible care, and use all[113] due means for the seizing and apprehending all such pirates and sea robbers and such as may be reasonably suspected for the same, eith

roduced no evidence from their informants at Kidd's trial in support of these allegations, although they had ample time and opportunity for obtaining it during his two years' imprisonment, it is not[115] unfair to assume that the information which they received on this occasion was not such as they cared to submit to an English Court of Law. But such as it was, the Lords Justices did not hesitate to act at once upon it, and to assume without further inquiry not only that Kidd was guilty, but that he was already a notorious pirate. On the twenty-third of November, 1698, whilst Kidd was stranded at Madagascar, they sent the following circular to Rear Admiral Benbow, and the governor of every American Colony: "The Lords Justices having been informed by several advices from the East Indies of the notorious piracies committed by Captain Kidd, and of his having seized and plundered divers ships in those seas, as their Excellencies have given orders to the commander of the squadron fitted out for the East Indies that he use hi

e that at this time they believed him to be guilty. It may even be that they continued in this belief when report after report came to hand of the piracies of other English seamen in the East, notwithstanding the marked absence in those reports of any mention whatever of Kidd or of the Adventure Galley. Whether they continued to believe in his guilt after his own narrative had been made a Parliamentary paper, and he had been examined before the House of Commons on it, is a very different question. Neither they[118] nor the Company were represented at the tr

119] pounds per annum which had apparently been given him on his dismissal by the late Queen, in 1693, from his post as her Receiver General, he seems to have succeeded in May, 1696, in obtaining a further grant of one thousand pounds a year out of the forfeited estates of Lord Kilmeare, and in March, 1697, to have been made colonel

urances on his word and honour that he could obtain the King's pardon for him and his men, was a trap laid for Kidd without the knowledge of his council, to whom he had submitted the letter for approval. His intention throughout had been to get hold of Kidd and send him to England, to be dealt with there in such manner as might be most convenient to the government. In his letters he has not only confessed this, but has even found it necessary to excuse himself to his superiors and give the reasons which he considered justified him in not arresting Kidd the moment he landed. "It will not be unwelcome news to your Lordships," he writes, "that I secured Captain Kidd last Thursday in the gaol of this town. I thought myself secure against his running away, because I took care not to give him the slightest umbrage of my design of seizing him. Nor had I, until the day I produced my orders from the Court to arrest Kidd, communicated them to anybody. But[123] I found it necessary to produce my orders to my Council to animate them to join heartily in securing Kidd. Another reason why I took him not up sooner, was that he had brought his wife and family hither on the sloop with him who (sic) I believed" (poor wretch!) "he would not readily forsake." At the same time whilst thus excusing himself for not arresting Kidd more promptly, Bellamont seems to have felt that some explanation was called for to justify his arresting him at all. "Your Lordships may observe," he writes, and it requires a very microscopical scrutiny of his hypocritical letter to observe it, "that the promise made Kidd in my letter of a kind reception, and promising the King's pardon for him, was conditional, that is, provided that he was as innocent as he pretended to be. But I quickly found sufficient cause to suspect him to be very guilty by the many lies and contradictions he told me." What these lies and contradictions were, he is very careful[124] not to say. Kidd's own narrative, corroborated by the depositions of several of his crew, are perfectly intelligible and straightforward documents, far more intelligible and convincing than Bellamont's lame reasons for thinking him guilty. The first of these was that Ki

ation. The prevailing popular opinion seems to have been that the four great ministers had sent Kidd out in the Adventure Galley to commit acts of piracy on their behalf; and that they had naturally selected for this purpose a past-master in the art of piracy. Some would have it that Somers, to prevent unpleasant disclosures, had already set the great seal to his pardon. Evelyn, in his diary of the third of December, says: "They" (i. e., Parliament) "called some great persons in the highest offices in question for setting the Greate Seale to the pard

ith him without consulting Parliament. To allay these suspicions, a certificate was produced signed by all the officers of the Rochester, from which, according to[129] Bellamont's apologist, it appeared that they had proceeded on their course to America "as far as their ship was able to bear the beating of the sea and then resolved to return to England." "When they were returned to England," he says, "by a like certificate they affirmed the same thing, and that the result was taken merely for securing the ship and the company's lives." "The

the King, praying that Kidd might not be tried, discharged, or pardoned until the next session of Parliament, and that Bellamont migh

mmanded him to acquaint the House that His Majesty having received an account of the arrival of Captain Kidd in the Isle of Lundy, by a ship which the Lords of the Admiralty had sent to fetch him, which was bound for the

Somers, Lord Chancellor of England, from his presence and counsels for ever." The motion was defeated by a majority of one hundred and sixty-seven to one hundred and six. But the fact that one hundred and six members voted for it, shows the bitterness of the party feeling against Somers, and the widespread suspicions of his honesty that prevailed amongst his political opponents. It need hardly be said that these suspicions[132] were not allayed

ed as unreasonable, seeing that the necessary documents relating to him had not yet been laid before the House; that time was required for the collection of evidence[133] against him from abroad; and that such of the facts relating to him and his employers as had already been disclosed, affor

the next day, they were presented; and it was ordered that such of them as came from the Admiralty sealed up, be opened, and the private examinations of Captain Kidd before the Admiralty were accordingly opened and read. It appeared from them that Kidd had denied[134] that

one containing the papers relating to Kidd, and the other the papers[135] that did not relate to him. Then Kidd's private examinations before the Admiralty were again read; and Kidd, being brought in by the keeper of Newgate, was called in. A petition from Cogi Babba, which had been presented to the House, was also read. This petition is noteworthy as being the only complaint to the House made by those who were alleged at his trial to have been plundered by him. It purported to be presented by Cogi Babba, on behalf of himself and other Armenians, inhabitants of Chalfa, the suburb of Spahow, and subje

ion and instructions to Kidd, which they did with the result that a motion was made that the grant passed under the Great Seal by Somers to Bellamont and others of the goods to be taken from

mmission and some other papers at his trial, ordered that "the said Commission and such other papers as Captain Kidd desires be delivered by the Clerk of this House to the Secretary of the Admiralty." Had this order been complied with, and the p