 | New-England legends |  |
THE TRUE ACCOUNT OF CAPTAIN KIDD.
The islands about the harbors of all our New
England rivers are so wild, and would seem to
have offered so many advantages, that they
have always been supposed, by the ruder population,
to be the hiding-place of piratical treasures,
and particularly of Captain Kidd's; and
the secretion, among rocks and sands, of chests
of jewels stripped from noble Spanish ladies
who have walked the awful plank, with shotbags
full of diamonds, and ingots of pure gold,
is one of the tenets of the vulgar faith. This
belief has ranged up and down the whole
shore with more freedom than the pirates ever
did, and the legends on the subject are legion
—from the old Frenchman of Passamaquoddy
Bay to the wild stories of the Jersey and Carolina
sandbars too countless for memory, the
Fireship off Newport, the Shrieking Woman of
Marblehead, and the Lynn Mariner who, while
burying his treasure in a cave, was sealed up
alive by a thunderbolt that cleft the rock, and
whom some one, under spiritual inspiration,
spent lately a dozen years in vain endeavor to
unearth. The parties that have equipped themselves
with hazel-rods and spades, and proceeded,
at the dead of night, in search of these
riches, without turning their heads or uttering
the Divine Name, and, digging till they struck
metal, have met with all manner of ghostly appearances,
from the little naked negro sitting
and crying on the edge of the hogshead of
doubloons, to the ball of fire sailing straight up
the creek, till it hangs trembling on the tide
just opposite the excavation into which it
shoots with the speed of lightning, so terrifying
and bewildering the treasure-seekers that
when all is over they fail to find again the place
of their late labor—the parties that have met
with these adventures would, perhaps, cease to
waste much more of their time in such pursuits
in this part of the country if they knew that
Captain Kidd had never landed north of Block
Island until, with fatal temerity, he brought
his vessel into Boston, and that every penny of
his gains was known and was accounted for,
while as to Bradish, Tew, and the rest of that
genry, they wasted everything as they went in
riotous living, and could never have had a dollar
to hide, and no disposition to hide it if they
had; and whatever they did possess they took
with them when, quietly abandoning their ships
to the officers of the law, they went up the
creeks and rivers in boats, and dispersed themselves
throughout the country.
Ever since the time of Jason there have been
sea-robbers, and at one period they so infested
the Mediterranean—owning a thousand galleys
and four hundred cities, it is said—that Pompey
was sent out with a fleet and a force of soldiery
to extirpate them. In later times there were
tribes of lawless men associated together in
hunting the cattle of the West Indian islands,
curing the flesh, and exchanging it in adjacent
settlements; they held all property in common,
and were called Buccaneers, from the word
“boucan,” a Carib term for preserved meat.
By the mistaken policy of the viceroys of the
islands, who, in order to reduce them to less
lawless lives, exterminated all the cattle, these
men were driven to the sea, and became in
time the celebrated freebooters, or “Brethren
of the Coast.” The bull of Pope Alexander VI.,
by authority of which Spain and Portugal
claimed all American discoveries, caused England,
France and the Netherlands to combine
in the Western Hemisphere, whatever quarrels
came to hand in the Eastern, and to ravage the
common enemy—so that letters-of-marque were
constantly issued by them to all adventurers,
without requiring any condemnation of prizes
or account of proceedings, by which means
these countries virtually created a system of
piracy, and Sir Francis Drake's sack of St. Domingo,
and the subsequent pillage of Pernambuco,
were in nowise different from the exploits
of the brutal Olonois, Van Horn, and
Brodely, upon the opulent Spanish cities of the
Main. As the trade with the East and West Indies
increased, these freebooters ceased to sail
under any color but their own, the black flag;
no longer left their ships to march through
tropical swamps and forests, to float on rafts
down rivers of a hundred cataracts, to scale
mountains, and fall, as if out of the clouds, on
the devoted cities of the Isthmus of Darien,
the silver and gold of whose cathedrals, palaces
and treasure-houses were worth the labor; nor
did they confine themselves on sea to overhauling
the Spanish galleon sitting deep in the water
with her lading from the Mexican and Peruvian
mines; but they made their attacks on the
great slow ship of the Asiatic waters, and
when their suppression became vital to commerce,
and all powers united against them,
in Madagascar and the Indian Ocean,
where they had their seraglios, and lived in
fabulous splendor and luxury. As this race,
hunted on sea and enervated on land, died out,
their place was taken by others, and expeditions
came gradually to be fitted out from the
colonies of New England, while Virginia, the
Carolinas, and even the Quakers of Philadelphia,
aflorded them a market for their robberies.
When these also in their time abandoned
their profession, they made their homes,
some in the Carolinas, some in Rhode Island,
and some on the south shore of Long Island,
where their descendants are among the most
respectable of the community.
To none of these did Captain Kidd belong;
and, previous to the last two years of his life,
he was esteemed a good citizen, and as honest
a sea-captain as ever sailed out of New York,
to which place he belonged, and where, in the
Surrogate's office, is still preserved his marriage
certificate, that classifies him as Gentleman.
During the war with France he had been master
of a ship in the neighborhood of the Caribbean
Sea, and had valiantly come to the assistance
of a British man-of-war, and the two
together had vanquished a fleet of six French
frigates; it was testified upon his trial that he
had been a mighty man in the West Indies, and
that he had refused to go a pirateering, upon
which his men had seized his ship; and it was
on account of his public services there that the
General Assembly of New York had paid him a
bounty of one hundred and fifty pounds—a
great sum in those days; and the probability
is, that, being made a bone of contention between
political parties, exactly what he was
applauded for doing at one time he was hung
for doing at another.
The American seas being greatly troubled by
pirates, early in 1695 the King summoned the
Earl of Bellomont before him, and told him
that, having come to the determination to put
an end to the increasing piratical tendencies of
his colonies, he had chosen him as the most
suitable person to be invested with the government
of New York and New England. The
earl at once set about devising the readiest
means for the execution of the King's purpose,
and Robert Livingston, chancing then to be in
London, and being acquainted with the earl,
introduced to him William Kidd, who, having
left his wi e and children in New York, was
also then in London, as a person who had secured
some fame in engagements with the
French, a man of honor and intrepidity, and
one who, knowing the haunts of the pirates,
was very fit to command the expedition against
them which Bellomont and others were planning.
Livingston became Kidd's surety, a
kindness that the latter always remembered,
as he threatened, on his return two years
afterward, to sell his sloop, and indemnify
Livingston out of the proceeds, if Bellomont
did not surrender the bond.
It was at first proposed that Kidd should
have a British frigate, but hardly daring to
give him that—which hesitation in itself indicates
how far the great lords were really implicated
in his transactions—a ship was purchased
for six thousand pounds, Kidd and Livingston
being at one-fifth of the expense, and the rest
being borne by the Earls of Bellomont and
Romney, the Lord Chancellor Somers, the Lord
High Admiral, the Duke or Shrewsbury, and
Sir Edward Harrison, and they agreed to give
the King, who entered into it very heartily, a
tenth of the profits of the affair. Kidd was
somewhat averse to the plan, and seriously demurred,
it is believed, but was threatened by
the men of power that his own ship should be
detained and taken from him if he persisted,
and accordingly he yielded, and in 1696 was
regularly commissioned under two separate
parchments, one to cruise against the French,
and the other—an extraordinary one, but issued
under the Great Seal, empowering him to proceed
against the pirates of the American seas,
and really given for the purpose of authorizing
him to dispose of such property as he might
capture. He had orders to render his accounts
to the Earl of Bellomont, remotely and securely
in New England; and the Adventure Galley, a
private armed ship of thirty guns and eighty
men, was brought to the buoy in the Nore at
the latter end of February, and on the 23d of
April, 1696, he sailed in her from Plymouth,
reaching New York in July, and bringing in a
French ship, valued at three hundred and fifty
pounds, which he had taken on the passage,
and which he there condemned.
In New York he invited men to enter his service,
by notices posted in the streets and presenting
large offers of booty after forty shares
for himself and the ship should be deducted;
and increasing his crew to more than one hundred
and fifty men, he went to Madeira, then
to several of the West Indian ports, and afterward
to Madagascar, the coast of Malabar, and
to Bab's Key, an island at the entrance of the
Red Sea, where he lay in wait for the Mocha
fleet, then preparing to sail. It is evident that
he went outside of his nominal instructions by
thus leaving the American for the Asiatic waters;
but it is also evident that he understood
he was to be supported by the people of power
who were behind him at home, and believed
himself to be only following out their intentions;
and the man who had been encouraged
to rob one ship had not, perhaps, sufficient refinement
of discrimination to think any different
matter of robbing another. Moreover,
having come across and captured no vessel
since leaving New York, he might naturally
have felt that his owners were expecting more
of him, and thus have resolved on something
desperate. At any rate he did not consider
himself to be going outside of his duty, or to
be appearing in any questionable light, when,
on his voyage out, he met the ship carrying the
ambassador to the Great Mogul, and exchanged
courtesies therewith.
Tired out with his want of success, when anchored
at Bab's Key, he sent boats to bring the
first news of the sailing of the Mocha fleet, established
a lookout on the hills of the island,
and told his men that now he would freight the
Adventure Galley with gold and silver when
the fleet came out, though it was found that
many of its ships belonged to friendly nations,
and it was convoyed by an English and a Dutch
man-of-war. Kidd, however, sailed into the
midst of the fleet, which fired at him first, and
returning the fire with one or two ineffectual
shots, he hauled off and left it to pursue its
course Sailing then for the coast of Malabar,
a couple of months afterward Kidd took a Moorish
vessel belonging to Aden, but commanded
by an Englishman, and finding but little of
"KID SNATCHED UP AN IRON-BOUND BUCKET AND STRUCK WILLIAM MOORE A BLOW ON THE HEAD, OF WHICH HE DIED THE NEXT DAY."
[Description: 693EAF. Page 003. In-line image. Captian Kidd holds a bucket above his head as he is facing a man. William Moore, the man Kidd is fighting, is flinching back from Captain Kidd. Other men look on. In the background is a mast and rigging.] value in the prize, he had her men hoisted bythe arms and beaten with the flat of a cutlass
to make them reveal what they had done with
their money—a punishment which, whether severe
or not for that semi-barbarous era, was,
with two exceptions, the only act of personal
cruelty of which he was ever accused; and people
whom, if the general idea of him were true,
he would have dispatched with a bullet, he
simply kept in the hold till, inquiry for them
being over, he dismissed them. He obtained
from this vessel some coffee, pepper, and Arabian
gold, and some myrrh, with which the extravagant
rogue pitched his ship. Going further
out to sea again, he next encountered a Portuguese
man-of-war, but after a brief engagement
withdrew with ten men wounded, and returned
presently to the coast of Malabar. Here, his
cooper having been killed by the natives, he
“served them in pretty much the same way,”
says one writer, “as the officers of our late
South Sea Exploring Expedition served the
Fijians, burning their houses and shooting one
of the murderers.” This, however, was one of
the other instances of cruelty to which reference
has just been made, the murderer being
bound to a tree and shot at in turn by all the
retaliators. Shortly after this, Captain Kidd
fell in with the ship Royal Captain, which he
visited, and whose officers he entertained on
board the Adventure Galley; but some of her
crew having told that there were Greeks and
others on board with much wealth of precious
stones, the piratical spirit of his men led to
rage with those who had wished to board and
rob the Royal Captain, Kidd snatched up an
iron-bound bucket, and struck William Moore,
the gunner and chief grumbler, a blow on the
head, of which he died next day. Kidd remarked
to his surgeon that the death of the
gunner did not trouble him so much as other
passages of his voyage, as he had friends in
England who could easily bring him off for
that; and he himself had it urged as a virtuous
act rather than otherwise, since done to prevent
both piracy and mutiny.
Still on the coast of Malabar, in November he
ran across another Moorish vessel, and artfully
hoisted the French colors, upon which the Moor
did the same. “By —! have I catched you?”
he cried; “you are a free prize to England!”
and making easy conquest of her, he caused
one Le Roy, a French passenger, to act the
part of master, and to show a pretended French
pass, upon which he declared her formally a
prize to England, as if observing again the prescribed
forms, and intending to claim for his
conduct, should he ever need to do so, the protection
of the commission authorizing him to
take French ships. In the course of the next
month, December, he captured a Moorish ketch
of fifty tons, and turned her adrift; took about
four hundred pounds' worth from a Portuguese,
and sunk her near Calcutta; and then made
prize of an Armenian vessel of four hundred
tons, called the Quedagh Merchant, and sometimes
the Scuddee, and commanded by an
Englishman—the entire value of the latter capture
being sixty-four thousand pounds, of which
Kidd's share was about sixteen thousand. Kidd
then went to Madagascar, where, having exchanged
all the equipments of the Adventure
Galley for dust and bar gold and silver, silks,
gold-cloth, precious stones, and spices, he
burned that ship, which was leaking badly, and
took to the Quedagh Merchant, refusing a ransom
of thirty thousand rupees which the Armenians
came, crying and wringing their hands,
to offer him.
Here, too, he is said to have met with one
of the East India Company's ships, Captain
Culliford, turned pirate. It was clearly his
duty, under his commission, to offer battle at
once; but, instead of anything of the kind,
it was testified on the trial that when the piraces,
with bated breath, sent out a boat to inquire
concerning his intentions, he drank with
them, in a kind of lemonade called “bomboo,”
damnation to his own soul if he ever harmed
them, and exchanged gifts with Culliford, receiving
some silk and four hundred pounds in
return for some heavy ordnance. Kidd denied
that he had ever been aboard of Culliford, and
declared that, when he proposed to attack him,
his men said they would rather fire two shots
into him than one into Culliford; that they
stole his journal, broke open his chest and rifled
it, plundered his ammunition, and threatened
his life so that he was obliged to barricade himself
in his cabin—his statement being borne out
in some degree by the fact that here ninety-five
of his men deserted to Captain Culliford, as if
their own master were not sufficiently piratical,
whereupon, recruiting a handful of men, he
sailed immediately for the West Indies. He declared
further that he did not go on board the
Quedagh Merchant until after the desertion of
these men, which left only about a dozen in his
crew—not enough to keep his leaking craft
from sinking.
But the capture of the Quedagh Merchant had
been reported home by the East India Company,
and directions had been issued to all the American
governors and viceroys to seize him
wherever he should appear. At Anguilla he
learned that he had been officially proclaimed
a pirate, and failing to obtain any provisions
either there or at St. Thomas, at which latter
place he was not even allowed to land, he went
to Curacoa from whence intelligence of his
whereabouts was forwarded to England, and
the man-of-war Queensborough was sent in pursuit
of him.
Kidd was aware that he had been upon a
hazardous enterprise, so far as the risks at
home were considered, to say nothing of the
risks at sea; and whether he was conscious
that he had exceeded his instructions, too
eagerly misinterpreting them, or whether he
knew that it is a way with the great to sacrifice
those who compromise them too seriously, he
prepared himself for any fortune: he determined
to go to New York, and prove for himself
what protection and countenance he now
had to expect from Bellomont and the others;
but he also determined to venture as little as
possible, and he accordingly bought the sloop
Antonia—though excusing this afterward to the
earl by saying that his men, frightened by the
proclamation, had wished to run the ship
ashore, and so many of them left him that
again he had not enough to handle the ropes,
which must have been untrue—loaded her with
his silks, muslins, jewels, bullion and gold-dust
(the rest of his booty, consisting of bales of
coarse goods, sugar, iron, rice, wax, opium,
saltpetre and anchors, he left in the Quedagh
Merchant, moored on the south side of Hispaniola,
with twenty guns in the hold and thirty
mounted, and twenty men, with his mate in
command)—and sailed in her for New York;
intimating, by his action, a doubt of his reception,
though that might well be accounted
for by a knowledge of the King's proclamation,
but just as plainly intimating that he had reason
to rely on the promises of Bellomont and the
rest of that royal stock company in piracy.
Meanwhile Bellomont had been delayed from
entering upon his official life by one thing and
another, until two years had elapsed from the
time of Kidd's departure from England. On
arriving in New York, he heard of the rumored
career which Kidd was running, and presently
the news having reached England, and an account
of the public sentiment about it there
being returned to him, Bellomont felt that very
active measures were necessary in order to exculpate
himself, the Ministry and the King from
the popular accusation of participating in Kidd's
robberies, and took every step necessary for his
apprehension.
Needing some repairs before reaching his
destination, Kidd very cautiously put into Delaware
Bay, where he landed a chest belonging
to one Gillam, an indubitable pirate, who had
been a Mohammedan, and who now returned,
a passenger from Madagascar. The news
spreading up the coast, an armed sloop went
after Kidd, but failed to find him, and he
reached the eastern end of Long Island without
being overhauled. Entering the Sound,
he dispatched a letter to Bellomont, and from
Oyster Bay sent loving greeting to his family,
from New York and went on board the Antonia.
Learning that the Earl of Bellomont
was in Boston, Kidd altered his course for
Rhode Island, and, arriving there, sent Mr.
Emot to Boston to secure a promise of safety
from Bellomont if he should land; a promise
granted on condition of its proving that Emot
told the truth—he having asserted that Kidd's
men locked him up while they committed piracies.
Kidd then went to Block Island, and
wrote to Bellomont again, protesting his innocence,
urging the care he had taken of the
owner's interests, and sending Lady Bellomont
a present of jewels of the value of sixty
pounds, which Bellomont had her keep lest she
should offend the giver and prevent the developments
that he desired, though afterward
surrendering and adding them to the general inventory
of Kidd's effects. While at Block Island
he was joined by his wife and children, under
the care of a Mr. Clark; he then gratefully went
out of his way in order to land Mr. Clark on
Gardiner's Island, as that gentleman wished to
return to New York; and although Kidd himself
did not go ashore at the latter place, he
left with Mr. Gardiner a portion of his treasure
afterward abandoned to the Commissioners
sent for it by the Governor. While lying here,
three sloops from New York came down and
were loaded with goods, which were, however,
all recovered—Kidd maintaining, with so much
paucity of invention as to resemble the truth,
that it was his men and not he who shipped
them off. Meanwhile the earl sent down Duncan
Campbell, the postmaster at Boston, to invite
Captain Kidd to that port, telling him that
if innocent he might safely come in, and he
would intercede for his pardon; and Kidd
straightway headed the Antonia for Boston,
reaching there on the 1st of July and appearing
publicly upon the streets. Hearing of his
arrival, the earl sent for him, and, refusing to
see him without witnesses, examined him before
the Council, directed him to draw up a narrative
of his proceedings, and dismissed him.
Bellomont, however, kept a watch upon his
movements, as he both desired and needed his
arrest, but thought it expedient to use friendly
means in order to discover the extent of his
outrages and the disposition of the property
acquired through them. At the end of the
week, Kidd showing no intention to unbosom
himself in that wise, and it being feared that
he meant to make off, he was arrested and
committed to prison, though not till he had
made a vallant opposition and had drawn his
sword upon the King's officers—the arrest
taking place near the door of the earl's lodgings,
into which Kidd rushed and ran toward
him, followed by the constables. His sloop, on
that, was immediately appraised, its contents
taken possession of by certain Commissioners
appointed for that purpose, his papers, containing
accounts of his buried treasure and of that
in Mr. Gardiner's hands, were opened, and all
the property was finally delivered to the earl,
with an inventory of one thousand one hundred
and eleven ounces of gold, two thousand
three hundred and fifty-three ounces of silver,
three-score jewels, and bags, bales and pieces
of goods about as valuable as the precious
metals. Mrs. Kidd's property, which included
several pieces of plate, nearly three hundred
dollars of her own and twenty-five crowns of
her maid's, was taken out of her temporary
lodgings in the house of Duncan Campbell, at
the time when search was made for a bag of
gold-dust and ingots of the value of a thousand
pounds, that Kidd had intended for a gift to
Lady Bellomont, and that was found between
two sea-beds; but on petition the Governor
and Council restored to Mrs. Kidd her own.
His wife—to whom he had been but a few
years married—accompanying him with her
children, her maid and all that she possessed,
shows that Kidd had no intention of being surprised
and overmastered; but on the contrary,
if worse came to worst, that he had meant to
take her back to the Quedagh Merchant and
find a home in some place beyond the pale of
British justice; while retaining her affection,
and caring to retain it, is in itself a sort of
testimony that he was hardly so black as he
has been painted. Ten days after his arrest
news came that the mate of the Quedagh Merchant,
left in command, had taken out her
cargo, removed it to Curagoa, and had then
set her on fire, and the mariner who brought
the intelligence had seen her burning. That
was a dark day, doubtless, to Captain Kidd,
but not so dark as others yet to come.
A ship-of-war had now been dispatched
from England to take Captain Kidd over there,
but being delayed by inclement weather, and
putting back in a storm after he was on board,
by the time it arrived in the Thames all England
was in a state of excitement over his
alleged partnership with several of the Ministers,
and their apparent determination not to
bring him to justice; and from a common
malefactor he became the lofty subject of a
state trial.
On his arrival the House of Commons addressed
the King, asking to have Kidd's trial
postponed until the next Parliament, that there
might be time for the transmission of all the
existing documents having any relation to his
affairs; and he was accordingly confined in
Newgate until the next year, when the papers
were laid before the House, together with a
petition from Cogi Baba, on behalf of himself
and other Armenians, subjects of the King of
Persia, setting forth all the facts of the
Quedagh Merchant's capture, and praying for
Kidd's examination and their own relief. Cogi
Baba was ordered before the House, and Kidd
himself was produced at the bar, and afterward
remanded to prison. A motion was then made
in the House to declare void the grant made to
the Earl of Bellomont and others of all the treasure
taken by Kidd, but it was negatived, and
the House of Commons then requested the
King to have Kidd proceeded against according
to law, and he was brought to trial at the Old
Bailey, in 1701, for murder and piracy upon
the high seas.
At the same time, the House of Commons
was proceeding upon an impeachment of the
Earl of Oxford and Lord Somers, for certain
high crimes and misdemeanors, one of which
was their connection with Kidd, and their
agency in passing the commissions and grant
to him, as prejudicial to public service and
private trade, and dishonorable to the King,
contrary to the law of England and to the Bill of
Rights. It was urged in reply that a pirate
was hostis humani generis, and his goods belonged
to whomsoever it might be that destroyed
him, and the King granted title only to
the lords were acquitted Bellomont was
dead, and Kidd was hung; while popular feeling
ran high, parties took sides in the affair;
there were accusations afloat that these lords,
now on their own trial, had set the Great Seal
of England to the pardon of the arch-pirate;
and as the anti-Ministerial side was determined
to hang Kidd in order to prove the complicity
and guilt of the Ministers with him, the Ministers
themselves were, of course, determined to
hang him to prove their own innocence.
Kidd made a very good appearance upon his
trial, ignorant as he was of all the forms of
law; he insisted on his innocence, and that he
had only captured ships with French passes or
sailing under the French flag, and he fought
manfully, but to no purpose. Of the men that
were tried with him, several plead that they
surrendered themselves upon a certain proclamation
of the King's pardon, but the Court decided
that, not having surrendered themselves
to the designated persons, they did not come
within its provisions, and they must swing for
it, and so they did. A couple of servants were
acquitted; but to Kidd himself no mercy was
shown. Justice Turton, Dr. Newton, Advocate
for the Admiralty, and the Lord Chief Baron,
all made elaborate arguments against him,
while no one spoke for him; and all his previous
plunderings were allowed to be cited in
the Court, in order to prove that he plundered
the Quedagh Merchant. When he desired to
have counsel assigned him, Sir Salathiel Lovell,
the Recorder, wonderingly asks him, “What
would you have counsel for?” And Dr. Oxenden
contemptuously inquires, “What matter
of law can you have?” But as Kidd quietly
answers, “There be matters of law, my lord,”
the Recorder asks again, “Mr. Kidd, do you
know what you mean by matters of law?”
Whereupon Kidd replies as quietly as before,
“I know what I mean; I desire to put off
my trial as long as I can, till I can get my evidence
ready.” He has had but a fortnight's
notice of his trial, and knowing how important
a delay would be to him in which the popular
feeling might die out or abate, he urges, “I
beg your lordships' patience till I can procure
my papers. I had a couple of French passes,
which I must make use of to my justification,”
and presently adds, “I beg your lordships I
may have counsel admitted, and that my trial
may be put off; I am not really prepared for
it.” To which the Recorder rudely replies,
“Nor never will, if you can help it.”
Kidd still contended for counsel, and at last
it was assigned to him. It then appeared that he
had already petitioned for money to carry on his
trial, and though it had, as a matter of course,
been granted to him, as to any prisoner, it had
been put into his hands only on the night before.
His counsel, for whose services he had
so exerted himself, made one or two timid remarks,
but, after the jury were sworn, although
the Solicitor-General plied the witnesses with
leading questions, the cowardly lawyers never
cross-examined, made any plea, or opened their
lips.
The indictment for murder, upon which Kidd
was first tried, portrayed, with great particularity,
the blow struck the gunner, saying that
of that mortal bruise “the aforesaid William
Moore, from the thirtieth day of October * * *
until the one-and-thirtieth day * * * did
languish, and languishing did live,” but on the
one-and-thirtieth day did die, and declaring
that William Kidd feloniously, voluntarily and
of malice aforethought did kill and murder him;
to all of which Kidd plead not guilty, constantly
interrupting the Court with his exclamations
and explanations. “The passes were seized by
my Lord Bellomont; that we will prove as
clear as the day!” cries he. When invited to
find cause for exception in the jury, he either
adroitly or ingenuously answers, “I shall challenge
none; I know nothing to the contrary
but they are honest men.” The time coming
for his defense, he told in an earnest manner a
short and simple story, but one in which, by
comparison of the various witnesses, several
discrepancies with the truth were found. “My
lord,” said he, “I will tell you what the case
was. I was coming up within a league of the
Dutchman, and some of my men were making
a mutiny about taking her, and my gunner told
the people he could put the captain in a way to
take the ship and be safe. Says I, `How will
you do that?' The gunner answered, `We will
get the captain and men aboard.' `And what
then?' `We will go aboard the ship and plunder
her, and we will have it under their hands
that we did not take her.' Says I, `This is
Judas-like. I dare not do such a thing.' Says
he, `We may do it, we are beggars already.'
`Why,' says I, `may we take this ship because
we are poor?' Upon that a mutiny arose, so I
took up a bucket and just throwed it at him,
and said, `You are a rogue to make such a motion.'
This I can prove, my lord.”
But he did not prove it, and though he struggled
hard to do so, and though his faithful
servant Richard Barlicorn, also on trial for his
life, must have committed a hundred perjuries
in his behalf, the Court could not find evidence
of any mutiny for more than a month before the
gunner's death, and decided that William
Moore's outcry that Kidd had brought him and
many others to ruin was not sufficient provocation
for the killing. And though Kidd plead
that striking the man in a passion, with so rude
and unpremeditated a weapon as the first slush-bucket
at hand, if not justifiable as a preventive
of mutiny, was, at furthest, no more than
manslaughter, and exclaimed that “it was not
designedly done, but in his passion, for which
he was heartily sorry,” yet, it being determined
to hang him at all odds, the lawyers
were given hints, the witnesses were browbeaten,
and the jury were instructed, after
tedious iteration, to bring him in guilty; which
was done.
At the trial next day on the indictments for
piracy, Kidd did not lose heart. There were
but two important witnesses produced against
him, Palmer, one of his crew, and his ship's
surgeon, Bradinham, who, though both of
them sharers in his adventures, had become evidence
for the Crown on the promise of their
own safety. Kidd himself cross-questioned
them, but idly, their replies being always
straightforward and consistent. His only defense
was that he had taken French passes from
every capture, that the Earl of Bellomont had
seized them, and that his men, once catching
sight of a French pass when a ship was overhauled,
would not let that ship go, and for the
rest answered with indifference, “That is what
these witnesses say,” as if such depraved testimony
could really be worth nothing. “Did you
“I heard you say so,” was the reply. “I am
sure,” said Kidd then, contemptuously, “you
never heard me say such a word to such a loggerhead
as you.” But matters going beyond
his patience soon, “Hear me!” he cried indignantly,
but was silenced by the Court, only to
break out again presently on Palmer with,
“Certainly you have not the impudence to say
that!” and to adjure him to “speak true.”
By-and-by the question of one of the passes being
up, “Palmer, did you see that pass?” he
eagerly asks; and, the old subordinate manner
returning to the other man, he answers, “Indeed,
captain, I did not;” whereupon, like one
who throws up his hands in despair, Kidd exclaims,
“What boots it to ask him any questions?
We have no witnesses, and what we
say signifies nothing.” With Bradinham he is
less contemptuous and more enraged. “This
man contradicts himself in a hundred places!”
he declared. “He tells a thousand lies * * *
There was no such thing in November; he
knows no more of these things than you do.
This fellow used to sleep five or six months together
in the hold! * * It is hard,” he exclaims
after awhile, “that a couple of rascals
should take away the King's subjects' lives.
Because I did not turn pirate, you rogues, you
would make me one!” And, with that, hope
slips faster and faster away from his grasp, and
when the Solicitor-General would know if he
has anything further to ask of the witnesses, he
replies, “No, no! So long as he swears it, our
words or oaths cannot be taken. No, no,” he
continues, wearily, “it signifies nothing.” But
he does ask at last one other question. “Mr.
Bradinham,” he cries, bitterly, “are not you
promised your life to take away mine?” and a
little later he adds, with dignity, “I will not
trouble the Court any more, for it is a folly,”
and when the final word of the Judge has been
uttered, that he shall be taken thence to his
execution, he says, “My lord, it is a very hard
sentence. For my part, I am the innocentest
person of them all, only I have been sworn
against by perjured persons.”
The feeling against Kidd, though, was hardly
satisfied even by his death; and fearful lest
they had lost a victim, after all, the public circulated
stories of his escape, and of the hanging
of a man of straw in his place, although if the
“blunt monster with uncounted heads” had
taken the trouble to use one of those heads, the
absurdity of the rumor might have been evident;
for Kidd's evil fortune pursued him even from
the scaffold, and the rope breaking, doubled
and prolonged the last awful moments, and
between the first hanging and the final one
he was heard to have conversation with the
executioner, ere passing to that Bar where
he was judged, let us hope, after a different
fashion.
But the death of Captain Kidd put an end to
piracy in the American and most other seas;
and, in the meantime, so far from lying concealed
to enrich the poor treasure-seekers of
our coasts, all the gains of Captain Kidd, ill-gotten
at the best, have gone to swell the revenues
of the English Kingdom.
| New-England legends | |