" a commission to apprehend certain
pirates, particularly Thomas Tew, of Rhode Island, Thomas Wake, and
William Maze, of New York, John Ireland, and "all other Pirates,
Free-booters, and Sea Rovers of what Nature soever."

This privateer enterprise was financed chiefly by Lord Bellomont, but the
other adventurers (on shore and in safety) were the Lord Chancellor; the
Earl of Orford, the First Lord of the Admiralty; the Earl of Romney and
the Duke of Shrewsbury, Secretaries of State; Robert Livingston, Esq., of
New York; and lastly, Captain Kidd himself.

The ship the _Adventure_ galley was bought and fitted up, and Kidd sailed
away in her to suppress piracy, particularly on the coast of America.
Nothing was heard of him till August, 1698, when ugly rumours began to get
about of piracies committed by Kidd in the Indian Ocean. In December of
the same year a general pardon was offered to all pirates who should
surrender themselves, with two exceptions--namely, Captain Avery and
Captain Kidd. In May, 1699, Kidd suddenly appeared in a small vessel at
New York, with rich booty. His chief patron, Lord Bellomont, was now
Governor, and was placed in the most awkward position of having to carry
out his orders and arrest Kidd for piracy and send him in chains to
England in H.M.S. _Advice_, which ship had been sent specially to New York
to carry back Kidd, Bradish, and other pirates to England.

The trial of Kidd proved a scandal, for someone had to suffer as scapegoat
for the aristocratic company privateers, and the lot fell to the luckless
Kidd. Kidd was charged with piracy and with murder. The first charge of
seizing two ships of the Great Mogul could have been met by the production
of two documents which Kidd had taken out of these ships, and which, he
claimed, proved that the ships were sailing under commissions issued by
the French East India Company, and made them perfectly lawful prizes.
These commissions Kidd had most foolishly handed over to Lord Bellomont,
and they could not be produced at the trial, although they had been
exhibited before the House of Commons a little while previously.

It is an extraordinary and tragic fact that these two documents, so vital
to Kidd, were discovered only lately in the Public Records Office--too
late, by some 200 years, to save an innocent man's life.

As it happened, the charge of which Kidd was hanged for was murder, and
ran thus: "Being moved and seduced by the instigations of the