made acquainted with the proposal by the Earl of Bellomont, which he was pleased to think very necessary to be immediately considered, because about that time divers informations upon oath had been sent to the Secretary of State of several vessels gone and a-going from Bermuda, New York, Rhode Island, etc., upon piratical designs. . . His Majesty was pleased to consult the Admiralty on this occasion; but the war employing all the King's ships which were in a condition for service, and the great want of seamen, notwithstanding the press and all other means used, together with the remoteness of the voyage, and the uncertainty of meeting with the pirates, or taking them though they might be found out," occasioned after some deliberation the laying aside of this project as impracticable at that time.1 Lord Bellomont then proposed the fitting out of a privateer, which he insisted would prove a profitable speculation. This enterprise he succeeded in carrying into effect. Several of the first men of the kingdom, the Earl of Oxford (first Lord of the Admiralty), Somers (Lord Chancellor), the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Earl of Romney, took shares, and the King was to have a tenth part of the profits of the cruise. Kidd obtained a commission under April. the Great Seal for his ship, and went to sea from Plymouth with a small crew. He crossed to New York, whence, having there, with Governor Fletcher's help, increased his company to the number of a hundred and fifty men, he sailed for the eastern February. 1696. September. 1697. able fortune, by whom he had a child." (Ibid.) He was a Scotsman by birth. (O'Callaghan, IV. 583.) 2 The Articles of Agreement by Bellomont and Livingston with Kidd (Oct. 10, 1695) are in O'Callaghan, IV. 762 et seq.; comp. 815. 3 Livingston afterwards told Lord But either Kidd had been a rogue from the beginning, or the new temptations which he encountered were too much for his little virtue. The times of Drake and Hawkins were not distant, and the morals of the seas were far from being settled. Madagascar and Borneo were a great way from the country where English evil-doers might be called to account, and there were richer prizes along their coasts than the paltry vessels of their native thieves. Kidd was not long in seeing that his good ship would be less gainfully employed in hunting pirates than in piracy. At first he was timid, if he had ceased to be scrupulous, and he contented himself with taking the ships of Asiatics, whose sovereigns would not be likely to bring their com plaints to the ear of his. But use lessens marvel. Presently he became the terror of the Indian commerce of the Portuguese. As he grew reckless, he grew savage. He landed with his brutes for expeditions of burning and massacre. He scourged his prisoners to make them reveal the hiding-places of their rupees. When the news of his doings came slowly to London, the merchants were con Bellomont that this successful enlist- (O'Callaghan, IV. 759, 760; comp. 815.) "If I have served the King and interest of England here, I am sure I have been strangely rewarded there." (Ibid., 725.) Nobody, however, was hostile to Lord Bellomont. It was Somers and his friends that he had to suffer for. I am surprised at the inaccuracy of some of Lord Macaulay's statements respecting Lord Bellomont's connection with Kidd (History of England, V. 246 et seq.), when such good authorities were accessible to him as the reports of Kidd's trials (State Trials, XIV. 123 et seq.) and the "Account of the Proceedings," &c., above-quoted. This work, a warm vindication and panegyric of Lord Bellomont, breathes the vehe ment spirit of the time. cerned for what had been done, and distressed by fear lest their turn should come next. The members of the East India Company were aghast in view of the retaliation to which such freedoms on an Englishman's part might expose their feeble factories.' The Lords of Trade sent orders to those in authority in the foreign possessions of England to keep a look-out for the ravager. Lord Bellomont's past agency in Kidd's promotion imposed on him a special responsibility. The matter had assumed a high political importance. The jealous mood of England, at the time when Parliament had refused the King's request to retain his Dutch guards, and was meditating an impeachment of Lord Somers, fastened upon Kidd's crimes as a means of bringing odium on the Whig leaders. In the House of Commons a resolve was proposed, and defeated a majority of less than fifty votes, that the affixing by Somers of the Great Seal to Kidd's letters-patent was "dishonorable to the King, against the law of nations, contrary to the statutes of the realm, an invasion of property, and destructive of trade and commerce."2 Even the King's august name was brought rudely into the question, as if he had been a stockholder in a pirate ship. by the counter party being negligent in attendance." (Evelyn, Memoirs, III. 376, for Dec. 3, 1699; comp. Rapin, History, &c., III. 396; Shrewsbury Correspondence, 599, 600.) — "I have been much troubled to find my name brought on the stage in the House of Commons about Kidd. 'Twas hard, I thought, I should be pushed at so vehemently, when it was known I had taken Kidd, and secured him in order to his punishment, which was a sure sign the noble Lords concerned with me, and myself, had no criminal design in sending out that ship." (Bellomont to the Lords of Trade, Oct. 17, 1700, in O'Callaghan, IV. 725.) Lord Bellomont was named in the preamble to the proposed Act. ? 1699. May. With marvellous rashness, since he must have assured himself that there had been no talebearer, Kidd came back with some of his spoils to an English colony. He appeared in Delaware Bay with about forty comrades, and having taken in some supplies proceeded to Rhode Island,' whence he sent a messenger to Lord Bellomont, who had then just arrived in Boston, to say that he was come thither to make his terms in a sloop, which had on board goods to the value of ten thousand pounds, and was able to make his innocence appear by many witnesses." The Governor feared that the culprit might yet escape. With the advice of his Council, he sent a message to Kidd that, "if he would make his innocence appear, he might safely come to Boston." Thither, accordingly, Kidd came in his sloop. After an unsatisfacJune 1. tory examination before the Governor and Council, June 6. he was "committed close prisoner with divers of his crew." The Governor transmitted his minutes of the examination to the Lords of Trade,3 and asked that a ship of war might be sent to convey the rover to July 8. 2 The messenger was one Emott, whom the Governor describes to the Lords of Trade (Letter of July 8, 1699, in British Colonial Papers; comp. letter of September 12, of the Lords of Trade to the Lords Justices, in O'Callaghan, IV. 583) as “a cunning Jacobite, a fast friend of Fletcher's, and my avowed enemy." (Comp. his letters to the Board, of July 26, August 28, in British Colonial Papers.) 1 Full Account, &c., 9." June into reserve, while the examination 19, 1699. Last Thursday Captain was proceeding. He had further Kidd came into Rhode Island harbor." thrown out a hint of a present of (News-letter in Proceedings of Mass. a thousand pounds "in gold dust Hist. Soc. for 1863, 422.) and ingots." (O'Callaghan, IV. 583, 584.) On the arrest of Kidd, the jewels were handed over to trustees. —“ Captain Kidd sent the gaoler to me a fortnight ago to acquaint me that, if I would let him go to the place where he left the ship" Quedah Merchant,” and to St. Thomas Island and Curaçoa, he would undertake to bring off fifty or three-score thousand pounds, which would otherwise be lost; that he would be satisfied to go a prisoner, to remove from me any jealousy of his designing to escape; but I sent him word he was the King's prisoner, and I could hearken to no such proposition, but I bade the gaoler to try if he could prevail with Kidd sent a present of some jewels to the Countess of Bellomont. The Governor informed his Council, who advised that they should be accepted, lest Kidd should be alarmed 1701. England for trial, there being no provincial law for punishing piracy with death. He was tried at the Old Bailey for murder and for piracy, found guilty May 8. under both indictments, and executed.2 In the latter part of the time of Lord Bellomont's short stay in Massachusetts, the Indians divided his attention Captain Kidd to discover where his treasure was hid by him, but he said nobody could find it but himself, and would not tell any further." (Letter of Lord Bellomont to the Lords of Trade, of June 5, 1699, in British Colonial Papers; comp. Full Account, &c., 11.) 1 Kidd continued to be a bête noire for more than a century. A broadside was still in circulation in my childhood, which purported to record his "Last Dying Words and Confession": Not many leagues from shore, as I sailed." The piracies specified in the indictments were the capture and robbery of a ship named the "Quedah Merchant," owned by Armenians, commanded by an Englishman, and navigated by a Moorish crew; of three Moorish vessels, one of them having also an English and another a Dutch captain; and of a ship of Portugal. It appeared on the trial that, after the capture of the "Quedah Merchant," Kidd had transferred himself to her with part of his crew. On his return voyage, he had left her with some twenty of his men in the West Indies, and there had bought the sloop in which he came to New England. The surgeon of the ship and a seaman became King's evidence. Kidd's defence was, as to some of his captures, that they were within his commission, the vessels being furnished with French passes; as to others, that he was not responsible for them, his men having mutinied and coerced him. One of the last objects of Lord Bellomont's attention before he left Massachusetts was the condition of the French Huguenots, who, thirteen years before, in the time of Governor Andros, had been established in the town of Oxford. (See above, Vol. III. 546, note 4.) In 1695, three years before Lord Bellomont's arrival, the settlement was broken up by the Indians (see above, 153), and the fugitives came to Boston, where they established a church, which continued for several years, till domestic alliances formed with other inhabitants of the town drew off its supporters. There are numerous descendants of theirs in Boston and its vicinity, but mostly through females of the stock. Only a few names are continued, as Sigourney, Cazneau, and Johonnot. Others were distinguished within a recent time, as Bowdoin, Faneuil, and Chardon. There was a Boudinot at Oxford, but Philadelphia was the birthplace of Elias Boudinot, the New Jersey philanthropist. Gabriel Bernon was the principal man of the Huguenots who came from Oxford to Boston. Dec. 18, 1696, he was in London, |