Kidd’s expedition having originated in the desire of the government to placate the East India Company, it is only reasonable to surmise that the Company received some early official intimation of what was being done on their behalf. To what extent they were informed officially of the details of the government scheme is of comparatively small importance. The great wealth at their disposal and the prodigality with which they expended their secret service money in those days, leave no room for doubt that at a very early stage of the proceedings they made themselves acquainted with the essential facts. Their factories were exposed to imminent danger from the irritation of the Great Mogul 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 adventurers’ project as a very promising one. When they heard of the failure of the Admiralty to protect Kidd’s carefully selected crew from the press gang, and realised that the bulk of the ship’s company would have to be got from New York, it is impossible that they can have entertained any illusions as to the probability of its success.
Kidd’s crew was pressed at the Nore on the first of March, 1696. By one of the curious close coincidences of date which speak for themselves in this case more convincingly than any words can do, the Company on the following day addressed a petition to the Admiralty, praying to be allowed[107] to take the business of dealing with the pirates into their own hands. In this petition they urged that “Your Lordships will please to empower the petitioners’ ships and officers to seize and take 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 necessary to carry it into effect: “That the more regular way will be for your Lordships to take a Commission under the Great Seal of England giving power to the Lord Admiral or Commissioners for executing the office of High Admiral to grant commissions to any of the Captains of the East[108] India Company’s ships for the taking of the ships of pirates, wherein it shall be expressed what parts or shares the King shall see fit to reserve to himself or bestow upon the Captors and Company.”
“That your Lordships may be pleased to erect a Vice-Admiralty at Bombay or any other place that shall be thought expedient in the same manner as is done in the West Indies, which being established by a commission in the ordinary form, that will be sufficient to empower such Vice-Admiralty there, to proceed against ships as fully as any Vice-Admiralty in England or the High Court of Admiralty can do.”
Why no action was taken on this proposal of the Company as modified by Sir Charles Hedges, is not clear. Possibly the Admiralty hesitated to hand over to the captains of the Company’s ships work which they thought more properly belonged to the King’s navy, and which when the French war was ended was very soon performed[109] by Captain Warren’s squadron. Possibly they felt a delicacy in doing anything that 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 question of the state and condition of the trade of England, by whom, if considered at all, it would have to run the gauntlet of many implacable enemies of the Company, and in particular of certain ardent protectionists of that day who never missed an opportunity of holding forth on the injuries to which English industries were exposed by the importation by the Company of Indian silks, calicoes, and muslins.
Apart, however, from any question of[110] the probable success of Kidd’s expedition, or the desirability of giving the Company a free hand to deal themselves with the pirates, the terms of the grant of the spoil to the adventurers, with which the Company had evidently made themselves familiar, were calculated to place them in a very awkward position with the Great Mogul. What they had to protect themselves against, was a summary expulsion from his dominions; and they must have realized that even if Kidd succeeded in catching his pirates, it would be a very unsatisfactory reply to the demands of that great potentate for the immediate restitution of the 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 still at New York trying to pick up his crew, the Company presented a further petition to the Lords Justices, praying that “such of the species of gold, silver and jewels as have already been or shall hereafter be seized in the custody of any of the pirates or any other persons who cannot make a legal title thereunto, may not be disposed of, but put into the possession of the Company, in order to be preserved for the use of the proprietors in India, that the Government may see that His Majesty as well as the Company have done their utmost endeavours to seize the said pirates and to make restitution to the persons injured so far as it is in their power.”
[112]
In taking this course the Company must have realized that it would be very distasteful to the King and his four great ministers, who were proposing themselves to appropriate the bulk of the spoil. But they also knew that these great men had placed themselves hopelessly in the wrong; and that there were plenty of their enemies in the House of Commons who would be only too eager to expose the scandal, when the time came for them to do so. This consideration seems to have had some weight with the Lords Justices, and prevented them from shelving this 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, either by reason of the great quantities of gold and silver of foreign coins they usually have with them, or by other probable circumstances; and to cause them to be straightly imprisoned, and their ships, goods, and plunder to be kept in safe custody; until upon returning to us a full account of the said persons, ships, goods and plunder, with the evidence relating to them, His Majesty’s pleasure shall be known and signified concerning them.” Amongst the signatories to this despatch the name of the Earl of Romney, another of the adventurers, appears.
As might have been expected, this dispatch produced little if any practical result. During the next two years the Company continued to receive repeated reports of the depredations of the pirates, and the excitement created thereby amongst the natives[114] of India, who had in some cases seized the Company’s factories and put the factors in irons. Meanwhile the absence of any news from Kidd had not unnaturally aroused the suspicions of the Company. Culliford, the captain of one of their own East Indiamen, the Moca Frigate, had run away with their ship from Madras and joined the pirates; and it may have seemed to them by no means improbable that Kidd with his American crew had done the like. At length they received some vague intimation, confirming their suspicions; and in August, 1698, they informed the Lords Justices “that they had received some information from their factories in the East Indies that Kidd had committed several acts of piracy, particularly in seizing a Moors’ ship called the Quedagh Merchant.” As they produced 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 his utmost endeavours to pursue and seize the said Kidd, if he continue still in those parts, so likewise they have commanded me to signify their[116] directions to the respective governors of the Colonies under His Majesty’s obedience in America, that they give strict orders and take particular care for apprehending the said Kidd and his accomplices, whenever he or they shall arrive in any of the said plantations, as likewise that they shall secure his ship and all the effects therein, it being Their Excellencies’ intention that right be done to those who have been injured and robbed by the said Kidd, and that he and his associates be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. You are to be careful, therefore, to observe the said directions, and if the said Kidd or any of his accomplices be seized within the provinces under your government, you are forthwith to transmit an account thereof hitherto, and take care that the said persons, ships and effects be secured, till His Majesty’s pleasure is known concerning them.”
It would appear from the wording of this extraordinary and unjustifiable circular that[117] the great men, who had sent Kidd out, had by this time abandoned hope of getting any gain out of their adventure, and that their main desire now was to clear themselves of the suspicion that they were conniving at the alleged piracies of the distinguished officer, whom they had induced against his own misgivings to enter their service, and who now was steadfastly doing his best for them in the face of grievous difficulties at the other end of the world. It may well be 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 trial, nor was any evidence then tendered on their behalf. It was their interest to make Kidd their scapegoat; and the interest of the Company that some one, guilty or not, the higher in rank the better, should be publicly hung in infamy, as a warning to mariners engaged in the Eastern piracy. It was nobody’s interest in England that Kidd should be acquitted, unless as a condition for such acquittal he could be induced to make compromising revelations against his employers. And this, as will be seen, he resolutely refused to do in the face of strong temptation.
To return now to his relations with Bellamont, who though appointed Governor of New England as far back as June, 1695, had not apparently started for America until more than two years afterwards; and had profitably employed the interval in obtaining further favours from the government. Not contented with the pension of five hundred[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 of a regiment of foot. In the following June it was announced that he would at last start to his government in the Deptford frigate, but he delayed his departure until October, by which time he had succeeded in extracting from the Treasury a further sop in the shape of “twelve thousand pounds, paid him in mault lottery tickets.”[11]
On the first of July, 1699, Kidd, as already mentioned, landed at Boston, relying on Bellamont’s word and honor, and assurance that he believed that the two French passes, which had been handed to him by Emmot, would justify the seizure of the two[120] prizes taken, and that he made no manner of doubt that he could obtain the King’s pardon for Kidd and for the few men left who had continued faithful. It is easy to understand the relief the old man must have felt in setting foot in a civilized country once more after all his troubles, with the knowledge that he had served his employers so well, and the expectation that he would now receive recognition and reward for all he had gone through on their behalf. Towards the end of his voyage his wife and family from New York had come on board, having been informed of his whereabouts by his old friend Emmot; and all of them were probably looking forward to a warm reception on their landing. If so, they were soon disillusionized. The Governor declined to see Kidd except in the most formal manner and in the presence of witnesses. The truth was that he had placed himself in a very awkward position with the home authorities by inducing the King’s ministers to embark in[121] this unlucky adventure, and that he and they had long since come to the conclusion that the safest course to take to exonerate themselves from the consequences was to make a scapegoat of Kidd. Bellamont had been playing a very double game, not only with Kidd, but also with his own council. His own admissions in his letters written to the authorities in England before the end of that month, leave no doubt on this point. His consignment of Kidd to gaol was a foregone conclusion; and the only difficulty he had ............