Pirate tales from the law

by Arthur M. Harris

Just what happened in the interview between Kidd and Bellamont is not recorded, but they began to dicker. All the pirates were quite at liberty, making themselves thoroughly at home and with all the air of honest sailors returned to spend their money and take a respite from the arduous sea.

Suddenly the wind changed. Why it so did we can only conjecture. But a letter from Bellamont is preserved in which he remarks that at about this time Livingston and Kidd were acting very “impertinently” about the money and valuables that Kidd had brought home.

Does “impertinently” mean that Bellamont suspected that his two partners were conspiring to deprive him of his share? That might well be. However, it is not fair to insinuate the governor was remiss in discharging his duties as a magistrate on the skimpy chronicle which has come down to us. We can say, however, that, so far as we can make out, he did not act with that decision which the crimes charged against Kidd would seem to require. This dallying about and questioning, privately and before the council, permit implications that the governor may or may not be actually responsible for. The whole affair does not look regular.

Then, again, Bellamont, who was sharp enough for most general affairs, could plan something like this: throw Kidd into jail, thus clearing himself of the talk of complicity which had been gathering since his connection with the pirate had become known, send him home to England for trial, and with him out of the way, attend to the matter of the loot, against which he could make a claim by virtue of the original commission to Kidd, supported by the political strength which he and his noble friends at home could exert.

Whatever might be the fact, the governor’s equivocal conduct stopped with the discovery of Livingston and Kidd’s “impertinence” in the affair of the spoils, and Kidd, with all of his crew who could be grabbed, were stowed away in Boston jail. Before that happened a number of his men had slipped across to the Province of Jersey and surrendered to Colonel Bass, the governor, in the spirit of the king’s proclamation, within the time therein provided, but to none of the persons therein particularly named as empowered to receive such surrenders.

In December, 1699, the pirates were sent to England in the frigate Advice, and on May 9, 1701, just about five years after leaving Plymouth, they went to trial for their lives in the historic Old Bailey.

XII

Captain Kidd and nine of his men arrived in Newgate gaol from the colony in February of 1700, and lay there for over a year until their trial. These nine men were those who surrendered to Colonel Bass, governor of what is now New Jersey. What disposition was made of the rest of those who came in on the St. Antonio does not appear.

Kidd’s arrival brought to a focus a sharp and unsparing struggle between the two great political factions of the day, and the Government was rocked in its seat by the exposures which were made of Bellamont and other friends of the administration’s connection with the pirate who was talked of from Land’s End to John O’Groat’s. During 1700 Kidd appeared several times before the House of Commons, and a contest was waged in that forum over his reputed treasure. A measure was introduced by the opposition providing that the commission to Kidd to take pirates and keep their effects and plunder should be illegal as void, and was lost by only a thin majority.

From this it may be supposed that Bellamont and the partners got hold of the swag. Not that it did the noble earl much good, for he died at about this time. However, the commissioning of the Adventure did not prove such a gain to the opposition as it hoped, and the matter was allowed to slide when the House recommended Kidd for common criminal trial.