The desire of the House of Commons that Kidd should not be tried, discharged, or pardoned until the next session of Parliament was most unfortunate for him, because it necessitated his being kept in confinement with his fellow-prisoners at Newgate for more than a year. But it cannot be regarded as unreasonable, seeing that the necessary documents relating to him had not yet been laid before the House; that time was required for the collection of evidence against him from abroad; and that such of the facts relating to him and his employers as had already been disclosed, afforded some ground for suspecting that the four inculpated ministers were far from blameless. It is the one satisfactory feature in this very unpleasant case, that no discredit attaches to the action of the House of Commons in respect of its treatment of Kidd, either in this session or the next.
On the sixth of March in the following year (1701), the House, having reassembled, ordered that the examinations of Kidd and all papers relating to him, transmitted by the Earl of Bellamont (who, it may be mentioned, was now dead), be laid before them by the Admiralty. On the next day, they were presented; and it was ordered that such of them as came from the Admiralty sealed up, be opened, and the private examinations of Captain Kidd before the Admiralty were accordingly opened and read. It appeared from them that Kidd had denied that he had ever seen Shrewsbury or Somers; or had heard more of them than that they were two of his owners; that he admitted that Bellamont had introduced him to the Earl of Orford, and that Colonel Hewetson had carried him to the Earl of Romney, which was all he knew of them.
The papers delivered up by the Admiralty related not only to Kidd, but also to atrocities which had been committed in the East Indies by pirates, who had nothing to do with him, and which had apparently been mixed up with his narrative, with the object of obscuring the case and creating a prejudice against him. The Commons appointed a committee to sort them, and to report to the House which of them related to Kidd. On the twenty-seventh of March this committee reported that they had done this; and their chairman, Sir Humphrey Mackworth, delivered them in at the clerk’s table, divided into two parcels, one containing the papers relating to Kidd, and the other the papers that did not relate to him. Then Kidd’s private examinations before the Admiralty were again read; and Kidd, being brought in by the keeper of Newgate, was called in. A petition from Cogi Babba, which had been presented to the House, was also read. This petition is noteworthy as being the only complaint to the House made by those who were alleged at his trial to have been plundered by him. It purported to be presented by Cogi Babba, on behalf of himself and other Armenians, inhabitants of Chalfa, the suburb of Spahow, and subjects to the King of Persia. It merely set forth that the petitioners had freighted a ship called the Karry Merchant (better known as the Quedagh Merchant—and referred to in the French pass as Cara Marchand), from Surat to Bengal, where the petitioners loaded her at prime cost to the value of four hundred thousand rupees, besides forty thousand rupees, the cost of the ship, which was all taken and carried away by Captain Kidd, on the ship’s returning to Surat about February, 1697; and it merely prayed that Kidd might be examined touching the premises, and the petitioners relieved concerning the same.
After the reading of these papers Kidd was examined and withdrew, and was remanded to Newgate; and it was decided that the House would the next day take into consideration the patent, commission and instructions to Kidd, which they did with the result that a motion was made that the grant passed under the Great Seal by Somers to Bellamont and others of the goods to be taken from the pirates before their conviction was illegal and void. The question being put, one hundred and eighty-five members voted in favour of the motion and one hundred and ninety-eight against it.
The House then decided that Kidd should be put on his trial in the ordinary course; and on the sixteenth of April, about three weeks before it took place, being informed that he had sent to the Admiralty that he might have the use of his commission and some other papers at his trial, ordered that “the said Commission and such other papers as Captain Kidd desires be delivered by the Clerk of this House to the Secretary of the Admiralty.” Had this order been complied with, and the papers been accessible to Kidd or his legal advisers, he would have had a complete answer to the charge of piracy brought against him. For they included the precious French passes, which had justified his seizure of his two prizes.