“This man contradicts himself in a hundred places. He tells a thousand lies. He knows no more of these things than you do. This fellow used to sleep five or six months together in the hold.”
At another time, when the testimony was going strongly against him, he cried out bitterly:
“It is hard that the life of one of the king’s subjects should be taken away upon the perjured oaths of such villains as these. Because I would not yield to their wishes, and turn pirate, they now endeavor to prove that I was one.”
When the solicitor general asked if Kidd had any further questions to put to the witnesses, he despairingly replied:
“No! no. Bradingham is saving his life by taking away mine. I will not trouble the court any more, for it is a folly. So long as these men swear as they do, no oaths of mine will be of any avail.”
The verdict of guilty was rendered. The judge pronounced the awful doom:
“William Kidd, the sentence that the law hath appointed to pass upon you for your offences, and which this court doth therefore award, is, that you, the said William Kidd, shall go from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, where you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may the God of infinite mercy be merciful to your soul.”
Kidd replied, “My lord, it is a very hard sentence. For my part, I am the most innocent person of them all. I have been sworn against by perjured persons.”