Governor Kyle suggested as a suitable person for this office his secretary, Robert Quarry, and "probably this recommendation made Quarry feel justified in assuming control when Kyle died. So flagrant was Quarry's encouragement of pirates, and his cupidity so notorious that he was removed from office after two months. Later "he went north and was appointed Admiralty Judge for New York and Pennsylvania." ("The Carolina Pirates," by S. C. Hughson, Johns Hopkins University Studies.)
CHAPTER IV
CAPTAIN KIDD, HIS TRIAL, AND DEATH
As the under dog in a situation where the most powerful influences of England conspired to blacken his name and take his life, Captain William Kidd, even at this late day, deserves to be heard in his own defense. That he was unfairly tried and condemned is admitted by various historians, who, nevertheless, have twisted or overlooked the facts, as if Kidd were, in sooth, a legendary character. This blundering, careless treatment is the more surprising because Kidd was made a political issue of such importance as to threaten the overthrow of a Ministry and the Parliamentary censure of the King himself. At the height of the bitter hostility against Somers, the Whig Lord Chancellor of William III, the Kidd affair presented itself as a ready weapon for the use of his political foes.
"About the other patrons of Kidd the chiefs of the opposition cared little," says Macauley.[[1]] "Bellomont was far removed from the political scene. Romney could not, and Shrewsbury would not play a first part. Orford had resigned his employments. But Somers still held the Great Seal, still presided in the House of Lords, still had constant access to the closet. The retreat of his friends had left him the sole and undisputed head of that party which had, in the late Parliament, been a majority, and which was in the present Parliament outnumbered indeed, disorganized and threatened, but still numerous and respectable. His placid courage rose higher and higher to meet the dangers which threatened him.
"In their eagerness to displace and destroy him, they overreached themselves. Had they been content to accuse him of lending his countenance, with a rashness unbecoming his high place, to an ill-concerted scheme, that large part of mankind which judges of a plan simply by the event would probably have thought the accusation well founded. But the malice which they bore to him was not to be so satisfied. They affected to believe that he had from the first been aware of Kidd's character and designs. The Great Seal had been employed to sanction a piratical expedition. The head of the law had laid down a thousand pounds in the hopes of receiving tens of thousands when his accomplices should return laden with the spoils of ruined merchants. It was fortunate for the Chancellor that the calumnies of which he was object were too atrocious to be mischievous.
"And now the time had come at which the hoarded ill-humor of six months was at liberty to explode. On the sixteenth of November the House met.... There were loud complaints that the events of the preceding session had been misrepresented to the public, that emissaries of the Court, in every part of the kingdom, declaimed against the absurd jealousies or still more absurd parsimony which had refused to his Majesty the means of keeping up such an army as might secure the country against invasion. Angry resolutions were passed, declaring it to be the opinion of the House that the best way to establish entire confidence between the King and the Estates would be to put a brand on those evil advisers who had dared to breathe in the royal ear calumnies against a faithful Parliament.
"An address founded on these resolutions was voted; many thought that a violent rupture was inevitable. But William returned an answer so prudent and gentle that malice itself could not prolong the dispute. By this time, indeed, a new dispute had begun. The address had scarcely been moved when the House called for copies of the papers relating to Kidd's expedition. Somers, conscious of his innocence, knew that it was wise as well as right and resolved that there should be no concealment.
"Howe raved like a maniac. 'What is to become of the country, plundered by land, plundered by sea? Our rulers have laid hold of our lands, our woods, our mines, our money. And all this is not enough. We cannot send a cargo to the farthest ends of the earth, but they must send a gang of thieves after it.' Harley and Seymour tried to carry a vote of censure without giving the House time to read the papers. But the general feeling was strongly for a short delay. At length on the sixth of December, the subject was considered in a committee of the whole House. Shower undertook to prove that the letters patent to which Somers had put the Great Seal were illegal. Cowper replied to him with immense applause, and seems to have completely refuted him.