My Lords
Your Lordships most humble
and obedient Servant
Bellomont.
[1] Public Record Office, C.O. 5:860, no. 62; Commons Journal, XIII, 18-19. Endorsed as received and read Aug. 31. Richard Coote (1636-1701), earl of Bellomont in the peerage of Ireland, was designated as governor of Massachusetts in June, 1695, and as governor of New York in July, three months before his agreement with Livingston and Kidd, but was not commissioned till June 18, 1697. He arrived in New York Apr. 2, 1698, and first came to Boston May 26, 1699. The part he had taken in sending out Kidd to capture pirates made Kidd's piracy a matter of special indignation and embarrassment to him, particularly when the affair was used in Parliament, in the session of 1700, as a means of attack on the Lord Chancellor Somers (see [doc. no. 71], [note 1]). The agreement with Kidd was an unwise arrangement, but there is no doubt that Bellomont was an honest and zealous official.
[2] Long Island.
[3] The letter, June 19, and Kidd's reply, June 24, are in Commons Journal, XIII. 22.
[4] Robert Livingston (1654-1725), first proprietor of Livingston Manor, a Scot like Kidd and Campbell, was a member of the council of New York, and secretary for Indian affairs.
[5] This inventory is printed in Commons Journal, XIII. 29, and, from a copy preserved by the Gardiner family at Gardiner's Island, in C.C. Gardiner, Lion Gardiner and his Descendants (St. Louis, 1890), pp. 84-85. Judge Samuel Sewall headed the commission, and supervised the shipping of part of the treasure to London; Diary, Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, XLVI. 7. The total of what was secured by the authorities—obtained from Kidd's box and chest, from the Antonio, from Campbell, and from Gardiner—was 1111 troy ounces of gold, 2353 ounces of silver, 17-3/8 ounces of jewels or precious stones, 57 bags of sugar, 41 bales of merchandise, and 17 pieces of canvas. How much leaked away in sloops from Long Island Sound to New York and elsewhere, or in the West Indies, or was destroyed in the burning of the Quedah Merchant in Hispaniola, is matter for conjecture. The total capture, listed above, was thought to be worth £14,000.—Since writing the above, I have come upon Mr. Ralph D. Paine's The Book of Buried Treasure (London, 1911), which presents, at p. 82, a photograph of the inventory mentioned above. Mr. Paine prints our docs. nos. [72], [76], [79], [82], [84], and part of [85].
[6] James Graham, another Scot, was attorney-general of New York and a member of the council.
[7] Acting as chief executive, in the absence of King William.
[8] Joseph Bradish and others of the crew of the ship Adventure of London, on a voyage from London to Borneo in 1698, piratically seized the ship and ran away with it to Block Island. John Higginson of Salem, in a letter of Oct. 3, 1699, after mention of Kidd, adds, "And there was one Bradish, a Cambridge man, who sailed in an interloper bound for India, who, in some part of the East Indies, took an opportunity, when the captain and some of the officers were on shore, to run away with the ship, and came upon our coast, and sunk their ship at Block Island, and brought much wealth ashore with them; but Bradish, and many of his company, and what of his wealth could be found, were seized and secured. But Bradish, and one of his men, broke prison and run away amongst the Indians; but it is supposed that he will be taken again." Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, XXVII. 210. Judge Sewall reports him as recaptured Oct. 26, 1699, and sent to England with Kidd Feb. 16, 1700. Ibid., XLV. 503; XLVI. 6.
[9] A Massachusetts act of 1692 punishing piracy with death had been disallowed by the crown. Judge Sewall, in the debate in the council as to the matter, declared that he knew of no power they had to send men out of the province to be tried. Ibid., XLVI. 4. He was probably right.