Quedah Merchant_. His defense was that on board
these prizes he had found French papers, or safe conduct passes made
out in the name of the King of France and issued by the French East
India Company. He therefore took the ships as lawful commerce of the
enemy.

The crews of such trading craft as these comprised men of many nations,
Arabs, Lascars, Portuguese, French, Dutch, English, Armenian, and
Heaven knows what else. The nationality of the skipper, the mate, the
supercargo, or the foremast hands had nothing to do with the ownership
of the vessel, or the flag under which she was registered, or
chartered. The papers found in her cabin determined whether or not she
should be viewed as a prize of war, or permitted to go on her way. In
order to protect the ship as far as possible, it was not unusual for
the master to obtain two sets of papers, to be used as occasion might
require, and it is easily possible that the _Quedah Merchant_, trading
with the East India Company, may have taken out French papers, in order
to deceive any French privateer or cruiser that might be encountered.
Nor did the agents of the East India Company see anything wrong in
resorting to such subterfuges.

The corner stone of Kidd's defense and justification was these two
French passes, which precious documents he had brought home with him,
and it was admitted even by his enemies that the production of them as
evidence would go far to clear him of the charges of piracy. That they
were in his possession when he landed in New England and that Bellomont
sent them to the Lords of Plantations in London is stated in a letter
quoted in the preceding chapter. The documents then disappeared, their
very existence was denied, and Kidd was called a liar to his face, and
his memory damned by historians writing later, for trying to save his
neck by means of evidence which he was powerless to exhibit.

It would appear that these papers were not produced in court because it
had been determined that Kidd should be found guilty as a necessary
scapegoat. But he told the truth about the French passes, and after
remaining among the state papers for more than two centuries, the
original of one of them, that found by him aboard the _Quedah
Merchant_, was recently discovered in the Public Record Office by the
author of this book, and it is herewith photographed in _fac simile_.
Its purport has been translated as follows:

FROM THE KING.

WE, FRANCOIS MARTIN