a
Sloopman of Rhode Island that he had employed there. The Gold seized
at Mr. Campbell's, the Narrator intended for presents to some that he
expected to do him kindness.

Some of his company put their Chests and bails on board a New York
Sloop lying at Gardiner's Island.

WM. KIDD.

Presented and taken _die praedict_
before his Exc'y and Council
Addington, Sec'y.

More than a year after Kidd had been carried to England with twelve of
his crew, he was arraigned for trial at the Old Bailey. Meantime Lord
Bellomont had died in Boston. Trials for piracy were common enough,
but this accused shipmaster was confronted by such an array of titled
big-wigs and court officials as would have been sufficient to try the
Lord Chancellor himself. For the government, the Lord Chief Baron, Sir
Edward Ward, presided, and with him sat Sir Henry Hatsell, Baron of the
Exchequer; Sir Salathiel Lovell, the Recorder of London; Sir John
Turton and Sir Henry Gould, Justices of the King's Bench, and Sir John
Powell, a Justice of the Common Pleas. As counsel for the prosecution,
there was the Solicitor General, Dr. Oxenden; Mr. Knapp, Mr. Coniers,
and Mr. Campbell.

For Captain William Kidd, there was no one. By the law of England at
that time, a prisoner tried on a criminal charge could employ no
counsel and was permitted to have no legal advice, except only when a
point of law was directly involved. Kidd had been denied all chance to
muster witnesses or assemble documents, and, at that, the court was so
fearful of failing to prove the charges of piracy that it was decided
to try him first for killing his gunner, William Moore, and convicting
him of murder. He would be as conveniently dead if hanged for the one
crime as for the other.

Now, it is not impossible that Kidd had clean forgotten that trifling
episode of William Moore. For a commander to knock down a seaman
guilty of disrespect or disobedience was as commonplace as eating. The
offender was lucky if he got off no worse. Discipline in the naval and
merchant services was barbarously severe. Sailors died of flogging or
keelhauling, or of being triced up by the thumbs for the most trifling
misdemeanors. As for Moore, he was a mutineer, and an insolent rogue
besides, who had stirred up trouble in the crew, and nothing would have
been said to any other skipper than Kidd for shooting him or running
him through. However, let the testimony tell its own story.