re
you to make diligent search within your several Precincts for such
suspected persons, and to apprehend and seize every such person or
persons, his or their money, gold, bullion, Merchandize and Treasure,
and to bring the same before the next Justice of the Peace to be
examined and proceeded against as the Law directs. And you are to
require and take such a number of persons, with Armes or otherwise,
unto your Assistance as you shall think meet for the seizing and
apprehending such suspected person or persons aforesd. and carrying
him or them before the next Justice or Justices. And all his Ma'tys
subjects are required to be aiding and assisting unto you in the
Execution of this Warrant, as they will answer their refusal or
neglect at their peril. And hereof you or they may not faile. And make
return of this Warrant with your doings thereupon. Given under my hand
and seal at Armes at Boston the Fourth day of June 1698, In the tenth
year of his Ma'tys Reign.

WM. STOUGHTON.

CASE OF WILLIAM KIDD.

_71. Deposition of Benjamin Franks. October 20, 1697._[1]

[Footnote 1: Public Record Office, C.O. 323:2, no. 124 I. William
Kidd, the most famous pirate in American history, was a Scot, born in
Dundee in 1654. In 1689-1690, in command of a captured ship, he took a
creditable part in the attacks on Mariegalante and St. Martin's by
Captain Hewetson, who at Kidd's trial testified to his bravery; but a
few weeks later his men, ex-pirates apparently, ran away with his
ship. _Cal. St. P. Col._, 1689-1692, pp. 122, 226, 227; Hargrave,
_State Trials_, V. 326. In 1689 he settled in New York, where he seems
to have been well regarded; in the record of his marriage license, May
16, 1691 (_N.E. Hist. Gen. Reg._, VI. 63) he is styled "William Kidd,
Gentleman," and two days earlier the New York assembly (_Journal_, ed.
1764, I. 6, 13) voted him a gratuity of L150 for services in
connection with the arrival of Governor Sloughter. In 1695, Kidd being
then in England, Robert Livingston of New York arranged in London with
Lord Bellomont, who had been designated but not yet commissioned as a
governor in America, and with others, for a privateering voyage under
Kidd's command. Other sharetakers were Sir Edward Russell, first lord
of the admiralty, Sir John Somers, lord keeper of the great seal, the
Duke of Shrewsbury, secretary of state, and the Earl of Romney,
master-general of the ordnance; and the king himself was to receive
on