Kidd’s arrival brought to a focus a sharp and unsparing struggle between the two great political factions of the day, and the Government was rocked in its seat by the exposures which were made of Bellamont and other friends of the administration’s connection with the pirate who was talked of from Land’s End to John O’Groat’s. During 1700 Kidd appeared several times before the House of Commons, and a contest was waged in that forum over his reputed treasure. A measure was introduced by the opposition providing that the commission to Kidd to take pirates and keep their effects and plunder should be illegal as void, and was lost by only a thin majority. From this it may be supposed that Bellamont and the partners got hold of the swag. Not that it did the noble earl much good, for he died at about this time. However, the commissioning of the _Adventure_ did not prove such a gain to the opposition as it hoped, and the matter was allowed to slide when the House recommended Kidd for common criminal trial. Under modern circumstances, this trial would have been a very close, keen struggle. The accused would have been able to engage the most expert counsel, who might be expected to make the prosecution exert itself in the matter of proving its charges; not an easy thing to do from some angles. There were five trials upon six indictments,--one for the murder of Gunner Moore and five for acts of piracy. Kidd was alone, of course, in the trial for murder; on the charges of piracy, he was in the dock with his nine seamen. The murder trial should be carefully noticed, in view of the modern vogue for exonerating Kidd of all guilty acts in the Indies. Those who attempt to show that Kidd was “judicially murdered,” as the result of a political plot carried on by factions opposed to the noble gentlemen who backed the Kidd enterprise, must prove this murder trial to have been unfair, for if it were not, then Kidd was liable to the death penalty regardless of the crimes of piracy. To clear himself, Kidd called three of his own men in an effort to show that he slew Moore as Moore was in the act of leading a mutiny; in other words, what we would call justifiable homicide. But his own witnesses proved that the mutiny concerning the _Loyal Captain_ occurred from two to four weeks before the death of the gunner--a fact which in modern law would have sufficed to convict Kidd--there being no “immediate” emergency, as our statutes would say. No modern court would upset the verdict of the jury who tried Kidd for murder, on the ground that it was not supported by the evidence.