With the bewhiskered seafarers in the dock before him, the clerk of arraignments of the Old Bailey arose and hurled eighty clauses at the accused, eighty or more clauses, with no longer pause between them than a semicolon. It may be submitted that this is no fair way to come at a man whose method of combat is entirely different; who thrusts, for instance, with a cutlass instead of a verb; hurls round-shot in place of mere nouns, with a wooden bucket, say, for purposes of punctuation. A fine fellow this clerk of arraignments with his wig and gown and fat, subservient bailiffs about him! But put him on the tipsy decks of the _Adventure_, and, mark’ee, that would be another story. So, perhaps, the captain thought, as he stood up before this broadside of words. If English justice is swift in these days, it must have been greased lightning in the days of William III. Half an hour after the grand jury met and returned the indictments, Kidd went to trial before the petit jury, and three days sufficed for all five indictments. A battery of prosecutors shelled the accused. The crown was represented by Mr. Knapp, Dr. Newton, Advocate of the Admiralty; Sir John Hawles, Sir Salathiel Lovell, Recorder; the Solicitor General and the Attorney General. On the bench, sometimes ably assisting the prosecution, were Baron Gould, Baron Hatsell; Justice Turton, Justice Powel and Chief Baron Ward, who divided the job of presiding in groups of judges. Now, in those days one accused of crime was not allowed the assistance of counsel on matters of fact. On a pure question of law he was permitted to consult a lawyer. This was just the opposite of what, according to a more enlightened jurisprudence, it should have been. Perhaps the extraordinary importance of the real science of evidence had not occurred to our forefathers. Great injustice was the result of thus handicapping a defendant. Kidd and his nine colleagues had to carry the big job of defense unadvised. The state used just two witnesses, Palmer and Bradinham, both old Kidd men who were turned king’s evidence. Palmer had been a common seaman on the _Adventure_ and was called by Kidd a “loggerhead”; Bradinham had been surgeon aboard, and was accused by Kidd of being a lazy, thieving, perjured rascal. Every man was running for his own neck then, and no one could afford to be too particular as to how he saved it. All of the piracies we have set down, as well as the murder of Moore, came from the evidence of Palmer and Bradinham, somewhat corroborated by the expressions of the nine sailors who were not delicate to save their commander in this pinch.