[Footnote 1: Suffolk Court Files, Boston, no. 4682, paper 3. The case is not precisely one of piracy, though piracy was at first suspected, but rather of the receipt of piratical goods. Bellomont writes to the Board of Trade, Oct. 24, 1699 (_Cal. St. P. Col._, 1699, p. 486), that he had lately seized at Boston a ship and some East India goods; that the officers of the custom house were not nimble enough or they had got all the goods, worth above L2000; that that which first gave him a "jealousy" of the ship was the fact that the master, William Sims, a man formerly burnt in the hand for stealing, had gone forth a poor man and come back master and half owner of a ship. The ship was seized, condemned, and sold for the crown, and Sims committed to jail. He had sailed as master of a sloop to Curacao, and thence to Crab Island (Vieques, see doc. no. 72, note 5). _Ibid._, 499. Bellomont suspected that what he found there in August had been derived from Kidd in May.] Suffolk SS. BOSTON, October 22, 1699 nine a clock at night: The Examination of William Syms of Boston, Marriner, Master of the Ship _Fidelia_, as followeth, Vizt. The Examinant saith That sometime in the month of August last past, he being at Crabb Island in the West Indies, where was lying the sd Ship _Fidelia_, one Tempest Rogers then Master of her,[2] of whome this Examinant and John Brett of Antigua Merchant (then at the aforesd Island) bought the sd Ship, and the Examinant was Ships' Master of her, and after their buying of the sd Ship, the sd Rogers tooke out of the sd Ship seaveral Bayles of Goods to the number of about twenty and laded them upon the Sloop which he had of the Examin't in part payment for the Ship, and left several bayles on board the Ship wch this Examinant Supposeth the said Mr. Brett bought of him: said Rogers declared that he came from the Coast of Guinea, saying also that he had been at Madagascar, and the Examinant saw the sd Rogers Sell several Bayles of Goods at Crabb Island to several Merchants that came thither: which Bayles were opened and contained Silke Muslins and other Muslins, Callico's and other East India Goods, and sd Rogers said he had remitted home to his owners the value of Twenty seven Thousand pounds in money by good bills of Exchange. and after the Examin't left Crabb Island with his Ship he Stopt at Portreico,[3] tooke in some Ballast and Provisions and came directly for New England, Mr. Brett aforesd, his Merchant and part owner, being on board, and when they came into the Massachusetts Bay as high as the Gurnett[4] off Plymouth, they spoke to a Sloop that was then fishing in the Bay to come onboard, and sd Brett treated with the sd Sloopmen, and the Bayles then on board the sd Ship to the number of Fourteen or Fifteen, containing (as the Examinant supposeth) East India Goods, were put out of the Ship into the sd Sloop, and the Examinant and sd Brett also went onboard of her leaving the Ship in charge with James