As the under dog in a situation where the most powerful influences of England conspired to blacken his name and take his life, Captain William Kidd, even at this late day, deserves to be heard in his own defense. That he was unfairly tried and condemned is admitted by various historians, who, nevertheless, have twisted or overlooked the facts, as if Kidd were, in sooth, a legendary character. This blundering, careless treatment is the more surprising because Kidd was made a political issue of such importance as to threaten the overthrow of a Ministry and the Parliamentary censure of the King himself. At the height of the bitter hostility against Somers, the Whig Lord Chancellor of William III, the Kidd affair presented itself as a ready weapon for the use of his political foes. "About the other patrons of Kidd the chiefs of the opposition cared little," says Macauley.[1] "Bellomont was far removed from the political scene. Romney could not, and Shrewsbury would not play a first part. Orford had resigned his employments. But Somers still held the Great Seal, still presided in the House of Lords, still had constant access to the closet. The retreat of his friends had left him the sole and undisputed head of that party which had, in the late Parliament, been a majority, and which was in the present Parliament outnumbered indeed, disorganized and threatened, but still numerous and respectable. His placid courage rose higher and higher to meet the dangers which threatened him. "In their eagerness to displace and destroy him, they overreached themselves. Had they been content to accuse him of lending his countenance, with a rashness unbecoming his high place, to an ill-concerted scheme, that large part of mankind which judges of a plan simply by the event would probably have thought the accusation well founded. But the malice which they bore to him was not to be so satisfied. They affected to believe that he had from the first been aware of Kidd's character and designs. The Great Seal had been employed to sanction a piratical expedition. The head of the law had laid down a thousand pounds in the hopes of receiving tens of thousands when his accomplices should return laden with the spoils of ruined merchants. It was fortunate for the Chancellor that the calumnies of which he was object were too atrocious to be mischievous.