Whatsoever may have been wrong with his contract or his commissions, and Parliament sustained them by vote as already mentioned, Captain Kidd cannot be held blameworthy on this score. And it is absurd to call him a premeditated pirate who sailed from Plymouth with evil purpose in his heart. His credentials and endorsements, his record as a shipmaster, and his repute at home, cannot be set aside. They speak for themselves. Nor is it possible to reconcile the character of the man, as he was known by his deeds up to that time, with the charges laid against him. It is worth noting that the complaints made against his conduct in the waters of the Far East came from the East India Company which denounced and proclaimed him as a pirate with a price on his head. It was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Although the House of Commons had decided five years before that the old Company should no longer have a monopoly of English trade in Asiatic seas, the merchants of London or Bristol dared not fit out ventures to voyage beyond the Cape of Good Hope, and found it necessary to send their goods in the ships that flew the flag of India House. The private trader still ran grave of being treated as a smuggler, if not as a pirate. "He might, indeed, if he was wronged, apply for redress to the tribunals of his country. But years must elapse before his cause could be heard; his witnesses must be conveyed over fifteen thousand miles of sea; and in the meantime he was a ruined man."[3] This powerful corporation which ruled the Eastern seas as it pleased, confiscating the ships and goods of private traders, accused Kidd of seizing two ships with their cargoes which belonged to the Great Mogul, and of several petty depredations hardly to be classed as piracy. The case against him was built up around the two vessels known as the _November_ and the _Quedah Merchant_. His defense was that on board these prizes he had found French papers, or safe conduct passes made out in the name of the King of France and issued by the French East India Company. He therefore took the ships as lawful commerce of the enemy.