There is no reason to believe that this is not a perfectly correct account of the taking of the ship; but for the capture of which it is improbable that any complaint against Kidd would ever have been made by the East India Company. Kidd’s own account of the capture is corroborated even by the King’s evidence, Bradenham, who states that Kidd chased the ship under French colours, and that when he came up with her he commanded the master on board. “And there came,” he says, “an old Frenchman in the boat; and after he had been aboard awhile” (mark the subtlety of the word “awhile.” Who would have conceived that it meant five or six days?), “he told Captain Kidd that he was not the captain but the gunner, and Kidd sent for the captain, whose name was Wright.” Palmer, the other King’s evidence, says he was not on board when the ship was taken. At the trial Kidd went more fully into this incident than in his narrative. “My lord,” he said, “this Frenchman was aboard for five or six days before I understood there was any Englishman aboard. ‘Well?’ said I. ‘What are you?--an Englishman?’ ‘I am, master.’ ‘What have you to show for it?’ ‘Nothing.’” Fortunately the French passes given to Kidd on the taking of both prizes were carefully preserved by him. He sent them to the Earl of Bellamont on his first arrival in American waters, and Bellamont forwarded them to the Admiralty. They were included amongst the papers relating to Kidd, delivered in at the clerk’s table of the House of Commons by the chairman of the committee appointed to sort the papers received from Bellamont and report thereon. Verbatim copies of them are to be found in the Journals of the House of Commons (Vol. 18, page 21), and are printed in Appendix C of this work. They constitute the most important documentary evidence that could have been forthcoming at Kidd’s trial; but although the Admiralty officials had them in their possession, and the House of Commons had directed that Kidd should have access to them, and although Kidd pleaded hard for a postponement of his trial in order that they might be produced, not only were they not produced, but the jury and judge were led to suppose that they existed only in Kidd’s imagination.