As might have been expected, this dispatch produced little if any practical result. During the next two years the Company continued to receive repeated reports of the depredations of the pirates, and the excitement created thereby amongst the natives of India, who had in some cases seized the Company’s factories and put the factors in irons. Meanwhile the absence of any news from Kidd had not unnaturally aroused the suspicions of the Company. Culliford, the captain of one of their own East Indiamen, the _Moca Frigate_, had run away with their ship from Madras and joined the pirates; and it may have seemed to them by no means improbable that Kidd with his American crew had done the like. At length they received some vague intimation, confirming their suspicions; and in August, 1698, they informed the Lords Justices “that they had received _some_ information from their factories in the East Indies that Kidd had committed several acts of piracy, particularly in seizing a Moors’ ship called the _Quedagh Merchant_.” As they produced no evidence from their informants at Kidd’s trial in support of these allegations, although they had ample time and opportunity for obtaining it during his two years’ imprisonment, it is not unfair to assume that the information which they received on this occasion was not such as they cared to submit to an English Court of Law. But such as it was, the Lords Justices did not hesitate to act at once upon it, and to assume without further inquiry not only that Kidd was guilty, but that he was already a notorious pirate. On the twenty-third of November, 1698, whilst Kidd was stranded at Madagascar, they sent the following circular to Rear Admiral Benbow, and the governor of every American Colony: “The Lords Justices having been informed by several advices from the East Indies of the notorious piracies committed by Captain Kidd, and of his having seized and plundered divers ships in those seas, as their Excellencies have given orders to the commander of the squadron fitted out for the East Indies that he use his utmost endeavours to pursue and seize the said Kidd, if he continue still in those parts, so likewise they have commanded me to signify their directions to the respective governors of the Colonies under His Majesty’s obedience in America, that they give strict orders and take particular care for apprehending the said Kidd and his accomplices, whenever he or they shall arrive in any of the said plantations, as likewise that they shall secure his ship and all the effects therein, it being Their Excellencies’ intention that right be done to those who have been injured and robbed by the said Kidd, and that he and his associates be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. You are to be careful, therefore, to observe the said directions, and if the said Kidd or any of his accomplices be seized within the provinces under your government, you are forthwith to transmit an account thereof