hitherto, and take care that the said persons, ships and effects be secured, till His Majesty’s pleasure is known concerning them.” It would appear from the wording of this extraordinary and unjustifiable circular that the great men, who had sent Kidd out, had by this time abandoned hope of getting any gain out of their adventure, and that their main desire now was to clear themselves of the suspicion that they were conniving at the alleged piracies of the distinguished officer, whom they had induced against his own misgivings to enter their service, and who now was steadfastly doing his best for them in the face of grievous difficulties at the other end of the world. It may well be that at this time they believed him to be guilty. It may even be that they continued in this belief when report after report came to hand of the piracies of other English seamen in the East, notwithstanding the marked absence in those reports of any mention whatever of Kidd or of the _Adventure Galley_. Whether they continued to believe in his guilt after his own narrative had been made a Parliamentary paper, and he had been examined before the House of Commons on it, is a very different question. Neither they nor the Company were represented at the trial, nor was any evidence then tendered on their behalf. It was their interest to make Kidd their scapegoat; and the interest of the Company that some one, guilty or not, the higher in rank the better, should be publicly hung in infamy, as a warning to mariners engaged in the Eastern piracy. It was nobody’s interest in England that Kidd should be acquitted, unless as a condition for such acquittal he could be induced to make compromising revelations against his employers. And this, as will be seen, he resolutely refused to do in the face of strong temptation. To return now to his relations with Bellamont, who though appointed Governor of New England as far back as June, 1695, had not apparently started for America until more than two years afterwards; and had profitably employed the interval in obtaining further favours from the government. Not contented with the pension of five hundred pounds per annum which had apparently been given him on his dismissal by the late Queen, in 1693, from his post as her Receiver General, he seems to have succeeded in May, 1696, in obtaining a further grant of one thousand pounds a year out of the forfeited estates of Lord Kilmeare, and in March, 1697, to have been made colonel of a regiment of foot. In the following June it was announced that he would at last start to his government in the _Deptford_ frigate, but he delayed his departure until October, by which time he had succeeded in extracting from the Treasury a further sop in the shape of “twelve thousand pounds, paid him in mault lottery tickets.”[11]