After the reading of these papers Kidd was examined and withdrew, and was remanded to Newgate; and it was decided that the House would the next day take into consideration the patent, commission and instructions to Kidd, which they did with the result that a motion was made that the grant passed under the Great Seal by Somers to Bellamont and others of the goods to be taken from the pirates before their conviction was illegal and void. The question being put, one hundred and eighty-five members voted in favour of the motion and one hundred and ninety-eight against it. The House then decided that Kidd should be put on his trial in the ordinary course; and on the sixteenth of April, about three weeks before it took place, being informed that he had sent to the Admiralty that he might have the use of his commission and some other papers at his trial, ordered that “the said Commission and _such other papers as Captain Kidd desires_ be delivered by the Clerk of this House to the Secretary of the Admiralty.” Had this order been complied with, and the papers been accessible to Kidd or his legal advisers, he would have had a complete answer to the charge of piracy brought against him. For they included the precious French passes, which had justified his seizure of his two prizes. CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER V KIDD’S FIRST TRIAL AT THE OLD BAILEY If any of the great personages involved in Kidd’s case took the trouble to look into the voluminous papers relating to it, which had been sent over to England by Bellamont for presentation to Parliament, they must at once have realized that Kidd’s prosecution was attended with great difficulties. Notwithstanding the public prejudice which had been aroused against him, and the fact that he was not only a Scotchman, but also a Colonial, they could hardly have believed that an English jury could be asked with safety to convict him of piracy, on any of the grounds on which Bellamont had committed him to gaol at Boston, either because he had been described by the Lords Justices as a notorious pirate or because he was thought to look guilty, or because during his examination he had in Bellamont’s opinion seemed at one time unduly cheerful, and at another unduly grave, or even because some one else had been so impertinent as to ask prematurely for the return of a bond. Kidd’s own simple narrative, which it is impossible to doubt that some of them must have read with interest, if not with shame, supported as it was by the depositions of such of his crew as had remained faithful to him, contained no inherent improbabilities, but bore the impress of truth, and satisfactorily accounted for his detention at Madagascar. No flaw was apparent in either of the French passes, which he had taken with his prizes, and which were included amongst the papers sent over by Bellamont. It is difficult to believe that any one who read them failed to come to the same conclusion that Bellamont had expressed, that they