“The CLERK OF ARRAIGNS. Set aside all but Captain Kidd. William Kidd, you are now to be tried on the bill of murder. The jury is going to be sworn. If you have any cause of exception you may speak to them, as they come to the Book. “KIDD. I shall challenge none. I know nothing to the contrary, but that they are all honest men.” The greater part of the evidence in this trial has already been given verbatim in the narrative of the voyage of the _Adventure Galley_. It is clear from it that the crew for some time before the altercation, which led to Moore’s death, had been on the brink of mutiny; that Moore was the spokesman of the mutineers who were prevented by Kidd from seizing the Dutch ship, and that he and his associates had concocted a plan, by which they thought they might have seized her and extorted documentary evidence from the Dutchmen to excuse themselves and Kidd in the event of their being called in question for doing so. The balance of evidence is strongly in favor of Moore’s having upbraided Kidd in the altercation which ended in the fatal blow, for not having allowed the mutineers to have their own way. When Kidd called him “a lousie dog,” his answer practically was that if Kidd had taken his advice, he and his companions, so far from being “lousie dogs,” would have made their fortune and been gentlemen. Kidd seems to have knocked him down in a moment of very justifiable indignation, and without any intention of killing him. It is not even clear from the evidence that Moore died of the blow. The only two witnesses against Kidd at the trial were Palmer and Bradenham. On Kidd’s behalf three of the prisoners, Owens, Parrott, and Barlicorn, gave evidence, and Kidd offered to call the rest of them if necessary. When he asked Bradenham, the principal witness against him, with a view to test the value of his evidence, whether he had not been in the mutiny himself, he was prevented from insisting on an answer by the Lord Chief Baron Ward, who said, “You will not infer that if he was a mutineer it was lawful for you to kill Moore.” Not only was he prevented from eliciting this fact, which would have tended to discredit the chief witness against him, but he was prevented from calling evidence as to his own character. The Lord Chief Baron summed up very summarily against him, being evidently desirous of ending the case as quickly as possible.