It might have been thought that the testimony given by such unimpeachable witnesses as Colonel Hewson, Captain Bond, Captain Humphreys, and Mr. Cooper of the character and eminent public services of Kidd was entitled to some weight, in cases where the question for the jury to decide was the relative credibility of Kidd and such of his men as had remained faithful to him, and that of the two mutineers who had by their own confession joined Culliford in open piracy, and had since been promised their lives if they would take Kidd’s. This, however, was clearly not the view of the Lord Chief Baron. Speaking of Kidd in his summing up he said: “He has called some persons here to give an account of his reputation, and of his services done in the West Indies, and one of them says” (as a matter of fact they all swore to it) “he did good service there. Well, so he might and might have” (_sic_) “and it is very like he had such reputation, when the King trusted him with these commissions, else I believe he had never had them, so that (_sic_) whatever he might be so many years ago, that is not a matter to be insisted on now, but what he hath done since, and how he hath acted in this matter charged against him.” The Lord Chief Baron evidently had no belief in the doctrine “_Nemo repente fuit turpissimus_.” Bradenham, before he had been caught by the police in London, had been seen by one of Kidd’s witnesses, a Mr. Say, at the Marshalsea. This witness, on being told by a friend that Bradenham had been Kidd’s surgeon, had observed: “There is a mighty noise about Captain Kidd,” on which Bradenham admitted that he had been with Kidd at Madagascar, but expressed his opinion that Kidd “had done nothing but what he could answer for, and nothing that could do him any hurt.” The truthfulness of this evidence was not questioned by the prosecution: but it was swept aside contemptuously by the Lord Chief Baron. “Mr. Bradenham,” he said, “was with him there. There is no doubt of that. It is not to be questioned, that he would not say anything ill against him then.” In other words, Bradenham in the judge’s opinion, was a witness whose voluntary evidence on an ordinary occasion was worthless. His testimony could only become of value, when given under compulsion, with the object of saving his own life, and after he had been drilled to cast it into such a shape that it would in the opinion of the legal advisers of the Crown, imperil the life of another man of unimpeachable antecedents, whom the Government desired to destroy. It is to be feared that such views of the value of King’s evidence were by no means rare in those days. When questioned by the Judge, why, if he thought the _Quedagh Merchant_ was a lawful prize, he did not have her condemned, Kidd’s simple answer was that his men would not allow him to do so. As a matter of fact he was on his way to the nearest Court of Admiralty competent to condemn her, when his men mutinied.