When the jury had brought in their verdict, Kidd, asked whether he had anything to say for himself why he should not die according to the law, replied, “My lord, I have nothing to say, but that I have been sworn against by perjured and wicked people.” After sentence had been pronounced, he added, “My lord, it is a very hard sentence. For my part, I am the innocentest person of them all, only I have been sworn against by perjured persons.” CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER VII KIDD’S END Kidd’s experience of the legal profession and the procedure of our English courts, though short, had been painfully instructive. After his return to Newgate, he seems to have had no more to do with either of them. But he had yet to reckon with his political and religious advisers, who combined to beset him to the last. Bellamont’s apologist says: “Dr. G----g knows who the person was, who was with Kidd more than once some few days before his execution and dealt so freely with him as to advise him to charge two lords by name with somewhat that was material, which he said was the only way he could save his life. And the more to provoke the poor wretch to follow his advice, swore to him that those lords and their friends, were restless in soliciting to have him hanged, and therefore it was reasonable for him to do their business.” “God,” he adds, “disappointed all these cursed designs. Perhaps the unhappy creature knew himself incapable to make a probable story, or to carry on one though made to his hands, and that deterred him from hearkening to these counsels of devils. I rather hope that as wicked as he had been, he was not arrived at such a pitch, as to attempt to take away other men’s lives and honour by deliberate perjuries.”