It never seems to have occurred to this gentleman, or indeed to any one else, during Kidd’s last days, that he was innocent of the crimes laid to his charge, and that he was not likely to go back on his word. Not only in his statements with respect to his employers, but also in his simple written narrative to Bellamont and in the oral evidence given at his trial of the various incidents in his voyage he had told a plain unvarnished tale, from which he had never deviated. So far as his dealings with his employers were concerned he had sworn in his examinations before the Admiralty and also in the House of Commons, that he had never seen Somers or Shrewsbury, or heard more of them, than that Bellamont had told him they were two of the owners of the _Adventure Galley_; that Bellamont had introduced him to Orford and that Colonel Hewson had carried him to Romney in his coach which was all that he knew of them. He had been recalled and pressed to make some further disclosure with regard to these great personages, and asked categorically if he knew anything in relation to Bellamont, Romney, Shrewsbury, Somers, or Orford, or any of the other owners, in relation to his expedition, or any other matter, touching any private directions, articles or instructions, given to him by word of mouth or otherwise. And after taking time “to recollect himself well,” he had affirmed that “he had nothing more to say in relation to the owners than that he had before declared.” It may safely be assumed that his answer to Dr. G----g’s mysterious friend, whoever he may have been, was to the same effect. It remained now for him to undergo that last trial of his patience, to which all condemned prisoners had in those days to submit, the well-meant attempts on the part of the Chaplain of the gaol to extort from them confessions of their guilt. If Kidd had yielded to this cruel pressure, he would have left this world with a lie upon his lips, as it is to be feared many poor creatures did before and after him. Witness the confessions of some of those convicted of witchcraft. It is no small confirmation of his innocence that he was able to emerge even from this trying ordeal without discredit to his veracity. The Ordinary of Newgate at that time was the Rev. Paul Lorrain, well known in his day as the author of innumerable “Last Dying Speeches and Confessions” of noted criminals, who seems to have combined with the more serious duties of his calling as confessor to the doomed the somewhat incongruous functions discharged in these latter days by enterprising press interviewers of celebrities in whose personal peculiarities and proclivities the reading public may be supposed to take an interest. He can rarely, if ever, have had more promising subjects for his professional treatment, or men of whose last days his account was likely to have a wider circulation, than Kidd and his fellow sufferers.