To come now to the last painful incident in this disgraceful tragedy. The day after Kidd’s corpse had been hung aloft in chains on the gallows, Somers dared at last to break the silence he had so long maintained and to put in his reply to the Articles of Impeachment brought against him by the Commons. The allegations he had to meet were that in the grant of the goods of the pirates to the co-adventurers, the name of Samuel Newton, one of the Grantees, had been “used in trust and for the sole benefit of” himself: that “the grant manifestly tended to the obstruction of trade and navigation, the great loss and prejudice of merchants and others, His Majesty’s subjects, and the dishonour of the King and his Kingdom:” and that “by procuring and passing it,” he had been guilty of a notorious breach of his duty. In his reply he was forced to admit that Newton had been named in the grant, “by and in trust for him,” and was apparently unable to give any excuse whatever for this discreditable deception. He pleaded that the grant “did not in any way tend to the obstruction or discouragement of trade or navigation, or to the loss or prejudice of His Majesty’s subjects, nor to the dishonour of His Majesty or His Kingdom.” He denied (and the denial implied what would be considered in these days a very low estimate of official honesty) that the passing of the grant was any breach of duty, inasmuch as it “was formed as a recompense to the grantees, who at their own charge had provided and fitted out the said Ship” (the _Adventure Galley_) to enable Kidd “to execute the powers in the said grant mentioned, _whereby the public might have received great benefit had the said William Kidd faithfully discharged the trust reposed in him by His Majesty and the Grantees, which he failing to do, the owners of the said ship had lost their expenses, and had not received any benefit from the grant_.”