The Rise and Fall of Pirate Captain Kidd

Summary

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Not Just the Tudors: The Rise and Fall of Pirate Captain Kidd

Date: March 26, 2026
Host: Professor Suzannah Lipscomb
Guest: Debbie Kilroy, historian and author

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Overview

In this riveting episode, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and historian Debbie Kilroy unravel the complex and ultimately tragic tale of Captain William Kidd. Moving beyond the legends and Hollywood depictions, they lay bare Kidd’s transformation from legitimate privateer to notorious pirate and scapegoat—shedding light on the political intrigue, financial desperation, and shifting moralities of the late 17th-century Anglo-American world. The discussion also exposes the self-serving ambitions of those in power who orchestrated Kidd’s downfall.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Captain Kidd’s Mysterious Origins & Early Career

[05:13–08:28]

• Little documentary evidence exists about Kidd’s origins; some debate even surrounds his nationality and date of birth.
• Rumored to be the son of a Presbyterian minister, Kidd escaped a humble background by joining ships to the American colonies, graduating from privateer to respected maritime figure.
• His early success was marred by crew mutinies and setbacks, yet his charisma and physical presence helped him rebuild.
• Notably, Kidd often staffed his ships with men seeking fortune or a fight—many of them were of questionable character, foreshadowing his future challenges.

"He wasn't landed by any stretch of the imagination and so there was very little information on his early life… But because he was charismatic, he could work his way up quicker than some."
—Debbie Kilroy [05:26]

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2. Gaining (Dubious) Respectability in Colonial New York

[08:28–15:25]

• Respectability in New York at the time was relative; the city was considered a "pirate base" and crime was entangled with commerce.
• Kidd prospered by marrying into property, integrating with society, and building a reputation—though standards of respectability then differed from today's.
• The broader context: religious and political turmoil in England (the Glorious Revolution) directly affected colonial power structures and financial priorities.

"New York actually was seen as a bit of a den of iniquity. It was a pirate base… people would trade with these basically people considered criminals."
—Debbie Kilroy [08:53]

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3. Lord Bellomont and the Privateering Scheme

[15:25–22:04]

• Richard Coote, Lord Bellomont, emerges: an impoverished Irish lord, desperate for cash, who had ties to various political factions and military campaigns.
• Kidd sought a new commission in London; his ambitions and contacts drew him to Bellomont via intermediaries.
• Together with a syndicate (including King William III), they concocted a scheme to hunt pirates in the Indian Ocean—but with profits destined for themselves, masked by legal and political maneuvering.

"People were unwilling to join in—until particularly William III—were unwilling to join in until suddenly they were promised a share of the loot."
—Debbie Kilroy [20:18]

• Their motivations were as much about personal profit as upholding law and order. The King’s involvement came via direct sanction under the Great Seal when the Admiralty declined official support.

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4. Flawed Motives, Political Cover, and Kidd’s Dilemma

[22:04–25:46]

• The arrangement was a Whig miscalculation—historians and contemporaries saw it as government collusion with the very pirates they condemned.
• Impeachment articles cited "preferring their own profit above that of the country" alongside outright sponsorship of pirates—though none of the powerful parties faced real consequences.

"It's scandalous…once again the people in power are putting their own finances, their own profit, above what's good for the country."
—Debbie Kilroy [24:28]

• Kidd, initially hesitant to target pirates, was pressured and possibly threatened (e.g., with impoundment of his ship) into accepting the commission.

"I do genuinely believe that to be the case. However, Kidd was both ambitious and naive, and that is a dreadful combination."
—Debbie Kilroy [25:54]

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5. Kidd’s Command: High Ideals, Bitter Realities

[27:41–32:24]

• At first, Kidd adhered to the letter of his commission—refusing to plunder anything but legitimate targets, which angered his crew (who were only paid for successful captures).
• He ultimately had to kill a mutinous crew member—a pivotal moment that began his slide into criminality, and a charge that would haunt him.

"He really irates his crew by turning away from ships...he will only go after ones that are legitimate targets."
—Debbie Kilroy [27:54]

• Pressured by desperate men and risky circumstances, Kidd turned to deception—using false flags to provoke ships to reveal 'enemy' papers, thus justifying their capture according to privateering rules.

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6. Catastrophe: The East India Company and Kidd’s Undoing

[32:24–37:01]

• In a crucial misstep, Kidd attacked the "Quedagh Merchant," a well-connected ship with ties to the East India Company and the Mughal court.
• At this point, the East India Company—though weakened, still influential—demanded retribution, seeking to make an example of Kidd amid suspicions they colluded with pirates themselves.

"He was a man in pretty desperate circumstances by that point…rumor got out that he was just pirating rather than doing anything legitimate. So he was desperate."
—Debbie Kilroy [32:24]

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7. Betrayal: Bellomont’s Calculated Sacrifice

[37:01–40:49]

• Despite assurances from Bellomont, Kidd is ultimately betrayed: the value in turning him in as a pirate far outweighed any loyalty to their prior arrangement.
• Kilroy characterizes this as a “dreadful” but calculating move, with Kidd’s captured loot—and Kidd himself—becoming political currency.
• Kidd realized too late that he was merely a pawn, abandoned by those in power.

"It was only very late in the day that you suddenly realized that no one was going to help him out and that he was, in fact, a pawn. He was nothing."
—Debbie Kilroy [39:45]

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8. The Trial: Sham Justice and Sacrifice

[40:49–44:25]

• Kidd remains loyal for two years, hoping for protection from his sponsors, only to be denied a fair trial.
• Modern listeners may be startled by the one-sided legal process and how convenient it was for the politicians to pin the scandal on Kidd.
• Even when at the gallows, he condemned the injustice in his “scaffold speech.”

"He was still very angry about what was going on."
—Debbie Kilroy [42:58]

• Kidd’s execution was gruesome: after the first hanging failed (the rope broke), he was hanged again, reinforcing the brutal pageantry of scapegoating.

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9. Legacy and Reflection

[44:25–47:07]

• Kidd’s real villainy was less about piracy and more about being the wrong man in the wrong place—an easy scapegoat for a changing world order.

"He was really ineffectual, but he became the bogeyman for all pirates everywhere. Everything that was wrong with the old financial system, with the old way of doing things… He was a scapegoat."
—Debbie Kilroy [44:37]

• The hosts agree: Kidd was simultaneously naive and ambitious, sacrificing the stability he had in pursuit of adventure and influence—traits that led to his downfall as the old world collided with the new.

"He was naive to go back to New York in the first place…he allowed himself this ambition, this wanting, one last hurrah. It made him this pawn. And by the time he realized it, it was too late to do anything about it."
—Debbie Kilroy [46:18]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On shifting respectability:
  "Being a member of the Royal African Company was perfectly respectable... so it's difficult really to say when did he become respectable? Because if we're looking at our own ideas of respectability, well, they're never particularly [relevant back then]."
  —Debbie Kilroy [08:53]

• On the Whig scandal:
  "…the people in power are putting their own finances, their own profit, above what's good for the country."
  —Debbie Kilroy [24:28]

• On political pawns:
  "He was a pawn. He was nothing. Who was he to any of these people, apart from possibly an embarrassment, and therefore that embarrassment needed covering up."
  —Debbie Kilroy [39:45]

• On Kidd’s symbolic fate:
  "He was the representative of an age that's going. He's a representative of that early modern age and he is killed by representatives of the new financial and political system."
  —Debbie Kilroy [45:55]

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Key Timestamps

• [05:13] – Kidd’s early life and ascent through privateering.
• [08:53] – Navigation of colonial respectability and illicit trade.
• [15:41] – Introduction of Lord Bellomont and convergence of schemes.
• [20:18] – Scheme’s real motives: personal profit over public good.
• [25:54] – Kidd’s reluctance and coercion into the “pirate hunting” mission.
• [27:54] – Crew’s mutiny and Kidd’s slide into violence.
• [32:24] – The “Quedagh Merchant” catastrophe and the wrath of the East India Company.
• [37:09] – Bellomont’s betrayal and Kidd's fate sealed.
• [40:49] – Unfair trial and Kidd’s awareness of his role as a scapegoat.
• [44:37] – The grim details of Kidd’s execution and his legacy as a “bogeyman.”
• [46:18] – Final reflection: Kidd’s naïveté and tragic ambition.

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Closing Reflection

Debbie Kilroy reflects on the wider history of “rogues” populating British politics, emphasizing the recurrence of self-serving behavior among the powerful across eras. Her portrayal of Kidd, neither hero nor villain but a casualty of shifting tides, situates his story as emblematic of a turbulent era’s moral and financial transitions.

"Possibly the characters of some politicians don't change."
—Debbie Kilroy [48:41]

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For history buffs and newcomers alike, this episode provides a captivating, layered, and ultimately poignant portrait of Captain Kidd—illuminating the treacherous waters where ambition, piracy, and power collided.

Transcript

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn and to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Many of us have probably heard the name Captain Kid, a privateer or pirate, depending on how you look at it, whose legend inspired writers including Robert Louis Stevenson and Edgar Allan Poe, and he's been played on film by the likes of Charles Lawton and Christopher Lee, the Truth is, Kidd was never meant to become a legend. He was meant to be, just, well, youthful. The frontman for an enterprise backed by politicians, including William of Orange, that looked virtuous on paper, but was actually a scheme to boost their own fortunes. William Kidd's life began as little more than apprentice aboard French pirate vessels prowling the Caribbean. But by 1689, quite an important year, he had clawed his way towards status, becoming a man of property, respected among colonial America's merchant elite, free from any stain of criminality. And that's where Richard Coote, the newly appointed and politically ambitious Earl of Bellomont, enters the store. Fresh from organizing the colonies against French incursions, Coote believed that wealth could be gained from the pirate plagued Indian Ocean if he had both a ship and a captain ruthless enough to command it. Funded by a syndicate of 11 wealthy investors, including the King himself, each expecting a percentage of captured prizes, William Kidd was hired as the captain of a royal expedition entrusted with a genuine commission to hunt the pirates that infested the route in India. Or so he thought. What he didn't understand was that he'd entered into a pact with forces infinitely more dangerous than pirates or French warships. Kidd had become entangled with political power, with the machinery of ambition, with men whose loyalty existed only as long as profit flowed and risk remained manageable. And it was ultimately their guile that led the loyal kid to the gallows while they got off scot free. To find out more about Captain Kidd, to delve deep into his story, I am joined today by Debbie Kilroy, founder of the award winning Get History platform and an associate fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Debbie's new book, Members Behaving A History of Britain in 52 Parliamentary Rogues, tells the scandalous stories of those members of Parliament who made history for all the wrong reasons. And that includes the awful Earl of Bellomont and his portrayal of Captain William Kidd. I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and this is Not Just the Tudors from History Hit Devi. Welcome to Not Just the Tudors.

[Debbie Kilroy]

Thank you very much for having me.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

It is an absolute delight to explore this story with you. So I guess let's start at the beginning. Let's start with William Kidd's what Do We Know About It? How does his seafaring career start out?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Well, it's actually quite a contested thing because he wasn't landed by any stretch of the imagination and so there was very little information on his early life. In fact, a new book has come out recently that said that he wasn't even born in Scotland, it puts his date of birth what, about 10 years later? So I can't personally see it, but yeah. So we don't know much about his early life. Rumor has it that he was the son of a Presbyterian minister and that he managed to get on a ship bound for the American colonies. From there he went on privateering missions and slowly worked his way up and became a privateer during King William III's wars with France. And he got quite a name for himself. There were some people who were very impressed by him in the Navy. Of course, he wasn't helped by the fact that he got a ship and peopled it with basically pirates, seafaring men certainly, who were after as much of a quick buck as a fight in which they might lose their lives. And they ended up mutinying and sailing off into the sunset, leaving Kidd without a ship. Nevertheless, he performed well enough that he was actually granted permission to go and abandon his station and go looking for his ship and these people. And he was even given the means to do that. So he was obviously quite a charming man. And people obviously saw something quite amazing about him, certainly some promise.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And at what stage did he become a captain in his own right?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Well, I don't know. It was before 89, because of course that was when he had the ship taken away from him. He would have gone through, as with most of these naval careers then he would have gone through certain stages of training because he would have started out as a landsman, basically. So you get very little pay and you literally need to learn the ropes. It's amazing how you get so many of these seafaring phrases. So you start out as a landsman, you work your way up at some points when you've had enough sailings under your belt, then you become someone who will actually get, say, a full share of any profits and will be considered better and from there on. But because he was charismatic, he could work his way up quicker than some. He was also apparently quite physically. He could be quite physically intimidating, certainly according to later propaganda. And the fact that he was strong, the fact that apparently he didn't necessarily hold back from expressing his will physically, probably helped his career.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And he has some dealings with Christopher Codrington, doesn't he? I mean, Codrington now may be known to people because his name has been taken off the all sorts college library because he was a plantation owner, a slave owner in Barbados. What sort of picture do we get of Kidd in these years? And how does he go on to gain respectability in New York well, define

[Debbie Kilroy]

respectability for a start, because that changes very much indeed. Wonderful example of taking people's names off buildings or schools or whatever. Samuel Pepys, of course, has been in the news recently because the Pepys school has renamed itself. Being a slave owner was certainly. Being a member of the Royal African Company was perfectly respectable. You know, kings and queens would do it all sorts. And so though it's difficult really to say when did he become respectable? Because if we're looking at our own ideas of respectability, well, they're never particularly. New York actually was seen as a bit of a den of iniquity. It was a pirate base. People would very happily trade with these basically people considered criminals by certainly the East India Company and by the Crown. But then again also, as we will find out with the story of King, the Crown also would trade with these criminals. And a lot of them made quite a quick buck from their contacts. And when there are issues with the economy, and of course we're not looking at the start of kids career at an economy that was like our own. It wasn't highly managed tax systems, tax collection, what have you, were not as advanced. So if you could make a buck, you would. And I mean, going back a century earlier, Robert Sissel, for example, was, you know, he was quite happy to sponsor adventuring missions. So, you know, kind of looking around the adventurous reaches around the globe and you've got Elizabeth Seadogs. We're still, we're in this crossover period. Possibly one of the things with Kid is that he's unfortunate in that he actually straddles that crossover where suddenly they decided that honest trade, quote, unquote, honest trade was more important, this corporate structure was more important than the rebooting that went before. To go back to how you said, how did he get involved really in New York society and how did he climb his way up that greasy pole? He was happily on the side. So once you had, in 1685, the Catholic monarch James II comes to the throne of England. And initially everyone's very, very happy with him or at least willing to give him a chance because he promises to leave all of the institutions of state and church alone. And he even calls the Parliament. He doesn't do much with it, but, you know, he's making the right sort of noises. But he genuinely believed in furthering the Catholic faith. And pretty much everyone in England did not believe in furthering the Catholic faith. Some of them believed in furthering their own careers. But so through use of carrot and stick, he started dismantling the Very things he promised to protect in the Church and in the state. And he even in fact appealed to the Protestant dissenters. So the other side of the Anglican Church, the Anglican Church is the one that is the state religion, but on one side that's illegal, you've got the Catholics and on the other side they frowned upon, although there's still quite a lot of people who supported it as the Protestant descent. The people who thought that the Anglican Church hadn't gone far enough in Reformation effectively. And so James was so desirous of bringing about this reintroduction of Catholicism that he actually tried to appeal to the dissenters as well. And so a lot of people weren't happy. You've got the full on Whigs, so the people who really didn't want him to be king in the first place, conspiring against him because he is Catholic and he threatens absolutism in their eyes and a closer involvement with the Catholic powers of France. And on the other side you've got people who are inherently inclined towards the Crown, who are seeing the one thing that trumps it, which is their church being threatened. And so they, they join together and he's over in, in 88, 1688, he is overthrown by his nephew and son in law, William of Orange, in what we call the Glorious Revolution. It wasn't a revolution and it wasn't glorious, but this is what centuries of propagandized history will do. And so we've still got this term. A lot of people were, in fact, it was meant to be bloodless. It wasn' certainly not in Ireland and not in parts of Scotland as well. But anyway, so completely different King and queen on the throne because it was William and Mary who was James's daughter, Protestant daughter. And it changes the outlook of the country. It actually sets in motion mechanisms that are still in place today. Because Williams really was more interested in his Continental concerns, particularly his war with France and basically dragging England and Scotland and Ireland into these French wars. And of course, if you control both sides of the Channel, so from him in, in Holland and then you've got all of the English and British coast, it puts him in a much better position when dealing with the French. Plus there's a good tax base and all the rest of it. So it changes the financial aspects through this huge war that suddenly the English are expected to pay for. We get the bank of England and what have you, and the start of the financial and military complexes combining anyway. All of that, therefore, is the background for what is going on in In New York at this time.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

One of the characters that we need to introduce who is in New York at this time and that Kidd comes to know is Richard Coote, Lord Bellomont. How did Kyd come to know him and what do we know about Coote?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Well, actually, so in 1689, Coote wasn't in America, he was still trying to get his finances sorted out in England. So he owns Irish estates because of the way the English political system worked. He sat in the Commons. So an Irish lord, but he sat in the Commons.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Right.

[Debbie Kilroy]

And he was always impoverished. He never. He would look into certain ventures, but they would never work. And he was very short of money. Of course, part of the problem is that Irish estates never returned the same cash as English estates. Scottish lords had the same and landowners had the same problem. Because he was living in England, he was still expected to live up to the English level of conspicuous consumption. So that's both in terms of dress, in terms of style and manner of living. He had also spent a long time actually on the continent fighting for William of Orange. Before James came to the throne, he was actually. He was recalled and he said, oh, no, I can't, basically.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So he needs more money. Basically, in a nutshell, he is desperate for cash.

[Debbie Kilroy]

Yes. It's surprising how many MPs are desperate for cash. It's surprising the number who end up in debtors prisons over the course of the time. My book covers a lot of them. I did do account at one point, I think obviously not all of them have made it into my book, but I think about 80 were in the clink that I managed to tally. And others, many others avoided debtors prison, but only because they either ran abroad or unfortunately, sometimes took their own lives. So, yeah, a lot of MPs had quite powerless finances and Coot was one of them.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And there's a scheme that Kidd and Coote get involved in. Is it something they both conceive or, you know, where's the origin point, do you think?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Yes and no. Well, so he had worked his way up through supporting various political factions. Well, in New York and he'd settled down, he'd married a wife with property. She was twice widowed and pretty much as soon as her second husband died, they got married. Kid and Sarah got married and, you know, he got bored. He'd been used to swashbuckling around the Caribbean. And it's one of these things that one finds repeatedly is that these adventurers really struggled to settle down. And it wasn't necessarily the draw of extra Cash, although I'm sure he would have liked that because she was well off. You know, they had a. They helped to build this church. They had a sponsored pew in a church in New York and things. They were a society couple. But he just felt, I think, the jaw of the sea and the jaw of adventure. And so he had a little cargo ship and he filled it with goods and he went over to London hoping to get another privateering commission and therefore, you know, kind of go and get some more cash, but also this adventure. And he used his contacts from New York society to try and get contacts within the Admiralty. Very quickly realized he wasn't going to be able to. One of the primary reasons being that the main contact was actually not in the country at the time, wasn't in England at the time, and so he had to look for other means. And it was through this chap called Livingstone the connections met coot. And from there they started talking about ways to improve the position of trade and England's trade. Of course, if you improve trade, you improve taxes and therefore there's more money to fight these ongoing continental wars. And so it changes from being a privateering commission to this idea of smashing the gangs, basically smashing the pirate gangs who are destroying trade in both the Americas and importantly with India and the Far East.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Is that the real motive for the scheme, the smashing of the pirate gangs? Or is there something underpinning it, some hope of profit?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Well, of course there's hope of profit. And in fact, people were unwilling to join in until particularly William III were unwilling to join in until suddenly they were promised a share of the loot.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Right.

[Debbie Kilroy]

And the fact that actually smashing the gangs wasn't the primary concern is shown by this agreement that they would keep the loot for themselves. They would split the profits, when in fact, actually the profits from any. When you take a private, the profits go to the State, the Admiralty, or are returned to the original owner. And this. No, no, no, no, let's not do that. Let's just keep it all and keep it very private. And in fact, a lot of the people who were involved in this scheme, they used proxies actually to shield themselves, to shield their names. It shows absolutely beyond a doubt that they were up to no good.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So, I mean, how does the King get involved?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Well, the Admiralty was initially approached for this warrant and they decided they didn't really want anything to do with it. And so it was issued under the Great Seal. So that's how the King had to be involved.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Foreign,

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And later, this is portrayed as one of the wig's great miscalculations. Why is that?

[Debbie Kilroy]

If you think specifically, and this is obviously in context of Britain today, but it's something along the lines of, imagine that any one of the recent governments was suddenly found to be in cahoots with the people manning the small boats coming across the Channel, having stated one thing and then actually are doing something else. It's scandalous, it's dreadful, and it's showing once again that the people in power are putting their own finances, their own profit, above what's good for the country. And when it came out, and of course, the Whigs and the Tories were at each other's throats and it was prime fodder, therefore, for the Tories. But some of the Whigs were actually impeached for their involvement. Well, it was partially. They were impeached for a lot of things. Some of the articles were preferring their own profit above that of the country, mishandling various things, nepotism, you know, kind of the usual sort of accusations. But also was trading with pirates and in fact sponsoring pirates. The Whigs who were accused actually got let off. The impeachment proceedings came to nothing. Sadly, they were found not guilty.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

To what extent was Kidd pressured into taking the job, or perhaps flattered one?

[Debbie Kilroy]

It's very, very difficult to know absolutely, because obviously Kidd's story is very different from the one that the prosecution gave, and so it all rests on interpretation. But certainly what Kidd said, and I am inclined to agree, is that he initially said, oh, I don't know, I don't really fancy this change. I don't mind going after French, but I don't really want to go after pirates. First of all, they're my mates. Secondly, they're a bit scary. I would rather go after people who would say, no, I surrender. So it was a change from what he was actually hoping to do to start with. And apparently Bellomont threatened to impound his cargo ship and keep him in London. He was, by London standards, quite poor. The ways of living and how money mattered in the colonies was different. It was a much higher way of living and much higher costs in London. Although actually, Bellomont, when he went to New York as governor, he complained that he'd expected it to be cheaper, but certainly Kidd was not well moneyed compared with a lot of the members of high society living in London. And so his ship being impounded with no way to make money, no way to get back home, and possibly even facing other Challenges that he backed down. His feet were warmed. The cold feet were warmed by Bellamond. I do genuinely believe that to be the case. However, Kidd was both ambitious and naive, and that is a dreadful combination.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

At first it looks like he's behaving well, doesn't it? Maybe that is the naivety at work there. But he doesn't seem to be sort of capturing and plundering any old ship, does he?

[Debbie Kilroy]

No. And in fact, he really irates his crew by turning away from ships. He doesn't go after neutral ships, for example, and he turns away from company ships. He takes a little French fishing boat on his way back to New York and things. But no, he will only go after ones that are legitimate targets, that are legitimate. But the crew was hired on a basically no win, no fee basis. If you don't capture something, you don't get paid, and they're risking life and limb and they obviously start to get reasonably irritated when you've got all of these really wealthy prizes being allowed to sail away. And in fact, Kidd actually ends up having to kill. He said he was in a fit of rage, but for whatever prompted the initial attack the kid made, he broke this man's skull, who was a potential mutineer, and he killed him. And in fact, that's one of the charges the kid was done for was a charge of murder based on him killing this person who was definitely wanting to go pirating.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And is that when things start to go wrong really for him?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Yes.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

I mean, murder might do it, mightn't it?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Well, yes, but the fact that he had to murder this mutineer shows that people were already starting to complain. And these were not necessarily the cream of the crop in terms of society. They, you know, kind of, they were after a quick buck. They were often people who were in debt or wanting to flee for various reasons, perhaps because they were wanted men, perhaps because that maybe left a few too many pregnant at home or something. And, you know, they weren't. What was it Samuel Johnson said? I think it was about going into the Navy more generally, but it applies as much. Any man of any intelligence. I am paraphrasing, any man of any intelligence would connive himself into jail rather than go to sea. Because being at sea is like being in jail, but with drowning. And then he says, and actually, do you know what? In jail, the food's going to be better, it's going to be more comfortable, and also the company's probably going to be nicer. And so, you know, these aren't the Napoleonic heroes, you know, kind of the jack tars of the Napoleonic era. These are desperate men, and desperate men do desperate things.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So how do these desperate men force him to turn on a vessel that's connected with the East India Company?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Chipping away at him quite basically. And the threat, because do you know what, he was a strong man, but he could be overpowered. And it's not just the physical threats. It's the fact he's got a family at home. It's the fact that he's indebted to these very powerful men in London. And once Coot goes to New York, actually to the governor of the place where his home is, where he lives, where his wife and children are. So he has to start thinking about ways around the injunction against illegal activity. And there's a wonderful. Well, not to the people who suffered from it, but a useful pirating or privateering trick, which is to put up false colors. So he's allowed to attack French vessels. And in order to get vessels to say they're French, he will run up French colors and pretend to be French. Right. I think so. That is, say East India owned or neutral, they will probably, to spare themselves, they will go, oh, we'd better run up these French colors as well. And they would have a selection of papers to show just as he had. And so it's almost a case of playing poker. You're trying to read the signals, but actually from quite a long distance to see, actually, is this a genuine friendship? Is it a privateer or a pirate pretending? And yeah, often these people made the wrong call and they would show French papers and then kid would go, you're the enemy. I can take you. I can take your ship as a legitimate prize. And he did do this, and he kept these French papers as proof.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

But given this level of deceit, did he still believe that he was acting within his commission?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Well, this was a standard privateering trick. I think he absolutely had problems with the Caddam Merchant, which was a pilgrim vessel, and the contract was through the East India Company, and there were Englishmen on board. And unfortunately, also there were people connected to the Mughal. The Mughal court in India on the ship. This was not a good ship to attack. He managed to offend a lot of people, but he was a man in pretty desperate circumstances by that point. And don't forget, also his own ship was rotting. It had spent so long at sea. And he had upset the navy as well. Leaving London, the crew mooned every navy vessel they passed, which, it wasn't a good start. It didn't make them think well of him to begin with. And rumor got out that he was just pirating rather than doing anything legitimate. So he was desperate.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

He was desperate and now he's got this major enemy. Can you remind us sort of how powerful the East India Company was by this point?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Well, interestingly, not as powerful as they once were. So the first hundred or so years of the East End India Company, it's more amazing that actually they survived. They were involved in the politicking of the day. They were quite Tory sponsored. And then you get the Whigs coming into power and they basically take away the charter, the monopoly for the East India Company and you get the new East India Company coming along, which is a wig, more of a Whig based thing. And so you have interlopers in their trade. You've also got a very difficult economic position thanks to the wars and thanks to issues over bullion, over actual the flow of cash. So they go from having a turnover, they had the turnover reduced, I think by something like 20 times in the space of 20, 30 years. It was. Their profits fell to almost nothing and it was amazing they survived. Plus because of other pirates in operating in the Indian Ocean, they weren't getting on very well with India and they were being forced to pay, not just to reimburse what pirates were taking from merchant vessels, but they were also being forced to convoy and protect the vessels. They were in a very difficult position and they kept on getting having mobs outside their factories threatening all manner of death and revenge. So they were panicked and they wanted to make an example because actually a lot of people in India thought that the old East India Company were in league with the pirates. And it didn't help that some of the more ruthless and criminal employees of the company would trade with pirates.

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And how does this string of incidents affect Bellomont? I mean, does he distance himself from Kidd at this point?

[Debbie Kilroy]

No. After the, the capture of this pilgrim vessel, they retreat to an island off Madagascar. And Kidd's going, what do I do? And a load of his crew do actually mutiny and sail off with most of his ships. He's going, oh, what do I do? Because he, he's not got the crew to, to man his remaining ship properly, certainly not to be able to claim any prizes. And he gets a letter saying that Bellomont is still your friend. Because actually the people in New York were trading with this pirate enclave on this island. There would be maybe four journeys a year, which is quite a lot. And they'd sell or buy slaves and sell all manner of things, take new masts and what have you out to the pirates. So the con, the trade was, it was quite a busy trade. And yeah, so he, he gets this letter and he goes, well, okay, he has little choice, I suppose, but he goes, I'll take Bellomont at his word. And then so he'll, he sails to the West Indies and he offloads a lot of stuff and gets a less conspicuous craft because, you know, an East India man is, it's a different, it's a different sort of vessel from one you'd expect in American waters. And even so, he still lurks around and he sends representatives to Bellomont and he's still assured. And there are some interviews as well between the two of them and with the council in New York. But yeah, Bellomont has obviously done the sums. And so he would get much less money as this trading partner of kids than he would as the person who captures this pirate. It's what 1 in 10 ish that he would get compared with 1 in 3 if he hands Kid over as a pirate. And for a man in straightened circumstances who is not the pleasantest of men, who also suffers from gout a lot as well. So he's probably quite grumpy a lot of the time. Yeah, it's a very easy decision to make. And so, you know, he, he basically offers kids safe passage and then goes back on his word. It's Dreadful.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And he comes across, I mean, to put it mildly, as a very calculating figure. Here you get a sense of this man's character. Do you think that Kidd still trusted him? Did he fail to grasp the extent to which he'd been double crossed?

[Debbie Kilroy]

I think he grasped it when he was about two weeks away from trial in London. It wasn't just Bellomont, of course, it was the. With Junto, it was the King. And he protected the Tories, gave him so many chances actually to turn on his sponsors. And it could well have saved his neck. I don't know if it would have done because of the East India Company needing to make an example and then fixated on Kidd to make that example. But he certainly, I think, hoped so. And it suddenly dawned on him, I'm going to be facing trial for a capital crime. And suddenly he finds that his papers, like the French papers he'd taken to prove his innocence, quote, unquote, have disappeared. And I think it was only very late in the day that you suddenly realized that no one was going to help him out and that he was in fact a pawn. He was nothing. Who was he to any of these people, apart from possibly an embarrassment, and therefore that embarrassment needed covering up.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And does he stay loyal to them once he's imprisoned and interrogated?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Yes. Yeah, for two years. So once you, you have a, you go for trial. It's not like you have a trial. You're found guilty and then you spend 10 years on death row. Punishment follows pretty quickly after trial in this era, as a, as a general rule, unless you're very important, for example. But even then, Charles the First, when, when did his trial end and when was he, you know, there was what, a week between Charles the First's guilty verdict and his execution? So, yeah, up until his trial, he really thought that it was going to be fine. And then suddenly it went badly. But by that point it was too late because he had already cut links to the Tories at that time. They'd tried so many times to take a statement to get him to speak out. So he had no roots left apart from trying to defend himself in court. But it wasn't a trial as we would recognize it, as a trial of justice, as we would recognize it today. The judge and jury weighed in for the prosecution as much as the prosecuting lawyers did. And so by any modern standards, it was unfair, it was fair by the time, but people were determined to make an issue of him, an example of him, particularly after other pirates had been let off in the Years before and had caused some massive embarrassment. The government was sure that he was going to suffer, hence also the tacked on charge of murder.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So he outlived his usefulness to both Whigs and.

[Debbie Kilroy]

Yeah, yeah, and he left letters and saying, oh, yeah, I've been a bit of a fool, but I have just been a pawn and if I did something illegal, surely my sponsors, who knew the laws of the land, should have told me about it and warned me against it.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So is that a kind of exposure of Bellomont, do you think?

[Debbie Kilroy]

It was enough of an exposure, not just to Bellomont, but Because actually Bellomont died before Kidd. He died of stomach in the gout. So possibly a fitting stomach in the gout in the stomach, even. Yes, possibly a fitting end, painful end to him, but yeah, it was an expose of all of the sponsors, but it was too late. And when he went, had his go at the scaffold speech, he again reiterated the injustice of it, rather than humbly submitting to the court and to God, as was how it should be done. That was the way it should be done at the time. And no, he. He was still very angry about what was going on.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

But did any of that make any difference to the outcome?

[Debbie Kilroy]

No. And as I said, when the Whigs were impeached, they got off.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Kidd's execution didn't go smoothly either, did it?

[Debbie Kilroy]

No, it didn't help that he got quite drunk beforehand, but then the rope broke and it must have been awful because he's got this. Suddenly the rush of adrenaline that you get from near death, combined with the wooziness from drink, combined with this fall quite onto stinking mud flats and knowing that you're going to have to do it again, it was very sad. And of course, it's not a nice way to go anyway. The neck's not breaking.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

No. You think there would have been some sort of clause in law that if you'd. I thought there was, in fact, that if you had been hanged and hadn't died, then you were suddenly free. But maybe that doesn't apply here.

[Debbie Kilroy]

That was never going to work for Kid. No, they needed a sacrificial lamb. Let's face it, as a pirate, he was pretty useless. He wasn't like Avery or one of these pirates who actually really did some damage and then disappeared into thin air. He was really ineffectual, but he became the bogeyman for all pirates everywhere. Everything that was wrong with the old financial system, with the old way of doing things, the old way that people would Trade, that was him. And he. He was therefore a scapegoat for so many more. And it's shocking the number of people who had properly turned pirates and wanted to be pirates from the get go who were issued with pardons to get kid. He was a representative. He was a piece of propaganda. And he was turned from this reasonably, well, very naive, quite bimbling and ineffectual pirate into the worst man imaginable.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

He becomes a scapegoat, in other words, for all of these concerns being, you know, but basically is entirely being used and abused by these unscrupulous men.

[Debbie Kilroy]

He's the representative of an age that's going. He's a representative of that early modern age and he is killed by representatives of the new financial and political system.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So to conclude then, do you think that he was naive to trust Bellomont and the Whigs or was he simply a pawn who could be easily sacrificed?

[Debbie Kilroy]

Well, he was both. He was really naive. He should have. As soon as he realized that he couldn't get that privateering commission, he should have turned tail and gone back to the loving arms of his wife a continent away and got on with his life in society there. And he was someone there. But he didn't. And instead he allowed himself this ambition, this wanting, one last hurrah. It made him this pawn. And by the time he realized it, it was too late to do anything about it. He was naive to go back to New York in the first place. He could have joined another crew, even if he'd lost his own crew and just carried on sailing around the Indian Ocean.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Well, thank you for introducing us to the real story of Captain Kidd. I've got one last question for you, because you've written about members of Parliament, including Bellomont, but many others who behaved badly. It's obviously perhaps always a timely topic. But what drew you to these absolute rogues?

[Debbie Kilroy]

I was doing a bit of academic research into the backgrounds of members of Jacobean Parliament, the Parliaments of James I, and it was lots of personal stuff like whether they trained as lawyers and what their religion was in terms of how godly they were, whether they were landed, et cetera, et cetera. And I kept on coming across these wonderful stories of getting drunk on state visits and falling into the Thames and having to be fished out, cuanculians on display, and of pirates and dueling and running around naked fisticuffs in the Commons and all the rest of it. And there were so many interesting, funny, but also relevant stories that it just expanded from there and it's like, oh, I wonder if this happened throughout history. Yep, nothing changes, possibly the extent or the, the some of the crimes change. You're not going to be dueling so much these days, but yeah, possibly, maybe the characters of some politicians don't change.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Well, it's been absolute delight to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming on. Debbie Kilroy, it's been a pleasure.

[Debbie Kilroy]

Thank you for having me.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors From History Hit. Thank you also to my researcher Max Wintle, my producer Rob Weim, and to Amy Haddo, who edited this episode. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a [e-mail] and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tudors From History Hit.

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