Note 5 — CASE OF WILLIAM KIDD.

By a treaty between the Great Elector and the King of Denmark, in 1685, Brandenburg secured for thirty years the privilege of maintaining on St. Thomas an establishment, chiefly useful in connection with the work of the Brandenburg company for the African slave-trade. The story is related in Westergaard, ch. III., and in Schück; see doc. no. 43, note 1, and no. 48, note 1. The episode of Burke and Van Belle is more fully related in Westergaard, pp. 115-118. Burke escaped and most of the goods went across the Atlantic to Brandenburg, but Lorentz seems to have been honest.