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Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period

Note 1 — CASE OF WILLIAM KIDD.

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Public Record Office, C.O. 5:860, no. 64 IV.; a copy certified by Bellomont, and endorsed, "Copy of a Memorial of Mr. Campbell who had been sent by the Earl of Bellomont to Captain Kidd, about what Kidd had said to him.... Referred to in the Earl of Bellomont's Letter of the 26th July 1699. Received [i.e., by the Board of Trade] September 26th, Read 26th, 1699." This memorial is printed, with slight inaccuracies, in the Commons Journal, XIII. 21-22, and thence reprinted in Sir Cornelius N. Dalton's The Real Captain Kidd, pp. 315-321 (a book of slight value as a vindication of Kidd, but reprinting useful documents); but the Commons Journal is in few American libraries, and the document is essential to the story of Kidd, and therefore is printed here. Duncan Campbell, a Scot like Kidd, had been a bookseller in Boston, and was now postmaster there. John Dunton describes him (1686) as "a brisk young Fellow, that dresses All-a-mode, and sets himself off to the best Advantage; and yet thrives apace. I am told (and for his sake I wish it may be true) that a Young Lady of a Great Fortune has married him." Letters from New England, p. 80.

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