The Alexandria Gazette

From the New-England Galaxy.

ROBERT KID AND THE MONEY DIGGERS.

It is high time that this illustrious Sea-Rover should be taken from the vile company, of the plundering, cold and cruel assassins (where for more than a century he has stood, in the vulgar opinion with Black Beard and Goff. and others. a scape-goat for all that was atrocious and bloody.)and placed within the royal circle of associates, where his glories first vegetated.

To those who are in any degree read in the English History, it is well known that, during the war which raged between them and the French prior to the year 1697,and which was terminated by the treaty of Ryswick, the West India commerce was greatly annoyed by Pirates, men influenced by all the diabolical passions, which characterize that present race at Cuba & elsewhere, but much more powerful, more daring and every way more adventurous, they visited our coast from the bay of Mexico, to the St. Lawrence--made descents wherever they pleased and plundered and captured at their will but as all our settlements within the reach of their depredations were miserably poor, these rovers generally chose to visit their friends and were uniformly with little or no ensnaring judged managed to retire in our ports without molestation, and obtain supplies for their more important expeditions on the Spanish Main.

I have a geography now open before me, printed in 1709, just after the period of Kid's enterprizes, in which Charleston in South Carolina is described as having 13 or 14 good houses and as many miserable huts packed into the streets, as sheltered 250 families. In Virginia, Jamestown had 70 scattering buildings, Williamsburg 30. In Maryland, Annapolis had 40 houses, and Baltimore, "a parcel of scattered houses not fit to be called a town." In Pennsylvania, Bristol, the capital of the state, had 50 houses, Philadelphia, so dignified with the title of city, 1200. built of brick, 2 or 3 stories high. with many warehouses and wharves. In Jersey, Elizabeth town contained 250 families "Newark, a little town of 100 families" "Perth Amboy. 48 families, "called a city, by which it appears what small places they dignify with such names." New York city is also said to contain about 800 houses, and 4 churches, of which Trinity was one described as 'a great church lately built" (it was built in 1698)--The county of Duchess had less than 20 families, and if we are allowed to erect a census from the assessment rolls, and take the city as a data, the whole state had a population less than 20,000. In Connecticut. "there is no town of any note, all the country beyond 10 miles back from the sea is barren hills and morasses uninhabited; here are bears, wolves, deer, otter, muskrat, &c. and a strange creature called a Moose, 12 feet high and the tip of his horns 12 feet asunder." In Massachusetts, "Reading is a good town, having one mill to grind corn and another to saw timber." Boston is the only place in all the British dominions in America which can be called a city, as well by reason of its opulency as for the several handsome buildings in it; both public and private, as the Court house, market house, and Sir William Phipp's house, several spacious streets, and is said to contain from 10 to 12 hundred inhabitants: 3 or 4 hundred ships load here in a year:" so that we may rationally conclude that the pirates finding no temptation to plunder, adopted the expedient of a peaceable intercourse. for purposes as I have observed, much more important.

Those pirates under a pretended commission as privateers, cruising for the public enemy. (like the Argentines now fitting from our Southern ports,) were not examined very strictly by our authority, as they behaved themselves very quietly, and paid cash and round prices for their supplies, and in many instances they were allowed (in N York particularly) to sell the fruits of their theft openly in the town, under protections obtained from the Governor, and Mr. Nicholls, one of the Council, became himself an agent for the pirates, of whom he received, and justified the receipt of £800 for his services.

Colonel Fletcher at this time, that is from 1692 to 1696, was the Provincial Governor, a man whose ideas of government were learned under a drill sergeant, rapid headlong, ignorant, self sufficient. and withal of the most unchaste and adventurous avarice--a man of whom it is said that for the posey on the hymeneal ring of cedamus amori he substituted the better wearer of, Rem, si possis, recte, si non, quocunque rem.

Talents like these, united to a boldness of transgressions which seemed to challenge scrutiny, and was equalled only by the frontless villainy of the pirates themselves, it may well be supposed; were as little calculated to conciliate friends as to insure impunity.--Complaints of his mal administration, denouncing him at the same time as the protector and partner of the sea robbers, very soon reached the throne, but a remissness in the ministry, which seemed rather to countenance than censure the conduct of the Governor, secured him in his office for the latter four years, when the popular clamour being too great to be resisted, he was superseded by the Earl of Bellomont.

It was between this latter appointment and the spring of 1696, that the Earl became acquainted with Mr Robert Livingston, the rich and common ancestor of the present L- family in New York, who happened to be in London at that time, The Earl, probably anxious to know all things relative to the object of his new appointment, and finding Mr Livingston very competent to inform him in this respect had frequent and long consultations with him. in one of which he took occasion to introduce the dishonourable conduct of his predecessor relating to the pirates. In this conference expedients for checking their depredations, or extirpating the race were conversed upon. Mr. L then informed the Governor that he was personally acquainted with a capt. Robert Kid, a gentleman of much personal bravery, and great nautical knowledge, and who was moreover acquainted with the haunts and rendezvous of the pirates, and every way qualified to command an enterprise of such importance. Kid was afterwards consulted upon the subject, and was introduced to the Earl by Mr. L--. when it was agreed, that if a frigate of 30 guns and 150 men could be obtained from the King, that he (Kid,) would undertake the Enterprise, and sail immediately. This was suggested to his majesty, who consulted the admiralty on the subject, but as the war with France was then in its full rage and fury, they reported against the application, and it was dropped for that time. Soon after Mr. L proposed to the Earl to make a private adventure of it, in which he (Mr. L--.) offered to be concerned with Kid one fifth in vessels and outfits, and moreover, become surety for Kid's faithful execution of his trust. On a communication of this new arrangement to the King. he very readily gave his sanction to it, and aided its popularity by taking himself one tenth of the joint fund, which was now agreed to extend as far as the gross sum of £26,000, to which (with others) Lord Somers, the Earl of Orford, Sir Edmond Harrison. the Duke of Shrewsbury. and the Earl of Oxford, Bellomont, Livingston and Kid were subscribers, the whole being under the direction of Bellomont. Kid sailed from Plymouth for New York, in April of 1696. How long he cruised on the American coast in execution of his commission is not known. Mr. Livingston was, however, the only one of the concern in America, until the arrival of the Earl two years afterwards. that is in April. 1697, Kid, in the mean while. went to the Indian Ocean. and establishing himself somewhere the Island of Madagascar, lay like a shark in those remote seas, pillaging and plundering with impunity the commerce of all nations, at his pleasure. It was here, that having captured a ship better suited to his purpose he is said to have burned the one belonging to the Company, and in the course of some few months to have united other captures to his main enterprize, and thus rendered himself formidable to the greater force that ordinarily traversed those seas, His depredations extended not only through the Eastern Ocean, but he taxed the whole coast of South America to the Equator, and thro' the Islands to the Bahama: and if in these mighty sweeps he should have found it convenient to have come north for the purpose of depositing his treasures on the Long Island coast, or its vicinity, it is probable that. such marks of locality were taken and communicated to the concern as to enable them to put their hands upon it at pleasure, and therefore that it would not remain as the spoil of dreamers. at the distance of a century. It is generally understood that Kid plundered none of his own nation-the Spanish commerce was the principal object. which was never unpopular with the English, from Sir Walter Raleigh's time to the present moment; but 120 years ago the moral sense from habit had become as bronzed in all that related to the depredations on the Spanish commerce, as that of any privateersman of the South a few years past under a commission of Artegus.

The known and avowed practices of Gov. Fletcher and of Nicholls, and the very circumstance of Mr. Livingston's giving bonds that Kid should not turn pirate, but above all that the king himself, a man of the most inveterate personal hostility to the Spaniards, should take so paltry a concern as twenty six hundred dollars, merely to give the thing a bastard character of nationality to screen his favorites, is enough to raise a presumption that Kid did not sail without a cabinet compass. The amount which this immortal plunderer amassed, if not known, but with the public, from that time to the present, it is and has been counted as immense; but that the posterity of the original concern are yet affluent is more certain. It is not generally known, that Kid having accomplished his first project, by some means or other got quit of his comrades and concern altogether, and was taken while walking the streets of Boston, dressed like a gentleman, in all the haughty tranquility of Cleveland at Kirkwall, by Gov. Bellomont himself, who probably was the only man in town who knew him: this was about 3 years and a half from the time he (Kid) sailed from Plymouth.

The Earl wrote to the Secretary of State to send for Kid. with a view to his trial in England, and a vessel was accordingly despatched upon that errand, but having met with some accident, she put back, and her voyage was not renewed: this circumstance tended much to inflame and fortify the parliamentary opposition, and a motion was actually made in the House of Commons for the expulsion from office of all the lords that composed the original concern, and who were now boldly and publicly accused of being concerned with Kid: this motion, however, did not prevail. Impeachments were afterwards substituted, which were managed by the first talent and eloquence of the opposition, who, at the hazard of a retaliation, not over cheering to those who had little fondness for the Tower and Tyburn, charged the delinquents the Lord Chancellor being one of a piratical conspiracy from the beginning, and sharing the stupendous treasures of this fortunate rover, acquired upon every ocean, during three years of the most lucky and desperate robberies.

What proofs then existed, to justify this bold and desperate attack upon the whigs is not known, they must, however, have been numerous, and at least plausible, to have warranted a measure so rash and hazardous. Gov. Bellomont and Mr. Livingston in the mean while, intrenched beyond the reach of this political hurricane, escaped without notice they lay not within the range of the object, neither was it ever proved that either of these gentlemen, or any of the English concern shared the treasures hidden or remitted by Kid: it is better known that the latter went afterwards to England, but was never bro't to trial, and opposition still said it was for fear of disclosures more terrible to the ministry than the halter was to him, that he was soon set at liberty for want of proof, and that he lived in London to a good old age, in very independent, if not affluent circumstances. This acquittal, or voluntary escape, of Kid, saved, of course, the bonds of Mr. L, and he was never prosecuted on them, although he had, at the time, provincial enemies enough to have seized on this as a pretext for his ruin. Had Kid been condemned and hung, as is now generally believed, in which case the destiny of this affluent and respectable family. might have been beyond the reach of envy. In the MSS annals of this family, commenced by the father of Robert and continued by him and his successors, perhaps to the present moment, this mysterious business of Kid's (never yet cleared up,) may undoubtedly be found, and it would be very amusing to the public, if some of Robert's posterity would publish, if for no other reason, yet as a specific against this Auri sacra fames. which, with its witcheries in and out of Ethiopia's brain, seems to have roused the Devil from his slumbers in Golconda to the great scandal of Wall street.

Sampson Shelton Broughton.