Word: bellomont
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...privateer was as thin as the line between hijacker and bootlegger. The scheme that led Captain Kidd to the gallows, according to Author Wilkins, was a technically legal venture in privateering. And it was not Kidd's idea in the first place. Robert Livingstone of Albany and Lord Bellomont, Governor of New York, concocted the scheme, got Kidd a letter of marque from William III and sent him out on the Adventure Galley to prey on pirates and incidentally make his backers some money...
...Lord Bellomont wrote Kidd two weasel letters to lure him ashore, then clapped him in jail, sent him to London. At his trial Kidd was not allowed counsel. As evidence that the prizes he had taken were legitimate, he had kept their French "passes" (commissions); but these vital papers had been taken from him and he could not produce them in court. Their evidence would not have affected the verdict, thinks Author Wilkins. The British Admiralty was determined to make an example of him. Reason: India's Great Mogul, tired of English pirates, had threatened to drive...
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