The Commission

Neither commission is on display here in the original: the texts survive in print, and no image of the original documents is yet exhibited. The nearest object this room can show is the title page of the printed 1701 trial record, below, which advertises "Captain Kidd's Two Commissions" among its contents.

Everything in this story descends from two pieces of paper.

The first was a royal commission under the Great Seal, dated 26 January 1695/6, authorising Kidd to seize four named pirates: Thomas Tew, John Ireland, Thomas Wake and William Mace. That dateline is the commission's own, so the Archives treats the date as confirmed on the document's own authority, though the original manuscript itself remains unexamined. The same document names its captain "Robert Kidd", the forename the Archives records as an attested alias rather than an error. The second instrument gave him authority against French shipping, England being at war with France. Together they made him a privateer: a private captain doing licensed violence, with the paperwork that separated his trade from the crime it otherwise resembled.

The men behind the venture mattered as much as the papers. This was not a waterfront speculation. Investors close to government put money into Kidd's voyage, the Earl of Bellomont among them, expecting a return from captured pirate goods and lawful French prizes. Their names on the subscription were an asset while the venture promised profit. They became a liability the moment it promised scandal.

Hold on to the distinction the commission created, because the whole case runs on it. A capture within the licence was prize. The same capture outside it was piracy. Which side of the line Kidd's voyage fell on would be decided years later, in a courtroom, partly by which documents were on the table.