The Papers

Two facts about the French passes sit at the centre of this Collection, each held at its own confidence.

Confirmed, from the printed trial record itself: the passes were never produced in the courtroom, no witness would say he had seen one, and Kidd told the court his papers had been taken from him by Bellomont.

Highly probable, with the archival reference and the middle of the custody chain not yet fully established: two passes survive, for the Quedagh Merchant and the Rouparelle, rediscovered among Board of Trade papers in 1910 and printed in the House of Commons Journal. The government held Kidd's seized papers before his trial.

Read those two statements together and the trial changes character. Kidd's defence on the piracy charges was that his captures fell within his authority against French shipping. The documents that would have tested that defence survived, yet the court never read them. That absence is not a legend attached to the story later. It is the reason this Collection begins where it does.

Absence is also the limit. The passes bear on particular captures, chiefly the Quedagh Merchant. They say nothing about William Moore, nothing about other conduct alleged across the voyage, and they do not by themselves make Kidd an innocent man. A document proves what it proves.

The Primary Source Room for the passes sets out what the documents are, where the surviving references place them, and what the evidence leaves open. No facsimile of the passes is on display there, and nothing on that page pretends to be one.