[Rarebooks] fa: [PIRATES] ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT Between CAPTAIN KIDD & LORD BELLOMONT - 1701 Broadside

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other titles relating to Piracy & Naval History, auction ending Sunday, January 20. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/boyw7qe

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.



Articles of Agreement, Made the 10th Day of October, in the Year of our Lord 1695. Between the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Bellomont of the one part, and Robert Levingston Esq; and Captian William Kid, of the other part. London: Printed for J. Richardson, near Ludgate, 1701. Broadside, folio (35 x 20.5 cm; 13 5/8 x 8 in), printed on both sides. Sabin 16654. Splitting at the folds, mild toning.

Authentic antique document printed on watermarked laid paper, not a modern reproduction. From the collection of noted treasure-hunter and pirate expert Robert I. Nesmith of Rye, New York, founder and curator of Foul Anchor Archives and the author and publisher of numerous works on pirates and treasure hunting, with his light (erasable) penciled notation in the bottom margin. Included are photostats of the New York Historical Society's copy of the same broadside, with ink stamps of Foul Anchor Archives on the reverse.

An original broadside printed at the time of Capt. Kidd's trial for piracy and murder. Named governor of New York in 1695 with orders to suppress piracy, Richard Coote, 1st Earl of Bellomont, commissioned William Kidd as a pirate-hunter and fitted him out with a new ship for the purpose. Sailing as far afield as Madagascar, the Red Sea, and Japan, Kidd eventually turned pirate himself, though to what extent is open to debate. He also killed a crewman in a quarrel along the way. When rumors of his buccaneering ways reached the colonies, Bellomont began to see his protege as a political liability. Not wanting to be implicated in piracy himself, he arranged for Kidd's arrest when he returned to America. Kidd was transported to England, where he was tried, convicted and hanged. This broadside prints the eleven articles of the agreement entered into by Bellomont, Kidd and the colonial agent Richard Livingstone, by which Bellomont, along with a syndicate of secret backers that included the Earl of Orford and Sir John Somers, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, agreed to provide four-fifths of the cost of the expedition.