[Footnote 2: A fever medicine, consisting of various drugs made up into a hard ball, lately invented in India by Gaspar Antonio, a lay brother of the Society of Jesus.]
Further saith That he left at said Gardiners Island a bundle of nine or tenn fine India Quilts, some of them Silk with fringes and Tassells.
_85. Lord Bellomont to the Board of Trade. November 29, 1699._[1]
[Footnote 1: Public Record Office, C.O. 5:861, no. 4. Endorsed as received Jan. 19, 1700, and read at the Board Feb. 9.]
I gave your Lordships an account in my Letter of the 24th of last moneth[2] by the last ship that went hence for England, of my taking Joseph Bradish and Tee Wetherley, the two Pyrates that had escaped from the Goal of this town;[3] and I then also writ that I hoped in a little time to be able to send your Lordships the news of my taking James Gill[am] the Pyrat that killed Captain Edgecomb, Commander of the _Mocha_ frigat for the East India Company,[4] and that with his own hand while the Captain was asleep, and Gillam is supposed to be the man that Incouraged the Ship's Company to turn Pyrats, and that ship has ever since been robbing in the Red Sea and Seas of India, and taken an Incredible deal of wealth; if one may believe the reports of men that are lately come from Madagascar, and that saw the _Mocha_ frigat there, she has taken above two millions sterling. I have been so lucky as to take James Gillam, and he is now in Irons in the Goal of this town, and at the same time with him was sie[ze]d one Francis Dole,[5] in whose house he was harboured, who proves to be one of Hore's Crew, H[ore] one of Colonel Fletcher's Pyrates commissioned by him from New York; Dole is also committed to Goal. My taking of Gillam was so very accidentall that I cannot forbear giving your Lordships a narrative of it, and one would believe there was a strange fatality in that m[an's] Starrs. On Saturday the 11th Instant late in the evening I had a letter from Colonel Sanford,[6] Judge [of] the Admiralty Court in Rhode-Island, giving me an account that Gillam had been there, but was come towards Boston a fortnight before, in order to ship himselfe for some of the Islands, Jamaica or Barbados, that he was troubled he knew it not sooner, and was affraid his Intelligence would come too late to me; that the Messenger he sent knew the Mare Gillam rode on [to] this town. I was in despair of finding the man, because Colonel Sanford writ to me that he was g[one] to this town so long a time as a fortnight before that; however I sent for an honest Constable I had made use of in the apprehending of Kidd and his men, and sent him with Colonel Sanford's Messenger to examine and search all the Inns in Town for the mare, and at the first Inn they went to, they found her tied up in the yard; the people of the Inn reported that the man that brought her thither, had lighted off her about a quarter of an hour before, had there tied her, but went away without saying anything to anybody. Upon notice of this I gave order to the Master of the Inn that if any body came to look after the mare, he should be sure to seize and secure him, but no body came for her. The next morning which was Sunday I summoned [a] Council, and we published a Proclamation, wherein I promised a reward of 200[l.] for the seizing and securing Gillam, whereupon there was the strictest search [all that] day, and the next, that was ever made in this part of the world, but we had missed him, if I had not been Informed of one Captain Knot, as an old Pyrate and therefore likely [to k]now where Gillam was concealed.[7] I sent for Knot and examined him, promising h[im if h]e would make an Ingenious Confession, I would not molest or prosecute him; he seemed [mu]ch disturbed, but would not confesse anything to purpose. I then sent for his wife and examined her on oath apart from her husband, and she confessed that one who went by the [name] of James Kelly had lodged severall nights in her house, but for some nights past [lo]dged as she believed in Charlestown Crosse the River. I knew he went by the name of Kelly, [the]n I examined Captain Knot again, telling him his wife had been more free and ingenious [tha]n him, which made him believe she had told all; and then he told me of Francis Dole in Charlestown, and that he believed Gillam would be found there. I sent half a dousin men immediately over the water to Charlestown and Knot with them, they beset the house, and searched it but found not the man, Dole affirming with many protestations he was not there, neither knew [of] any such man.