23 May—On this day in 1430, Burgundians (essentially Germans in France well before the Nazis) captured Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc). She tried to escape twice but failed. A little later they sold her to the English, who occupied part of France at the time. A year and a week later, 30 May 1431, the 19-year-old war heroine was burned at a French pillar.

Back in England 103 years later, King Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s good to know the right people and even better to be the king.

One-hundred sixty-eight years after that travesty, William Kidd, known to history as Captain Kidd, was hanged in England. Kidd, a Scotsman born in 1654, had settled in New York City to clean up as a privateer—essentially a pirate authorized and contracted by the English (as opposed to British) government to get the enemy where it hurt—largely in the pocketbook.

The English had around the time of Kidd’s arrival in North America annexed New Netherlands from the Dutch and renamed it in honor of the Duke of York, the future King James II. Of course, New York ultimately became the Rotten Apple.

New York was a great base for Kidd’s legalized piracy in the Atlantic and Caribbean. Usually skippering the Blessed William (on an ego trip?), he mostly plundered French mercantile shipping. He was quite successful as a pirate—make that privateer—as well as an investor. Kind of like modern venture capitalists. And lots of them work out of New York.

It didn’t hurt that William Kidd married twice widowed Sarah Bradley Cox Oort, who was just about young enough to be his daughter. Youthful Sarah’s first husband had left her a fortune that made her one of the wealthiest women in New York.

But Captain Kidd’s fortune turned sour when his crew of venture capitalists on the Adventure Galley mutinied in 1696 and essentially forced him to become a common pirate himself. Then followed predictably negative publicity, his capture in Boston, dirty politics in which his friends in high places deserted him, and a rigged trial in which he was convicted and sentenced to death.

William Kidd’s last words on the gallows were, “I have nothing to say except that I have been sworn against by perjured and wicked people.” And history confirms that he was telling the truth.

If you have nothing better to do, a good part of Captain Kidd’s legendary treasure is thought to be buried on (or in or under) Long Island . . .