1774 Criminal Court Case On the Murder of Michael Kennedy
At the General Assizes held in St. John's, Newfoundland, the third day of
October in the fourteenth year of His Majesty's reign George the Third of
Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King Defender of the Faith and so Forth and
in the year
one thousand seven hundred and seventy four before Edward Langman, Nicholas
Gill, John
Stripling, William Thomas, Robert Bulley, Samuel Webber and Elliot Elinor esqs.
Commissioners
appointed by his excellency Molineux Shuldham Esq. Governor to hear and
determine all
criminal causes/ Treason excepted/ according to laws and justices and to proceed
to sentences or
acquittances as the cases shall require.
The Court being opened and the Grand Jury, the several Jurors being duly
sworn, the sundry bills of indictment were given them upon whence they
withdrew.
The Jurors for our Lord the King upon oath then present that George Rider
late of Poole in the county of Dorset, Merchant having God before his eyes
but being moved and seduced by the instigations of the devil on the first day of
January in the
fourteenth year of the reign of our said Sovereign Lord George the Third of
Great Britain,
France, and Ireland King defender of the Faith and so forth, on the first day of
January
aforesaid with force and arms near his house at Bonavista in the Island of
Newfoundland in and
upon another Mich. Kenedy a native of the Kingdom of Ireland, in the Peace of
God and of Our
Said Lord then and there being, the aforesaaid, Michael Kenedy having first
stricken the said
George Rider feloniously did make an assault, and that the aforesaid George
Rider with a
cetain gun of the value of ten shillings which he the said George Rider in hands
then and
there held, loaded with lead, shott the said Michael Keney under the ear of him
the said Michael
Kenedy the aforesaid Michael Kenedy as aforesaid then and there not having any
weapons drawn nor
the aforesaid Michael Kenedy then and there having first stricken the said
George Rider,
then and there feloniously did shoott and discharge the lead into the head of
the said
Michael Kenedy giving unto the said Michael Kenedy then and there with the gun
aforesaid in form
aforesaid in and under the ear of him the said Michael Kenedy three mortals
wounds with the shott
aforesaid of which mortal wound he the said Michael Kenedy then and there
instantly died. And
so the jurors aforesaid upon their oath aforesaid do say that the said George
Rider, on
the aforesaid first day of January in the year aforesaid at Bonavista aforesaid
in the manner and form
aforesaid, feloniously did kill against the peace of our Lord the King His Crown
and
dignity, as aginst the forms of the statute in such case made provided.
Ignoramus Jas Gosse Foreman