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soon as the danger at Quebec should be over. The shipmasters who acted as pilots had been impressed by Dudley in Boston and other ports. This coercion was necessary, because they felt themselves to be incompetent, by reason of their little acquaintance with the river. Three of them were sent to England, where, however, they were not examined; perhaps because the Ministry thought they might tell what it was as well for those in power that the people of England should not know, and especially it might not be agreeable to the sovereign that in the circumstances they should draw attention to the commander of the land forces.2

In Massachusetts the consternation, as well as the disappointment, was extreme. The expedition having so miserably failed, the cost of it appeared all but ruinous. The General Court, however, never giving way to despair, sent an Address to the Queen, praying for a further renewal of the repeatedly frustrated enterprise. As to their own capacity for contributions to it,

1 In a letter of Nov. 13, 1711 (in British Colonial Papers), Dudley tells St. John that formerly, "being long in hopes of such a day as this," he had sent twice up the river of St. Lawrence to Quebec for the exchange of prisoners to make pilots and see the place, till Mr. Voderil (sic) forbade my coming that way about five years since." At one of these times his son, William Dudley, and Colonel Vetch " were brought thither, and tarried there twenty days, and made all the advantageous observation they could.'

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2 Penhallow, 66; Niles, in Mass. Hist. Col., XXXV. 330. — The naval commander, Sir Hovenden Walker, was charged by the Admiralty not only with incompetency, but with peculation, and was left off from the list of half-pay officers. After nine years' silence, part of which time he

Oct. 17.

passed in seeking his fortune in Carolina (Introduction to Journal, 7), he published a vindication, prefixing it to a journal of the expedition which he had written, covering the time from April 6, 1711, when he received his commission, to October 10, when he got back to Plymouth. He does not impute the defeat of his expedition, so confidently as some of his officers had done, to dilatoriness on the part of the government of Massachusetts; but unfounded reports to that effect had been carefully spread in England by the mortified English soldiers and seamen, and had made such an impression as to make Dummer think it worth his while to refute them in a publication which he entitled "Letter to a noble Lord concerning the late expedition to Canada."

they prayed for some forbearance, "because of their enfeebled and impoverished state." As one proof that it was not zeal in which they were wanting, they represented that one man out of every five in their jurisdiction, capable of bearing arms, had been doing military service in the past year.1 While their agent in England was "to vindicate and justify the government," they magnanimously or prudently instructed him not to "fault or impeach others for want of doing their duty, or for their conduct in that affair." Some little consolation was derived from the knowledge that a plan entertained by the French for the retaking of Port Royal had been disconcerted by the necessity of concentrating their forces for the strengthening of Quebec.2

Oct. 24.

1712.

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In the following year some of the customary inroads. of Indians, varied by no novel circumstances, took place along the north-eastern border. On the Peace of whole, in the discouragement which prevailed, the Utrecht. intelligence of the discreditable peace of Utrecht was received with welcome in Massachusetts.4 March 31. The Indians proposed to the officer command

1713.

1 British Colonial Papers.

2 "Letter read [June 8, 1713] from Mr. Harley, referring to the Board petition of officers who served in the late war, and now disbanded, to the Queen, praying a grant of a great tract of land in North America, uninhabited, between New England and Nova Scotia, in order to their settling and planting there." (Journal of the Board of Trade, sub die.) Mr. Dummer, as agent for Massachusetts, appeared before the Board, June 11, and expressed his approval of the project. A negotiation followed (July 6, 9, 10, 21) respecting the expenses of their transportation. An "estimate of the charges" was "sent [April 8, 1714] to Sir Isaac Newton, master worker of her Maj

esty's mint, for his opinion and observations thereon." The Queen died a few months after this, and the scheme, though not yet abandoned, came to nothing.

8 Niles, in Mass. Hist. Col., XXXV. 333-335; Penhallow, 7174; comp. N. H. Provincial Papers, III. 543–546.

4 May 4, 1713, the Privy Council "ordered that the Lords of Trade forthwith cause the proclamation for publishing the treaties of peace and commerce lately concluded between her Majesty and the French king to be sent to the Governors of her Majesty's plantations, with directions to cause the same to be solemnly published." (Register of the Privy Council.)

July 11.

ing at Casco to make a treaty on their own account.1 Dudley kept up his dignity by answering that they must come to him at Portsmouth; and there accordingly they made another of their untrustworthy pacifications, professing themselves loyal subjects of the British Queen, and imploring forgiveness for their past misdeeds and perfidies. It was estimated that the eastern tribes had lost one-third part of the whole number of their warriors during the past ten years, and an equal proportion of women and children, and that the proportion of lives sacrificed had been little, if at all, less among the English population of Maine. While some families were extinct, others mourned parents, brothers, children, murdered or torn from them to hopeless captivity. The settlements were reduced to miserable poverty; their trade was ruined; their houses were burned; their fields were devastated. More than a hundred miles of sea-coast, lately the seat of prosperous life, bore no longer a trace of civilized humanity.

1 Mass. Archives, XXIX. 22-29, 30-32.

CHAPTER IX.

Discord be

Governor

and the General Court.

1703. Sept. 1.

April 8.

THE renewal of the Indian war at the beginning of Dudley's administration, while it invited harmonious action between him and the General Court, did not sustween the pend their jealousy of one another. He called the Court together to consult on the state of affairs, informing them that he had already sent succors into Maine, in sufficient force, as he still hoped, to restore tranquillity. It was not unnatural that he should regard a moment when he felt his importance to the people to be great, as being a favorable one for the enforcement of measures which he knew to be disrelished by them; and he read a letter from the Queen urging anew the matter of stated salaries for the high officials. The House replied that, in the absence of many of its members, kept at home by the existing alarm, they could not prudently proceed to consider a subject of such moment.1 The importance of a stated and permanent salary for the Governors had been as clearly seen by themselves as by their masters from the institution of the provincial government, by the Ministry, because it so materially affected the power of their representatives to serve them; by the Governors, both for that reason and for their private comfort and ease. Sir William Phips was not long in seeing the expediency of praying Novembor. the King to "nominate to said Assembly a salary

1693.

1 Nor did the Governor find the Council pliant. “Till the Queen appoints the Council, the best men can have no share in the govern

ment." (Dudley to the Board of Trade, in September, 1703, in British Colonial Papers.)

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sufficient for his support." Lord Bellomont, before he left England, applied to have " such a salary fixed on him as might be suitable to the government; an application of which the unsatisfactory result has been seen in 1695. the reply of the agent of Massachusetts to the July 4. message of the Lords of Trade.2

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At the Governor's next opportunity for communication with the Court, his urgency for action in respect to established salaries and the restoration of the eastern 1703. fort was such as to bring the House to a formal Nov. 16. defence of that policy, which it had adopted at the beginning of the provincial history, and in which it persisted to the end. There was now discord between the two branches of the Legislature, the Council siding with the Governor on questions of form and of his prerogative. The Representatives had sent an Address to the Queen, without consultation with the Council. The Council desired to see it. The Representatives replied that their Journal, in which it was recorded, was open to the Council's inspection, but they refused to send their clerk up with the Journal, or to furnish a copy of the paper. Dudley summoned the House to come to the Council Chamber with their Journal. They came, but did not bring it. At length they were prevailed upon to furnish a copy of the Address, and the altercation came to nothing except as manifesting the jealous temper which prevailed."

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