July 4.

struck, when four vessels sent from Boston to relieve the place appeared in the offing. There was nothing for them but to put to sea again. A portion of the victorious party took the ill-fated Dover on their way back. There, at a hamlet called Fox Point, they captured six persons, killing twice as many, and burning some houses. Later in the summer a party of Indians fell upon Exeter, where on one day they killed eight persons whom they found mowing in a field, and in the next put to death as many more belonging to a garrison-house, from which, however, the savages were repulsed. Two companies of English, following an Indian track, found at Wheelwrights' Pond, in Dover, a superior force, which they attacked without success, being obliged to draw off after the loss of several men, of whom twelve were killed. Forty more Englishmen were murdered within the week, along the Massachusetts line.2

July 6.

The alarm was great throughout New York and New England, the greater because the Mohawks, disgusted with what they considered the pusillanimity of the Dutch and English, many of whom, terrified by the disaster at Schenectady, had moved down the river to be out of harm's way, seemed to be wavering in fidelity to their alliance.1

1 Charlevoix, Histoire, &c., II. 54. 2 Magnalia, VII. 72-75.-1690, May 28, David Jeffries writes from Boston, to John Usher in London, of the miserable condition" of the Eastern people, and their "cries for relief." Counsellor Bullivant writes of the distressed condition, and says that Danforth answered to applicants for relief that "the Lord Jesus was King of the earth as well as the heaven, and if he did not help them, he could not." (British Colonial Papers.)

8 A change of Counsellors which was made at the election of May, 1690, is perhaps to be interpreted as an indication of popular uneasiness.

Wait Winthrop, Sir William Phips, and Dr. Oakes were substituted for Shrimpton, Richards, and Pynchon. (Mass. Col. Rec., ad loc.)

Colden, History, &c., I. 123, 125, 130. But there was more than hesitation among the Mohawks, since no fewer than eighty of that furious tribe had been with the French in the assault on Schenectady. Charlevoix gave the Iroquois credit for an astute policy. "Ils ne veulent pas qu'aucune des deux nations Européennes, entre lesquelles leur pays est situé, prenne une trop grande supériorité sur l'autre, persuadés qu'ils en seroient bientôt les victimes." (II. 89; comp. 138.)

May 1.

Connecticut, not herself immediately exposed, sent troops to secure Albany and the upper towns on Connecticut River. The General Court of Massachusetts invited a consultation of commissioners from the several Colonies as far south as Virginia, appointing William Stoughton and Samuel Sewell on her own part. Delegates from Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New York, met at New York, and part of the result of their deliberations is to be seen in the expedition against Quebec which is presently to be described. Meanwhile a spirited enterprise was proceeding, which Massachusetts had set on foot. That Colony despatched seven or eight hundred men in eight small vessels for an attack on Port Royal (afterwards Annapolis), in Acadia, from which place privateers had been fitted out to prey upon her commerce. The expedition was under the command of Sir William Phips, who was now for Capture of the first time made a freeman, having "voluntarily Port Royal. offered himself" for the service. It had complete sucPort Royal, surprised and unprepared for resistance, surrendered at the first summons; and Phips followed up his good fortune by capturing and destroying the French fort at the mouth of the river St. John.3

cess.

1 Mass. Archives, XXXVI. 4, 5. 2 Mass. Col. Rec.

O'Callaghan, IX. 455; Murdock, History of Nova Scotia, 183, 185; Charlevoix, Histoire, &c., II. 65-72. According to Charlevoix, the garrison of Port Royal consisted of but eighty-six men, and they had but eighteen guns, and those not mounted. He understood the four English vessels which appeared before Falmouth just after its capture to have been part of Phips's squadron. (Ibid., 65.) —“The expedition cost £3000 more than the plunder amounts to." (Letter of Jan. 8, 1691, from James

2

April 28.

May 23.

Lloyd of Boston, in British Colonial Papers.) In 1690, "A Journal of the Proceedings in the Late Expedition to Port Royal," &c., was "printed for Benjamin Harris at the London Coffee House." I have not seen the piece. - The reader will remember that, since the Treaty of Breda, in 1667, Nova Scotia had been a possession of the crown of France. (See above, Vol. II. p. 630.)

Among the late Mr. Sparks's papers in the library of Harvard College is a copy by George Chalmers of a Journal of Phips's expedition to Port Royal, sent some seventy

Expedition against

Unfortunately, this gratifying exploit gave new encouragement to the more ambitious scheme, the consideration of which had hitherto been only approached with a reasonable and warning conviction of its difficulty and hazards. The conquest of Canada was indeed no new idea. The project had formerly found favor in England; ' Canada. and, encouraged by the remembrance of this approval, the General Court sent a vessel to solicit from the King a supply of arms and ammunition, and the March 12. aid of a naval force,2- the first time that ever Massachusetts asked military help from England, and now with the purpose of a foreign conquest for the crown. The fruitlessness of the application did not defeat the enterprise. The present time, if any, seemed in some respects highly suitable for its prosecution. It was believed that Quebec was not in a good condition for defence. The existing animosity of the Five Nations against the French promised a formidable auxiliary force, and their urgency for the movement was even such as it might not be prudent to oppose.3 The conquest would be an immense benefit to Massachusetts, in respect to her security for the future against disturbances from the Eastern Indians, as well as to hostile relations always likely to exist with the French, whose aggressions had hitherto been so brutal. A special reason for energetic action at the present moment was presented by the position of Massachusetts at the British Court. Soliciting as she was from the King a restoration of her charter, in no way could she better recommend herself to his good-will than by laying at his feet the dominion of Canada, the conquest of her arms. A solemn proclamation was sent out, exhort

years later by Governor Bernard to the Board of Trade. After Phips's conquest a President and Council were appointed to reside on the spot, and report to the Governor of MassachuRetts.

114.

See above, Vol. II. 630; IL

2 Mass. Col. Rec., sub die. Colden, History, &c., I. 117.

We

66 are now

March 12.

ing the people to seek by repentance for sin the Divine intervention, never needed more. arriving," it declared, "to such an extremity that an axe is laid to the root of the trees, and we are in imminent danger of perishing."1

June 6.

The expedition was projected on a scale proportioned to the magnitude of the object. Its costliness presented a formidable difficulty. The government issued a proposal to persons who should advance the money that they should be remunerated with half the net proceeds of the spoils, besides being repaid the amount of their outlay.2 This plan did not find favor, and the sums immediately necessary were borrowed on the simple credit of the Colony. An embargo was laid to prevent intelligence and to detain supplies. Sir William Phips's recent achievement caused him to be appointed General, and John Walley of Barnstable was made Lieutenant-General, of the forces to be sent by sea.

June 12.

March 22.

Aug. 9.

The fleet, consisting of thirty-two vessels, the largest mounting forty-four guns, sailed from Nantasket, near Boston, having been detained till too near the autumn, waiting for the supplies which it was hoped would come from England; but it was the summer of the battle of the Boyne, and there was too much going on just then to allow the home government to concern itself about America. Phips's fleet conveyed two thousand men, with provisions for four months. The stock of ammunition was scanty. The plan of the campaign contemplated a diversion to be made by an assault on Montreal by a force composed of English from Connecticut and New York, and of Iroquois Indians, at the same time with the attack

1 Mass. Col. Rec., sub die. 2 Mass. Archives, XXXVI. 111. Mass. Col. Rec., sub die. Letter of John Usher (July 4) in British Colonial Papers.

4"Ammunition little enough." (Letter of Major Savage, Feb. 2, 1691, in Mass. Hist. Col., XIII. 256.)

on Quebec by the fleet. And a second expedition into Maine under Captain Church was to threaten the Eastern tribes, whose incursions had during the last summer been so disastrous. At the same time that their maraudings. along the northern border were to be checked and punished, they were to be kept occupied, so as to be disabled from carrying assistance to Quebec.

As is so apt to happen when a plan involves the simultaneous action of distant parties, the condition of success failed. The movement of Church, who had with him but three hundred men, proved ineffective as to any contribution to the descent upon Canada. In the peril in which he found himself, Frontenac could not afford to September. send his Abenaqui allies any succor; nor was it, on the other hand, to be imagined that the English commander with so small a force should penetrate across the country in time to make himself useful on the St. Lawrence. Landing in an inlet of Casco Bay, in what is now the town of Brunswick, Church went forty miles up the Androscoggin, taking two or three Indian forts, killing a few scores of the savages, and liberating a number of their captives. Leaving a hundred men at Wells, he returned by sea to Boston, to meet there a cold reception, which he thought cruelly unjust.' Certainly he had achieved nothing brilliant. But it may have been in consequence of his inroad, against which the savages found that they got no aid from Quebec, that they sent some of their sagamores to the Kennebec, who agreed with commissioners of Massachusetts on a truce for five months, and a restoration of their prisoners. Only three towns, Wells, York, and Kittery, all close to the south-western corner of Maine, now remained to the English in that province.

Nov. 29.

It was not till after a voyage of more than six weeks

1 Church, Entertaining Passages, to Thomas Hinckley, in Mass. Hist 107-117; Williamson, History, &c., Col., XXXV. 271 et seq. I. 624-627; Letter of Benjamin Church