The Great Company Part 19

The scarcity of servants seems to have continued. In the following year greater bribes were resorted to. "Captain Mounslow was now ordered to provide fifteen or sixteen young able men to go to H. B.

This expedition for five years, which he may promise to have wages, viz.: 8 the 1st year; 10 the 2nd; 12 the 3rd and 14 for the two last years, and to be advanced 3 each before they depart from Gravesend." The result of this was that in June, 1711, the first batch of these servants came aboard the Company's ship at Stromness. But they were not destined to sail away to the Bay in their full numbers.

Overhauled by one of Her Majesty's ships, eleven of the young men were impressed into the service. For many years after this incident it was not found easy to engage servants in the Orkneys.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The younger men now stole again to the French camp and ma.s.sacred all the others in their sleep."

(_See page 185._)]

Captain Barlow was governor at Albany Fort in 1704 when the French came overland from Canada to besiege it. The Canadians and their Indian guides lurked in the neighbourhood of Albany for several days before they made the attack, and killed many of the cattle that were grazing in the marshes. A faithful Home Indian (as those Crees in the vicinity were always termed), who was on a hunting excursion, discovered those strangers, and correctly supposing them to be enemies, immediately returned to the fort and informed the governor of the circ.u.mstance. Barlow, while giving little credit to the report, yet took immediately every measure for the fort's defence. Orders were given to the master of a sloop hard by to hasten to the fort should he hear a gun fired.

In the middle of the night the French came before the fort, marched up to the gate and demanded entrance. Barlow, who was on watch, told them that the governor was asleep, but he would go for the keys at once.

The French, according to the governor, on hearing this, and expecting no resistance, flocked up to the gate as close as they could stand.

Barlow took advantage of this opportunity, and instead of opening the gate opened two port-holes, and discharged the contents of two six-pounders into the gathering. This quant.i.ty of grape-shot slaughtered great numbers of the French, and amongst them their commander, who was an Irishman.

A precipitate retreat followed such an unexpected reception; and the master of the sloop hearing the firing proceeded with the greatest haste to the spot. But some of the enemy, who lay in ambush on the river's bank, intercepted and killed him, with his entire crew.

Seeing no chance of surprising the fort, the French retired reluctantly, and did not renew the attack; although some of them were heard shooting in the neighbourhood for ten days after their repulse.

One man in particular was noticed to walk up and down the platform leading from the gate of the fort to the launch for a whole day. At sundown Fullerton, the governor, thinking his conduct extraordinary, ventured out and spoke to the man in French. He offered him lodgings within the fort if he chose to accept them; but to such and similar proposals the man made no reply, shaking his head. Fullerton then informed him that unless he would surrender himself as his prisoner he would have no alternative but to shoot him. In response to this the man advanced nearer the fort. The governor kept his word, and the unhappy Frenchman fell, pierced by a bullet. No explanation of his eccentric behaviour was ever forthcoming, but it may be that the hardships he expected to encounter on his return to Canada had unbalanced his mind, and made him prefer death to these while scorning surrender.

[Sidenote: Desperate condition of the French at Fort York.]

It was some solace to know that their French rivals were in trouble, and that York Factory had hardly proved as great a source of profit to the French Company as had been antic.i.p.ated. The achievements of Iberville and his brothers had done little, as has been shown, to permanently better its fortunes. To such an extent had these declined, that the capture, in 1704, of the princ.i.p.al ship of the French Company by an English frigate, forced these traders to invoke the a.s.sistance of the Mother Country in providing them with facilities for the relief of the forts and the transportation of the furs to France. In the following year, the garrison at Fort Bourbon nearly perished for lack of provisions. The a.s.sistance was given; but two years later it was discontinued, because they could no longer spare either ships or men.

Although both were urgently needed for defence against the New Englanders. Owing to the enormous increase of unlicensed bushrangers, the continued hostilities and the unsettled state of the country, no small proportion of the entire population chose rather to adventure the perils of illicit trade in the wilderness, than to serve the king in the wars at home.[45] Unaccustomed for so long a period to till the soil, their submission was not easily secured, no matter how dire the penalties.

Finding their continual pet.i.tions to the Lords of Trade ineffectual, the Company now drew up a more strongly worded one and presented it to Queen Anne herself. The memorial differed from any other, inasmuch as the Company now lay stress for the first time on some other feature of their commerce than furs.

"The said country doth abound with several other commodities (of which your pet.i.tioners have not been able to begin a trade, by reason of the interruptions they have met with from the French) as of whale-bone, whale-oil (of which last your subjects now purchase from Holland and Germany to the value of 26,000 per annum, which may be had in your own dominions), besides many other valuable commodities, which in time may be discovered."

If the French, it was argued, came to be entirely possessed of Hudson's Bay, they would undoubtedly give up whale fishing in those parts, which will greatly tend to the increase of their navigation and to their breed of seamen.

When your Majesty, in your high wisdom, shall think fit to give peace to those enemies whom your victorious arms have so reduced and humbled, and when your Majesty shall judge it for your people's good to enter into a treaty of peace with the French King, your pet.i.tioners pray that the said Prince be obliged by such treaty, to renounce all right and pretensions to the Bay and Streights of Hudson, to quit and surrender all posts and settlements erected by the French, or which are now in their possession, as likewise not to sail any ships or vessels within the limits of the Company's charter, and to make rest.i.tution of the 108,514, 19s. 8d., of which they robbed and despoiled your pet.i.tioners in times of perfect amity between the two Kingdoms.

This pet.i.tion seems actually to have come into the hands of the Queen and to have engaged her sympathy, for which the Honourable Adventurers had to thank John Robinson, the Lord Bishop of London. This dignitary, _persona grata_ in the highest degree to the sovereign, was also a close personal friend of the Lake family, whose fortunes[46] were long bound up with the Hudson's Bay Company. The Company was asked to state what terms it desired to make. In great joy they acceded to the request.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF TRADES AND PLANTATIONS.

_The Memorandum of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay:_

That for avoiding all disputes and differences that may, in time to come, arise between the said Company and the French, settled in Canada, they humbly represent and conceive it necessary--

That no wood-runners, either French or Indians, or any other person whatsoever, be permitted to travel, or seek for trade, beyond the limits hereinafter mentioned.

That the said limits began from the island called Grimington's Island, or Cape Perdrix, in the lat.i.tude of 58 north, which they desire may be the boundary between the English and the French, on the coast of Labrador, towards Rupert's Land, on the east main, and Novia Britannia on the French side, and that no French ship, bark, boat or vessel whatsoever, shall pa.s.s to the northward of Cape Perdrix or Grimington's Island, towards or into the Streights or Bay of Hudson, on any pretence whatever.

[Sidenote: Demand of the Company.]

That a line be supposed to pa.s.s to the south-westward of the said Island of Grimington or Cape Perdrix to the great Lake Miscosinke, _alias_ Mistoveny, dividing the same into two parts (as in the map now delivered), and that the French, nor any others employed by them, shall come to the north or north-westward of the said lake, or supposed line, by land or water, or through any rivers, lakes or countries, to trade, or erect any forts or settlements whatsoever; and the English, on the contrary, not to pa.s.s the said supposed line either to the southward or eastward.

That the French be likewise obliged to quit, surrender and deliver up to the English, upon demand, York Fort (by them called Bourbon), undemolished; together with all forts, factories, settlements and buildings whatsoever, taken from the English, or since erected or built by the French, with all the artillery and ammunition, in the condition they are now in; together with all other places they are possessed of within the limits aforesaid, or within the Bay and Streights of Hudson.

These limits being first settled and adjusted, the Company are willing to refer their losses and damages formerly sustained by the French in time of peace, to the consideration of commissioners to be appointed for that purpose.

By order of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson's Bay.

Hudson's Bay House, 7th of February, 1711-12.

A LIST OF FORTS FROM 1668 TO 1714.

1. Rupert, called by the French St. Jacques. Founded 1668 by Gillam. Taken by the French under Troyes and Iberville, July, 1686. Retaken by the English, 1693.

2. Fort Monsippi, Monsonis, St. Lewis and Moose Fort, taken by Troyes and Iberville 20th June, 1686. Retaken 1693.

3. Fort Chechouan, St. Anne or Albany, taken by de Troyes and Iberville in 1686. Retaken 1693.

4. New Severn or Nieu Savanne, taken by Iberville, 1690.

5. Fort Bourbon, Nelson or York. Founded 1670. Taken by the French, 1682, acting for English, 1684. Retaken by Iberville 12th October, 1894. Retaken by the English 1696, and by the French, 1697. Retaken by the English, 1714.

6. Fort Churchill, 1688.

7. East Main.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] By the Treaty of Ryswick, Great Britain and France were respectively to deliver up to each other generally whatever possessions either held before the outbreak of the war, and it was specially provided that this should be applicable to the places in Hudson's Bay taken by the French during the peace which preceded the war, which, though retaken by the British during the war, were to be given up to the French. Commissioners were to be appointed in pursuance of the Treaty to determine the rights and pretensions which either nation had to the places in Hudson's Bay. But these commissioners never met. The commissioners must, however, have been bound by the text of the Treaty wherever it was explicit. They _might_, said the Company's opponents, have decided that France had a right to the whole, but they could _not_ have decided that Great Britain had a right to the whole. They would have been compelled to make over to France all the places she took during the peace which preceded the war, for in that the Treaty left them no discretion. The following are the words of the Treaty:--"But the possession of those places which were taken by the French, during the peace that preceded this present war, and were retaken by the English during the war, shall be left to the French by virtue of the foregoing article." Thus the Treaty of Ryswick recognized and confirmed the right of France to certain places in Hudson's Bay distinctly and definitely, but it recognized no right at all on the part of Great Britain; it merely provided a tribunal to try whether she had any or not.

[41] "Therefore, we shall proceed to inform your Lordships of the present melancholy prospects of our trade and settlement in Hudson's Bay, and that none of his Majesty's plantations are left in such a deplorable state as those of this Company, for by their great losses by the French, both in times of peace as well as during the late war, together with the hardships they lie under by the late Treaty of Ryswick, they may be said to be the only mourners by the peace. They cannot but inform your Lordships that the only settlement that the Company now have left in Hudson's Bay (of seven they formerly possessed) is Albany Fort, vulgarly called Checheawan, in the bottom of the said Bay, where they are surrounded by the French on every side, viz., by their settlements on the lakes and rivers from Canada to the northwards, towards Hudson's Bay, as also from Port Nelson (Old York Fort) to the southward; but beside this, the Company have, by the return of their ship this year, received certain intelligence that the French have made another settlement at a place called New Severn, 'twixt Port Nelson and Albany Fort, whereby they have hindered the Indians from coming to trade at the Company's factory, at the bottom of the Bay, so that the Company this year have not received above one-fifth part of the returns they usually had from thence, insomuch that the same doth not answer the expense of their expedition."

[42] The Company being by these and other misfortunes reduced to such a low and miserable condition, that, without his Majesty's favour and a.s.sistance, they are in no ways able to keep that little remainder they are yet possessed of in Hudson's Bay, but may justly fear in a short time to be deprived of all their trade in those parts which is solely negotiated by the manufacturers of this kingdom. Upon the whole matter, the Company humbly conceive, they can be no ways safe from the insults and encroachments of the French, so long as they are suffered to remain possessed of any place in Hudson's Bay, and that in order to dislodge them from thence (which the Company are no ways able to do) a force of three men-of-war, one bomb-vessel, and two hundred and fifty soldiers besides the ships' company will be necessary, whereby that vast tract of land which is of so great concern, not only to this Company in particular, but likewise to the whole nation in general, may not be utterly lost to this kingdom.

[43] The Duke of York's (James II.) share, however, was retained by his heirs up to 1746.

[44] Captain John Merry is desired to speak with Captain Moody, who has a nephew in the Orkneys, to write to him to provide fifteen or sixteen young men, about twenty years old, to be entertained by the Company, to serve them for four years in Hudson's Bay, at the rate of 6 per annum, the wages formerly given by the Company.--From the Company's Order Book, 29th February, 1710.

[45] "This country," it was remarked in 1710, "is composed of persons of various character and different inclinations. One and the other ought to be managed, and can contribute to render it flourishing."

[46] I find the following in the minute books, under date of 24th March, 1714. "It was resolved that the Committee when they meet Friday come Senuit, do agree to wait on the Lord Bishop of London, in order to return him the thanks of this Company for the care that has been taken of them by the Treaty of Ryswick."

CHAPTER XVII.

1712-1720.

Queen Anne Espouses the Cause of the Company -- Prior's View of its Wants -- Treaty of Utrecht -- Joy of the Adventurers -- Pet.i.tion for Act of Cession -- Not Pressed by the British Government -- Governor Knight Authorized to take Possession of Port Nelson -- "Smug Ancient Gentlemen" -- Commissioners to Ascertain Rights -- Their Meeting in Paris -- Matters move slowly -- Bladen and Pulteney return to England.

At last the Company had triumphed. Its rights had been admitted; the Queen and her ministers were convinced of the justice of its claims.[47] Peace, long and anxiously awaited, began to dawn over the troubled horizon. Lewis and his courtiers had long sickened of the war: and at the Flemish town of Utrecht negotiations were on foot for a cessation of hostilities and the adjustment of differences between the crowns of England and France.