John Nairne, Seigneur of Murray Bay
Colonel Nairne's portrait.—His letters.—The first Scottish settlers at Malbaie.—Nairne's finance.—His tasks.—The curé's work.—The Scottish settlers and their French wives.—The Church and Education.—Nairne's efforts to make Malbaie Protestant.—His war on idleness.—The character of the habitant.—Fishing at Malbaie.—Trade at Malbaie.—Farming at Malbaie.—Nairne's marriage.—Career and death in India of Robert Nairne.—The Quebec Act and its consequences for the habitant.
In the dining room of the Manor House at Murray Bay Nairne's portrait still hangs. It was painted, probably in Scotland, when he was an old man, by an artist, to me unknown. The face is refined, showing kindliness and gentleness in the lines of the mouth, and revealing the "friendly honest man" that he aspired to be. His nose is big and in spite of the prevailing gentleness of demeanour the thin lips, pressed together, indicate some vigour of character. He has the watery eye of old age and this takes away somewhat from the impression of energy. It is not a clever face but honest, rather sad, and unmistakeably Scottish in type. Nairne wears the red coat of the British officer and a wig in the fashion of the time. The portrait might be one of a frequenter of court functions in London rather than that of a hardy pioneer at Murray Bay, who had carried on a stern battle with the wilderness.
Nairne was a good letter writer. To his kin in Scotland he sent from the beginning voluminous annual epistles. They are not such as we now write, hurriedly scratched off in a few minutes. With abundant time at his disposal Nairne could write what must have occupied many days. When written, the letters were sometimes copied in a book almost as large as an office ledger. It is well that this was done, for in this book is preserved almost the sole record of the life at Murray Bay of a century and a half ago. The pages are still fresh and the handwriting, while not that of one much accustomed to use the pen, is clear and vigorous. The zeal for copying letters was intermittent. There are gaps, covering many years. Then, for a time, not only the letters sent, but those received, are copied into the book. In the long winter evenings there was not much to do. Malcolm Fraser, it is true, lived just across the river at the neighbouring manor house. But Malcolm was more usually away than not. Besides, as one grows older, there is no place like one's own fireside of a winter evening. So our good seigneur read and dozed and wrote and we are grateful that he has told us so much about past days.
Nairne's first visit to Malbaie was, as we have seen, in the autumn of 1761, when he took possession of his seigniory. Not until the following year was the formal grant made by Murray. Long afterwards, in 1798, writing to a friend, Hepburn, in Scotland, Nairne recalled his arrival at his future home. "I came here first in 1761 with five soldiers [alas, we do not know their names!] and procured some Canadian servants. One small house contained us all for several years and [we] were separated from every other people for about eighteen miles without any road." He contrasts this with what he sees about him at the time of writing—a parish with more than five hundred inhabitants, with one hundred men capable of bearing arms, grist mills, fisheries, good houses and barns, fertile fields, a priest, a chapel, and so on. The five soldiers of whom Nairne speaks were no doubt men of the 78th Highlanders and ancestors of a goodly portion of the population of Malbaie at the present time. Perhaps some of them had fought at Culloden; certainly all fought at Louisbourg and Quebec.
In the first days at Murray Bay Nairne was in debt. In 1761, probably to purchase his captaincy, he had incurred a considerable obligation to his friend General Murray; where Murray got £400 to lend him is a mystery, for he was himself always pressed for funds. With everything to do at Murray Bay, mills to be built, roads to be opened, a manor house to be constructed, it was not easy to get together any money; for years the debt hung like a mill-stone round Nairne's neck. But he had always a certain, if small, revenue in his half pay and, in time, he acquired, chiefly by inheritance, what was, for that period in Canada, a considerable fortune. In 1766, when Nairne was in Scotland, General Murray, who had himself just arrived from Canada, wrote urgently to ask for payment. Murray owed to a Mr. Ross £8,000 and could not borrow one shilling in England on his estates in Canada; so he said "delay will be a very terrible disappointment to me." But this disappointment he had to bear. In 1770 the debt was still unpaid and may have remained so for some years longer. Happily the friendship between the former comrades was not impaired by their financial relations. Murray promised to put Nairne in the way of being "very comfortable and easy" in Canada, if he would follow his advice, but nothing came of his offer. For some years after 1761 Nairne thought of returning to Scotland, whither ties of kin drew him strongly. But his father's death in 1766 or 1767 helped to weaken these ties. In any case Scotland offered no career and he must do something to pay the debt to Murray and to provide for himself.
Nairne's chief task as seigneur was to put settlers on his huge tract. The seigneur, indeed, discharged functions similar to those of a modern colonization company, but with differences that in some respects favour the older system. Now-a-days the occupier buys the land and the colonization company gets the best possible price for what it has to sell; it can hold for a rise in value and, if it likes, can refuse to sell at all. Nairne had no such powers. Under the law, if a reputable person applied for land, he must let him have it. Settlers required no capital to buy their land, and, as long as they paid their merely nominal rent, they could not be disturbed in their holdings. The rent amounted to about one cent an acre, and some twenty cents or a live capon for each of the two or three arpents of frontage which a farm would have. The rent charge was uniform and depended not upon the quality of the land or upon the individual seigneur but upon what was usual in the district; moreover, under the French law, no matter how valuable the land became, the rent could not be increased and, though so trifling, it was rarely required until the settler's farm had begun to be productive. Sometimes in a single year Nairne would put as many as twenty brawny young fellows on his land to hew out homes for themselves. Each of them got a tract of about one hundred acres and, as the annual rental received for a dozen farms would be hardly more than twenty dollars, the seigneur reaped no great profit from his tenants. It was only when a tenant sold a holding, that the seigneur secured any considerable sum. To him then went one-twelfth of the price. The other chief source of profit, as settlement increased, was from the seigneur's mill. To it all the occupiers of his land must bring their grain and pay a fixed charge for its grinding. In scattered settlements the mill brought little profit and was a source of expense rather than of income. But, as population increased, this "droit de banalité" became valuable. The mill at Malbaie was, in time, very prosperous.
In Canada the seigneur was not the oppressor of his people but rather their watchful guardian. He planned roads and other improvements, checked abuses, and enforced justice. At his side stood, usually, the priest. The moment a parish was established a curé was entitled to the tithe; near every manor house, the village church was sure to spring up. Even when, as at Malbaie, the priest and the seigneur were not of the same faith they were often fast friends. Nairne's relations were good with the neighbouring curé, when, at length, Malbaie had a resident priest. Each village would thus usually have at least two men of some culture working together for its spiritual and temporal interests. Both remained in touch with the outside world; the priest with his bishop at Quebec, the seigneur with the representative there of the sovereign. Upon each change of governor Nairne was required to appear at Quebec to render fealty and homage. With head uncovered and wearing neither sword nor spur he must kneel before the governor, and take oath on the Gospels to be faithful to the king, to be party to nothing against his interests, to perform all the duties required by the terms of his holding, and, especially, to appear in arms to defend the province if attacked. We find Nairne excused by General Haldimand in 1781 from discharging this ceremony, but only because he was away on active service.
When Nairne settled at Murray Bay he was unmarried and so, no doubt, were the soldiers he brought with him. Only after five or six years did he himself find a wife but we may be sure that his men did not wait so long. What more natural than that they should marry the French Canadian servants of whom Nairne speaks? A visitor at Murray Bay is struck with names like McNicol, Harvey, Blackburn, McLean, and one or two others that have a decidedly North British ring. Some, if not all, are names of one or other of the half dozen soldiers who settled at Murray Bay in Nairne's time. There was no disbanding there of a regiment, as tradition has it. In time the 78th Highlanders were disbanded, but certainly not at Murray Bay, and, though hundreds of them remained in Canada, only a few individual soldiers came to Nairne's settlement. Already when he arrived French Canadians were there and from the first the community was prevailingly French and Catholic. In 1784 when joined with Les Eboulements and Isle aux Coudres under a single priest Malbaie already had 65 communicants. As likely as not some even of the Highlanders were Catholics. In any case their children became such and spoke French, the tongue of their mothers; even Nairne's own children spoke only French until they went to Quebec to school.
When, from time to time, a missionary priest visited the place he baptized children of Catholic and Protestant alike, including even the children of the Protestant family in the manor house. The only religious services that the people ever shared in were those of the Roman Catholic Church. Nairne would have wished it otherwise. He held sturdy Protestant views, and wished to bring in Protestant settlers. On one or more of his visits to Scotland he made efforts to induce Scots to move to Canada. But he met with no great success. A Scottish friend, Gilchrist, who had visited Nairne at Murray Bay, writes, in 1775, to express hope that he will not encourage French settlers who will rob him, who have "disingenuous, lying, cheating, detestable dispositions," and are the "banes of society." He adds, "I am glad you give me reason to believe you are to carry over some industrious honest people from hence with you. I am convinced 'twere easy by introducing a few such [to bring about that] the dupes to the most foolish and absurd religion now in the world might be warmed out and your quiet as well as interest established from Point au Pique to the Lake."[7] The Roman Catholic faith had more vitality than Nairne's correspondent supposed. It was Protestantism that should in time be "warmed out" of Murray Bay.
To prevent this Nairne did what he could; for a long time he entertained hopes not only that the Protestants at Murray Bay might be held to their faith but also that the Roman Catholics would be led into the Protestant fold. His chief complaint against the Roman Catholic Church was in regard to education. There was woeful ignorance. Nairne was in command of the local militia and he found that officers of militia, and even a neighbouring seigneur, could not read. When Roman Catholic services were held at Murray Bay, as they were regularly before he died, the tongue was one that the people did not understand. At the services there was nothing "but a few lighted candles, in defyance of the sun, and the priest singing and reading Latin or Greek.... None of us understands a word." He complains of "the greatest deficiency in preaching sentiments of morality and virtue." Indeed, very few of the priests could preach or say anything in public beyond the Latin mass. Nairne tried to secure better means of educating his people. Probably earlier also, but certainly in 1791, he was writing to the Anglican Bishop of Quebec to help him to do something. He lives, he says, in "the most Northerly and, I believe, the poorest parish on the Continent of America." The people cannot read and have no literary amusement. Their idle days they spend in drunkenness and debauchery and he wishes something done for them. Ten years later Nairne is returning to the charge. There are five Protestant families in the neighbourhood. They cannot even be baptized except by the curé. They cannot get any Protestant instruction; so the Protestant children are reared Roman Catholics. Nairne wished to have a Protestant clergyman established at Murray Bay; he could make that place his headquarters and carry on missionary work in the neighbouring parishes. But the five Protestant families at Murray Bay soon became three, for Nairne says, in 1801, that his and Colonel Fraser's families and one other man, an Englishman, are the only remaining Protestants. He and Fraser, he adds, are growing old and, in any case, it was doubtful whether the Englishman would attend service.
Yet Nairne still begged for a Protestant missionary. He desired most of all a free school. The teacher should be, he says, French but able also to preach in English; there was now no school at Murray Bay; a free school and a church system which would release the people from paying tithes could work wonders and, probably, most of the people would soon become Protestants. Knowing the tenacity with which the French Canadians have clung to their faith, it seems hardly likely that Nairne's dreams would have been realized. At any rate nothing was done. At that time there were hardly more than a dozen Anglican clergymen in all Canada and the Bishop of Quebec had no one to spare to look after the few scattered sheep at Murray Bay. On the other hand the rival Church did not forget her own. Long before the British conquest occasional services had been held at Malbaie and these were continued, with some regularity, until a resident priest came in 1797. The visiting priests worked hard. They were, Nairne says, "industrious in private to confess the people, especially the women, which branch of their duty is deemed most sacred and necessary." Against this tremendous power of the confessional, Protestantism had nothing that could be called an opposing influence. When a Protestant died he might not, of course, be buried in the Roman Catholic burial ground. For these outcast dead Nairne set aside a plot near his own house, where, still, under a little clump of trees, their bones lie, neglected and forgotten. Not more than half a dozen Protestants were ever buried there and this shows that even the Protestant pioneers were few in number; hardly one of their children remained outside the Roman Church.
Nairne thought the Canadians not too prone to industry and he deplored the multitude of religious holidays that gave an excuse for idleness. In a year there were not less than forty, in addition to Sundays, and on some of the holidays, such as that of the patron saint of the parish, there were scenes of great disorder. Nairne wrote on the subject to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec asking him to take steps to ensure that the people might come to think it not sinful but virtuous to work for six days in the week. The Bishop promised consideration of the matter. Already it had been under debate and in the end the Bishop gave orders that labour might continue on most of the Church's festivals; that of the patron saint of the parish was in time abolished. Nairne thus helped to bring about a considerable industrial reform. But beyond this he achieved little.
The French Canadians, who occupied his vacant acres, have shown both a marvellous tenacity for their own customs and also a fecundity that has enabled people, numbering 60,000 at the time of the British conquest, to multiply now to some 2,500,000, scattered over the United States and Canada. To govern them has never been an easy problem. Nairne says that the French officer, Bougainville, who had known the Canadians in many campaigns, called them at Murray's table a brave and submissive people; he thought they needed the strong hand of authority and added that he was sure the British method of government would soon spoil them. Under the French régime they had had no gleam of political liberty. For twenty years before the conquest France had exacted from them the fullest possible measure of military service. The British ended this and brought liberty. Its growth is sometimes so rapid as to be noxious, and, no doubt, some of those who came to Nairne's domain gave him much trouble. "No people," Nairne said of them, "stand more in awe of punishment when convinced that there is power to inflict it, as none are so easily spoiled as to be mutinous by indulgences." Some of them showed striking intelligence: in 1784 we find Nairne recommending for appointment as Notary one Malteste (no doubt the well-known name Maltais is a later form) as a "remarkable honest, well-behaved countryman with more education than is commonly to be found with one in his station." The dwellers at Malbaie were for the most part a quiet people entirely untouched by the movements of the outside world. "Nothing here," wrote Nairne in 1798, "is considered of importance but producing food to satisfy craving Stomachs, which the people of this cold and healthy country remarkably possess, and to feed numbers of children.... They have no other ambition or consideration whatever but simply to procure food and raiment for themselves and their numerous families."
They had a very clear idea of their rights. Nairne's grant conferred upon him those of fishing and hunting. But the inhabitants declared that when land was once granted, the seigneur lost all control over the adjoining waters. Nairne wished, for instance, to prohibit the spearing of salmon at night by the Canadians, with the aid of torches or lanterns. But they had never been hampered by such restrictions and, when Nairne tried to check them, they said that they would not be hindered. It was in vain that he said "I had rather have no power at all and no seigneurie at all [than] not to be able to keep up the rights of it." When, in 1797, he ordered one Joseph Villeneuve to cease the "flambeau" fishing at night, the fellow "roared and bellowed" and set him at defiance; no less than twenty companions joined him in the fishing. They would acknowledge no law nor restraint and seem to have had force majeure on their side. It was not until long after that the legislature at Quebec passed strict laws regulating the modes of fishing.
Whatever the limitations on the seigneur's authority he had the undoubted right of control over fishing in rivers and lakes until the adjacent lands were conceded to occupiers. It was important, therefore, not to grant lands which carried with them the best fishing and Nairne's ardent friend Gilchrist kept exhorting him from Scotland on this point. "There is no place ... I would so willingly and happily pass life in," he wrote, in 1775, "as in your Neighbourhood and often have I been seized with the memory of your easy and uncontrolled way of rising, lying, dancing, drinking, &c., at your habitation.... One hope ... I wish to be well founded and that is that your Stewart, Factor or Attorney, has not conceded any lands with the River in front from the Rapides du Vieux Moulin. If otherwise, you have lost more than the profits [which] all above Brassar's will yield in our lifetime. The fishing in that part of the River is alone worth crossing the Atlantic."
Over trade Nairne and Fraser tried to exercise some real control. Their grants gave them no right to trade with the Indians and in reality no authority over trade. But they were guardians of the law and took steps to check traders from violating it. One Brassard, who lived up the Murray River, seems to have been a frequent offender. It was easy to debauch the Indians with drink and then to get their furs for very little and the seigneurs needed always to be alert. In 1778 we find Malcolm Fraser making with one Hugh Blackburn a bargain which outlines what the seigneurs tried to do in regard to trade. Blackburn binds himself in the sum of £200 to obey certain restrictions: he will not attempt to debauch the Indians belonging to the King's Posts; in no circumstances will he sell them liquor; nor will he sell liquor on credit to anyone. He will obey the lawful orders of Nairne and Fraser relative to the carrying on of his trade; he will pay his debts, and will make others pay what they owe him, refusing them credit if accounts are not paid within six months. In consideration of these pledges by Blackburn Fraser guarantees his credit with the Quebec merchants. The difficulty in regard to trade with the Indians settled itself by the tragic remedy of their gradual extinction. In 1800 Nairne says that the Micmacs, once a great nuisance, are now rarely seen.
Nairne was a good farmer and his letters contain many references to farming operations. At Murray Bay, he says, plowing goes on for seven months in the year, from the middle of April to the middle of November. But the Canadians do not plough well; they do not understand how to preserve the crops when cut; and, on the whole, are backward in agriculture. He himself preserved for a domain more land than he could ever get cleared, for this clearing was heavy work. Some of the soil at Murray Bay is very good. Gilchrist writes indeed to say that he has been talking in Scotland about Nairne's land. "On my mentioning that you had lime, without digging for it, it was acknowledged that you possessed all the advantages possible and that anything might be done with ground such as yours which is dry; and I verily believe would you thoroughly lime your land you may keep it in crops as long as you please and have prodigious returns." Good farming, he says, Nairne may have and he should preserve good fishing; then Murray Bay will be perfect. "If I have the pleasure of seeing your sisters, I'll represent Mal Bay as the counterpart of Paradise before the fall." He adds some local characterizations. "Catish will do for Eve, La Grange for Adam, and Dufour for the Devil."
Nairne was married in 1766 to Christiana Emery. Of her history I know nothing, except that she was born in Edinburgh and married in Canada. Soon after marriage Nairne paid a long visit to Scotland and there in 1767 the freedom of the borough of Sterling was conferred upon him. Mrs. Nairne must have been considerably younger than her husband, for though he lived to ripe old age, she survived him by twenty-six years, dying at Murray Bay in 1828. Whether she brought any dowry I do not know; Nairne certainly had had in mind the improvement of his position by marrying. Nine children were born to them but three died in childhood of an epidemic fever that broke out at Murray Bay in 1773 while Nairne was in Scotland. A fourth child, Anne, died of consumption. Five children lived to grow up—three daughters and two sons.
Canada seemed so remote that it was not easy for Nairne to keep in touch with his kin. The scattering of families, one of the penalties Imperial Britain, with a world wide domain, imposes upon her sons, had taken Nairne's brother Robert to India. At a time only ten years later than Clive's great victory of Plassey, Britain's grasp on the country was, as yet, by no means certain and India was amazingly remote; five years usually elapsed between the sending of a letter to India from Canada and the receipt of a reply! On January 5th, 1770, Robert Nairne writes from Marlborough, India, acknowledging a letter from his brother John, only recently received, dated April 21, 1767. The brothers discuss family news and family plans, their old father's health, the desirability of settling down at home in Scotland, the life each is living, remote from that home. Though an officer, Robert engaged in trade and made some money. "The Company's pay is hardly subsistence," he says, "and here we have not, as on t'other side of India the spoils of plundered provinces to grow fat on. I keep my health very well and if I want the satisfaction, I am also free from many Anxietys, people are subject to who are more in the glare of life." He was in a retired place, where there were few people and perennial summer, with "no variety of seasons nor of anything else." Time passes insensibly, he says; "in India years are like months in Europe ... I write, read, walk and go in company the same round nearly throughout the year. Here we have little company; yet everyone wants to go to out settlements where they are quite alone. I cannot account for it. Mal Bay is your out settlement. Do you like that as well as Quebec?"
Robert Nairne was something of a philosopher. "Have you ever so much philosophy," he writes to the seigneur of Murray Bay in 1767, "as to think everything that happens is for the best? I am so far of that mind that content and discontent I think arises [sic] rather from the cast of our own thoughts than from outward accidents and that there is nearly an equal distribution of the means of happiness to all men, and that they are the happiest that improve their means the most." He felt the weariness of exile, the Scot's longing for his own land. "Certainly to a person of a right tone of mind if there are enjoyments in life, it must be in our own country amongst our friends and relations. With such conditions the bare necessaries of life are better than riches without them.... Death is but a limited absence and you and I are much in that state with regard to our friends at home."
It was not long before Robert Nairne's letters ceased altogether. In 1776, John Nairne received at Murray Bay the sad news that, in November or December, 1774, his brother had been killed in a petty expedition against some local tribesmen. A native chieftain had murdered, cooked and eaten a rival who was friendly to the East India Company and Robert Nairne with some natives, and only three Europeans, went up country, through woods and bogs, to seize the offender. When there was fighting his natives fled, and he was shot through the body. It was a pity, says John Nairne's correspondent, Hepburn, to lose his life "in so silly a manner." He would soon have been governor of Bencoolen and was in a way to make "a great figure in life." Of his fortune of £6,000 John Nairne received a part. Twenty-five years after his brother's death Nairne was to get at Murray Bay similar news of the loss of his own son in distant India. It has levied a heavy tribute of Britain's best blood.
In 1774 Nairne again revisited Scotland. Though no politician, he must have heard much about the Quebec Act, then before the Imperial Parliament. The Governor of Canada, Sir Guy Carleton, after careful consideration of the whole question, had reached the conclusion, not belied by subsequent history, as far as the Province of Quebec is concerned, that Canada would always be French and that, with some slight modifications, the French system found there by Britain should be given final and legal status under British supremacy. So the Quebec Act was passed in 1774. While the British criminal law was introduced, the French civil law, including the land system under which Nairne held Murray Bay, was left unchanged. The Bill gave the Church the same privileged position that it had enjoyed under Catholic sovereigns. The tithe could be collected by legal process; taxation for church purposes voted by the parochial authority called the fabrique was as compulsory as civil taxes, unless the person taxed declared that he was not a Roman Catholic; and the whole ecclesiastical system of New France was supported and encouraged. The Bill caused much irritation in Protestant New England, which saw some malicious design in the establishment of Roman Catholicism on its borders. The Continental Congress of 1775 denounced the Quebec Act, and even the Declaration of Independence has something to say about it.
It is obvious that Nairne disliked the Bill. His irrepressible friend, Gilchrist, wrote giving a picture of its probable dire social results, upsetting all domestic relations between the two races. The Bill, says Gilchrist, "is the most pernicious [that] could have been devised. Judge of the Fêtes now that the fools have got the sanction of the British Parliament to their beggaring principles. It is not clear that your Protestant servants will [even] be allowed to work upon their [the Roman Catholic] idle days. What would you and I think on being told by these black rascals [the priests are meant of course] that our people, I mean Protestants, durst not obey our orders without a dispensation from them?"
The social consequences of the Quebec Act did not prove as revolutionary as Nairne's animated correspondent feared. Less than is usually supposed did the habitant like it since it placed him again under the priest's and the seigneur's authority, suspended since the British conquest. To the English colonies it added one to other causes of friction that boded trouble to the British Empire. In the previous year the people of Boston had defied Britain, by throwing into their harbour cargoes of tea upon which the owners proposed to pay a hated duty, levied by outside authority. The Quebec Act brought a final rupture a step nearer and at last there was open war. "The colonists have brought things to a crisis now, indeed;" wrote Gilchrist; "the consequences must be dreadful to them soon and I am afraid in the end to our country." To Great Britain indeed disastrous they were to be and soon the seigneur of Murray Bay was busy with his share in preparing for the conflict.