The conquest of the great Northwest, Volume 1 (of 2) /

by Agnes C. Laut

For seven years after he came to London, the love of wilderness places, of strange new lands, clung to Radisson. He spent the summers on Hudson Bay for the Company, opening new forts, cruising up the unknown coasts, bartering with new tribes of Indians, and while not acting as governor of any fur post, seems to have been a sort of general superintendent, to keep check on the Company’s officers and prevent fraud, for when the cargoes arrived at Portsmouth, orders were given for the Captains not to stir without convoy to come to the Thames, but for “Mr. Radisson to take horse” and ride to London with the secret reports. During the winters in London, Sir John Robinson of the Tower and Radisson attended to the sales of the beaver, bought the goods for the next year’s ships, examined the cannon that were to man the forts on the bay and attended to the general business of the Company. Merchants, who were shareholders, advanced goods for the yearly outfit. Other shareholders, who owned ships, loaned or gave vessels for the voyage. Wages were paid as money came in from the beaver sales. So far, Radisson and his associates were share and share alike, all laying the foundations of a future prosperity. Radisson and his brother-in-law drew from the beaver sales during these seven years (1667-1673) £287, about $2,000 each for living expenses.

But now came a change. The Company’s ships were bought and paid for, the Company’s forts built and equipped—all from the sales of the cargoes brought home under Radisson’s superintendence. Now that profits were to be paid, what share was his? The King had given him a gold chain and medal for his services, but to him the Company owed its existence. What was his share to be? In a word, was he to be one of the Adventurers or an outsider? Radisson had asked the Adventurers for an agreement. Agreement? A year passed, Radisson hung on, living from hand to mouth in London, receiving £10 one month, £2 the next, an average of $5 a week, compelled to supplicate the Company for every penny he needed—a very excellent arrangement for the Gentlemen Adventurers. It compelled Radisson to go to them for favors, instead of their going to Radisson; though from Radisson’s point of view, the boot may have seemed to be on the wrong leg. Finally, as told in a preceding chapter the committee met and voted him “£100 per ann. from the time of his arrival in London, and if it shall please God to bless this company with good success, they will then resume the consideration of Mr. Radisson.” One hundred pounds was just half of one per cent. of the yearly cargoes. It was the salary of the captains and petty governors on the bay.

Radisson probably had his own opinion of a contract that was to depend more on the will of Heaven than on the legal bond of his partners. He quit England in disgust for the French navy. Then came the raids on Nelson, the order of the French Court to return to England and his resumption of service with the Hudson’s Bay Company up to the time Iberville drove the English from the bay and French traders were not wanted in the English service.

For changing his flag the last time, such abuse was heaped on Radisson that the Hudson’s Bay Company was finally constrained to protest: “that the said Radisson doth not deserve those ill names the French give him. If the English doe not give him all his Due, he may rely on the justice of his cause.”

Indeed, the English company might date the beginning of the French raids that harried their forts for a hundred years from Radisson’s first raid at Port Nelson; but they did not foresee this.

The man was as irrepressible as a disturbed hornets’ nest—break up his plans, and it only seemed to scatter them with wider mischief. How the French Court ordered Radisson back to England has already been told. He was the scapegoat for court intrigue. Nothing now was too good for Radisson—with the English. The Adventurers presented him with a purse “for his extraordinary services to their great liking and satisfaction.” A dealer is ordered “to keep Mr. Radisson in stock of fresh provisions,” and the Company desires “that Mr. Radisson shall have a hogshead of claret” presumably to drown his memory of the former treatment. My Lord Preston is given a present of furs for persuading Radisson to return. So is “Esquire Young,” the gay merchant of Cornhill, who was Radisson’s best friend in England, and Sir James Hayes, who had been so furious against him only a few months before, begs Monsieur to accept that silver tankard as a token of esteem from the Adventurers (£10 4s, I found it cost by the account books.)

Only one doubt seemed to linger in the minds of the Company. In spite of King Louis’ edict forbidding French interlopers on Hudson’s Bay, secret instructions of an opposite tenor were directing Iberville’s raiders overland. If Radisson was to act as superintendent on the bay, chief councillor at Port Nelson, the Company must have bonds as well as oath for his fidelity, and so the entry in the minute books of 1685 records: “At this committee, Mons. Pierre Radisson signed and sealed the covenants with the company, and signed a bond of £2,000 to perform covenants with the company, dated 11 May.... Dwelling at the end of Seething Lane in Tower Street.”

I think it was less than ten minutes from the time I found that entry when I was over in Seething Lane. It is in a part of old London untouched by the Great Fire running up from the famous road to the Tower, in length not greater than between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, New York. Opening off Great Tower Street, it ends at Crutched Friars. At the foot of the lane is the old church of All Hallows Barking, whose dial only was burned by the fire; at the top, the little antiquated church of St. Olave Hart’s, whose motley architecture with leaning walls dates from the days of the Normans. If Radisson lived “at the end of Seething Lane,” his house must have been just opposite St. Olave Hart’s, for the quaint church with its graveyard occupies the entire left corner. In this lane dwelt the merchant princes of London. Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Navy, who thought his own style of living “mighty fine”—as he describes it—preening and pluming himself on the beautiful panels he had placed in his mansion, must have been a near neighbor of Radisson’s; for in the diarist’s description of the fire, he speaks of it coming to Barking Church “at the bottom of our lane.” But a stone’s throw away is the Tower, in those days commanded by Radisson’s friend, Sir John Robinson. The Kirkes, the Colletons, Griffith the dandy of the balls, Sir Robert Viner, the rich Lord-Mayor; Esquire Young of Cornhill—all had dwellings within a few minutes’ walk of Seething Lane.

The whereabouts of Radisson in London explain how the journals of his first four voyages were lost for exactly two hundred years and then found in the Pepys Collection of the Bodleian Library. He had given them either directly or through the mutual friend Carterett, to his neighbor Pepys, who was a keen collector of all matter appertaining to the navy, and after being lost for years, the Pepys Collection only passed to the Bodleian in recent days.