And unless the Company can be secured according to these propositions, they think it will be impossible for them to continue long at York Fort (should they exchange with the French), nor will the trade answer their charge; and therefore if your lordships cannot obtain these so reasonable propositions from the French, but that they insist to have the limits settled between [Albany and] York and Albany Fort, as in the latitude of 55 degrees or thereabouts, the Company can by no means agree thereto, for they by such an agreement will be the instruments of their own ruin, never to be retrieved.
By order of the General Court,
Wm. Potter, Secretary.
Confirmed by the General Court of
the said Company, 10th July, 1700.
The adventurers were, they said, not indisposed to listen to reason. They proposed limits to be observed by the two nations in their trade and possessions in the Bay. But should the French be so foolish as to refuse their offer, then they would not be bound by that or any former concession, but would then, as they had always theretofore done, "insist upon the prior and undoubted right to the whole of the Bay and straits."
Lewis proposes boundaries.
The Court of Versailles was now most anxious to delimit the boundaries of the respective possessions of the two countries in the Bay. To this end, proposals were exchanged between the two crown governments. One alternative proposed by the French Ambassador was that the Weemish River, which was exactly half way between Fort Bourbon and Fort Albany, should mark the respective limits of the French on the east, while the limits of New France on the side of Acadia should be restricted to the River St. George.
This proposition having been referred to them, the Board of Trade and Plantations discouraged the scheme. The Hudson's Bay Adventurers it said, challenged an undoubted right to the whole Bay, antecedent to any pretence of the French. It was, therefore, requisite that they should be consulted before any concession of territories could be made to the Most Christian King or his subjects.
The Company pinned their hopes to an outbreak of hostilities,[42] which would enable them to attempt to regain what they had lost. A protracted peace was hardly looked for by the nation. In answer to Governor Knight's continual complaints, to which were added those of the dispossessed Geyer, the Company begged its servants to bide their time; and to exert themselves to the utmost to increase the trade at Albany, and Moose, and Rupert's River.