And when they were half-way up
They were neither up nor down.
Amherst lived but two years after the close of his public career, dying in 1797, at the age of eighty-one.
He it was who, demolishing the old house at Riverhead, built the present exceedingly plain stone mansion, and re-named house and park “Montreal.” There was, in fact, something in the scenery around Sevenoaks that reminded him vividly of those great northern pine-clad territories of America, where he had warred with such distinction against the French and the redskins; and there is a spot on the road from Sevenoaks to Ightham, where the red-stemmed pines grow thick and a mysterious woodland hush enshrouds the place, so keenly reminiscent of the scene of his action at Crown Point in 1759, that he rechristened it by that name. The spot—in the woodlands of Seal Chart—may readily be found to-day, for it is marked by the Crown Point inn, whose sign, the “Sir Jeffrey Amherst,” exhibiting a picture of the warrior himself brooding over the scene of his exploit, depends picturesquely from a tree-trunk.
A tall obelisk, built rather precariously of rubble, stands on a rabbit-infested mound in the park of “Montreal,” in a vista opening from the house, and is itself surrounded by weird pine-trees. It bears long inscriptions reviewing those military operations. One side is dedicated to a “most able statesman” (by whom William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, is indicated), and another commemorates the meeting here of Amherst with his two younger brothers—John, Admiral of the Blue, and William, Lieutenant-General.
It was an era when England was fighting all the world, and had need of such commanders.
The long list of military successes is stupendous:
- Dedicated
- to that most able
- Statesman
- during whose Administration
- Cape Breton and Canada were conquered,
- and from whose Influence
- the British Arms derived
- a Degree of Lustre
- unparallell’d in past Ages.
- Fort Levi surrendered 25th August 1760
- Isle au Noix abandoned 28th August 1760
- Montreal surrendered
- and with it all Canada and
- Ten French Battalions lay’d
- down their Arms 8th Sept. 1760
- St. John’s, Newfoundland
- retaken 18th Sept. 1762.
- Louisbourg surrendered
- and Six French Battalions
- Prisoners of War, 26th July 1758
- Port du Quesne taken possession of 24th Nov. 1758
- Niagara surrendered 25th July 1759
- Tonderoga[2] taken possession of 26th July 1759
- Crown Point taken possession of 4th August 1759
- Quebec capitulated 18th Sept. 1759.
- To commemorate
- the providential and happy meeting
- of three Brothers
- on this, their Paternal Ground
- on the 25th January 1764
- after a six Years glorious War
- in which the three were successfully engaged
- in various Climes, Seasons and Services.
[2] I.e. Ticonderoga.