[309] In May, 1775, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold surprised the Forts of Ticonderoga on Lake George and Crown Point on Lake Champlain. General Carleton, the Governor of Canada, was in command of very inadequate forces, and it was feared that the province would join the Colonists against the British.
[310] Addresses from the principal trading towns of England poured in, asking the king to prosecute the war with vigour. Walpole (Journal of the Reign of George III., 1771-83, vol. i. pp. 501, 502, Dr. Doran's edition) says that the addresses were bought.
[311] The Government endeavoured to raise a regiment of Irish Catholics; but these, says Walpole, "would not list, nor could they in the whole summer get above 400 recruits in England" (Journal of the Reign of George III., vol. i. p. 500).
[312] Dr. Wesley, on the other hand, published, in 1775, his Calm Address to our American Colonies, in which he urged arguments similar to those of Dr. Johnson in his Taxation no Tyranny.
[313] Mr. Stephen Sayer, a London banker, and one of the sheriffs of the City, was accused by one Richardson, a young American officer in the Guards, of a plot to seize the Tower, and attack the king as he went to open Parliament. The guards were trebled, and Sayer, brought before Lord Rochford, Secretary of State for the Southern Department, was committed to the Tower. Another "mad enthusiast for liberty" and "one or two dissenting Divines" were also apprehended. The meeting of Parliament, however, passed off quietly, and the temporary panic subsided. On October 28, 1775, Sayer was brought before Lord Mansfield on a Habeas Corpus, and admitted to bail. On December 13 he was discharged from his recognizances.
[314] The negotiations with Russia failed. But the Landgrave of Hesse, the Duke of Brunswick, and other petty German potentates supplied seventeen thousand mercenaries.
[315] The address was moved on October 26, 1775, by Mr. Acland (eldest son of Sir Thomas Acland), and seconded by the Hon. William Lyttleton. M.P. for Bewdley, formerly Governor of Jamaica, and minister at Lisbon, An amendment proposed by Lord John Cavendish, demanding the fullest information on the subject of America, was rejected by 278 to 108.
[316] Mr. Eliot, on the death of Sir J. Molesworth, was elected M.P. for Cornwall. Miss Burney, in 1781, speaks of meeting "Mr. Eliot, knight of the shire of Cornwall, a most agreeable, lively, and very clever man." He was one of the pall-bearers at the funeral of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was also a friend of Johnson, to whom he lent Defoe's Memoirs of Captain Carleton, a book which the Doctor had never seen (Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, 1887, vol. iv. pp. 334-344).
[317] Colonel Gould.
[318] On November 14, 1775, Benedict Arnold made an unsuccessful attempt to capture Quebec by surprise. Reinforced by a considerable body of troops under General Montgomery, he renewed his attack on December 31. Montgomery was killed, Arnold wounded, and the assault repulsed. The siege was, however, continued, and it was not till May, 1776, that General Carleton was able to assume the offensive and drive the Americans out of Canada.