Of those whose looks burned as they listened to the Colonel, and who would not subscribe to the address, some were yet to stand upon the drop to die for treason—a dignified name with which Colonel Talbot, in common with Drew, Prince and others, would have had little patience. These disaffected were chiefly influenced by an Englishman, George Lawton, who, like a good many of the demagogues of that day, had been a factious pate elsewhere. Concerned in the Bristol Riots, he was well up in the catch-words which thrilled the crowds there, and he used his strong mind and nimble tongue upon Canadian complications. He had to escape, somehow, from the consequences of his acts at home; so a sham illness and a sham death, a stuffed coffin and a funeral, and a voyage of the supposed deceased brought George Lawton to the Talbot District to sow those “seed-grains” of revolutionary doctrine which were to make him a second time an outcast. One of the first persons he met in this country was a chief mourner who had followed his coffin to the grave.
As early as ’33, Colonel Talbot writes to a friend: “My rebels endeavoured to hold a meeting at St. Thomas on the 17th, Dr. Franklin’s birthday as I am informed, but in which they were frustrated by my Royal Guards, who routed the rascals at all points and drove them out of the village like sheep, numbers with broken heads leaving their hats behind them—the glorious work of old Colonel Hickory. In short, it was a most splendid victory. Mr. Fraser, the Wesleyan minister, behaved admirably on the occasion, and I scarcely think they will venture to call another meeting in St. Thomas. Their object was to form a political union, the articles of which were to elect the Legislative Council and magistrates.”
At all periods of the Rebellion Talbot’s District provided much “sympathy.” Several men from Port Stanley set out to join the sympathisers who were making ready at Detroit. Their small vessel was provided with boiler and machinery, and they made fair headway until off a spot near the Lake Road, when the rudder gave way. In a frenzy of conscience the boat made for her own shore and stuck in the sand-bank. Just at that point there happened to be a small company of dragoons, who, when they saw the boat coming towards them, with armed men in it, divided into two parties and galloped off in opposite directions. The officer of the company, in two minds to go both ways at once, solved his difficulty by popping under an upturned canoe. The would-be saviours of their country in the rebel boat got clear of the sand-bank and made off, upon which the dragoons galloped back to look after their captain. After a careful search, for he was very coy, they found him under his canoe canopy, not a bad makeshift where umbrellas were not procurable.
There was scarcely a locality which did not give evidence that the rebel spirit had a lodgment not far off. But also in each there were martial spirits eager and willing to lead or be one of loyalist troops. Some of them tell their own stories so well that it would be a pity to garble or curtail them. One man describes how he gave up his professional work, as the winter and the Rebellion were coming on together. “... The political horizon at that time looked rather squally. The Rads. were holding frequent meetings in different parts of the country, at which loud and long speeches were made to the ignorant and wicked, until it broke out in a general rising among the disaffected portion—which was the largest portion of the County of York. In Simcoe the Rads. were fully half the population; but they did not turn out for fear of the other half, among whom were many fiery Orangemen. And to this Order I attribute the safety of our country, although many loyal men, not Orangemen, turned out in behalf of the Government. Without these men we should have failed, as, before troops could arrive from England, the Yankees would have flooded the country.
“The Home District appeared to be the stronghold of the disaffected in Upper Canada. On the 4th of December, as I was going towards Queensville, I met five or six men with rifles, whom I knew to be fond of hunting deer. We talked about hunting and I went on my way, when I met sixty or seventy more, straggling along, some with guns, some with swords, and others unarmed. They had several waggons with them, which appeared loaded, but were covered up. I began to suspect their object, but could get no satisfaction to my questions. Then I met a young fellow whom I followed into his father’s house, and saw his father give him a pair of boots and some money. That convinced me. I then turned back and followed the party, when I met a man who told me my suspicions were correct, and that they were going to take Toronto. I advised him to go home, but he said he dare not; so then I told him he had better go to the States. He said he would, and I afterwards learned that he took my advice. On my way south I went into the tavern on Tory Hill, and asked the landlady if she understood the movement, to which she replied that they were going to take Toronto, and she had known it for several days. Her husband and several others had gone there three days before, and I may say here that when I went to the city I found him there as a volunteer—either that or go to prison. I next saw Mr. Samuel Sweasey, and asked him if he understood the movement. ‘Yes, they are going to take Toronto, rob the Bank, hang the Governor, and when they come back they will hang you,’ When I asked him where his sons were, he said he had sent them to the woods to get rid of them, as the rebels were after them.” Between this narrator and his friends the news was soon pretty well spread in the neighbourhood of the Landing, Bond Head, Bradford and Newmarket as to what he had seen and heard. “Farther on I met several men, too great cowards to turn out with the rebels, but mean enough to give me great abuse on account of my principles.” He and various other officers met at Newmarket, and agreed to do all possible to raise quickly what force they could in their respective neighbourhoods, the narrator being assisted by one of his sons, who was a sergeant. “Two men had been sent from Newmarket to inform the Governor that there were a number up here he could depend on. These men were taken prisoners by Mackenzie’s party.... We felt much the want of arms. Orders were given to search for and seize all the arms that could be found; but we had poor success, as most of them were in the hands of the rebels and the rest were hidden away to prevent our getting them. About the 9th we heard that John Powell had shot Anderson,” followed by the rest of the doings after Montgomery’s. News reached the men of the north slowly, and for many reasons their march to the assistance of the city was delayed. “At McLeod’s inn, on Yonge Street, a most cowardly affair occurred. Some twenty-five or thirty of the Scotch and a few others, on hearing that a body of men under Lount was stationed in the Ridges, whom we might have to fight, turned tail and went home. Their minister did all he could to dissuade them; but home they would go. When he found persuasion useless, he mounted his horse and called for volunteers. A few fell in with him, and he and they were with us when we took up our march for the city.
“A certain officer had assumed the command, and was mounted on a horse that had been taken from a Lloydtown man as he was trying to get home after Montgomery’s. When we got down as far as Willis’s farm, at the entrance to the Ridges, a halt was called and a council held, and, as it was yet feared by some that there was a strong force of rebels in the Ridges, it was decided that a few of us, about eight, and mounted, should form an advance guard to reconnoitre. A man from the Landing had gone into Willis’s and got a gun, which when the colonel saw he called to the man to let him have. The other objected, whereupon the colonel went up to him and, in the presence of us all, wrenched it out of his hands. We were then ordered, the disarmed man one of us, to advance, which we did. The eight of us had two guns, three swords, one club, and this little party went through the Ridges while the colonel and his reserve waited for about half an hour. Hearing nothing from us in the shape of a skirmish they ventured through. When we got to Bond’s Lake I got a pitchfork for the man from whom the colonel had taken the gun.” At Thornhill they learned that the rebels were completely dispersed, and many were for returning home; but it was decided to continue the march and tender their services to the Government. “By this time we mustered pretty strong, as several had joined us during the night and morning, many of whom I presume would have joined the other party had they been able to reach the city and make a stand there. We had now some twenty-five or thirty prisoners that we had picked up as we came. These we tied and placed in two strings, somewhat in the form of Ʌ.” Arrived in the city the volunteers were inspected by the Governor, and thanked by him in Her Majesty’s name for the tender of their services. “When they came opposite to where I was sitting on my horse, Colonel Carthew said, ‘A more loyal man does not live,’ and upon this the Governor bowed twice and passed on.” Some ten or twelve of them did not accept their billet upon the people, but went to a tavern and paid their own way. “I was officer of the guard on the night that Peter Matthews was brought into the Parliament House (used as head-quarters and prison) a prisoner. On the next night I went with Mr. Robinson, Dr. King and Sheriff Jarvis to the hospital, where Edgar Stiles, Kavanagh, and Latra were lying, to take their depositions.” On the next night he was sent “with a strong party to Sharon, where we captured some thirty or forty and sent them to Toronto. For three or four days I was at Newmarket attending to the guards, as we had a number of prisoners in the Baptist meeting-house.... I was ordered to where Collingwood now stands to look for Lount, who was said to be there at a lonely house of one John Brasier. When we had got as far as Bradford a man was sent after us with a report that Lount had been taken somewhere below Toronto. When I went to Newmarket again I found that in my absence several gentlemen who had been nowhere at the first had come in, had got commissions and my men.... After this, some eighteen or twenty of us about the Landing and Sharon joined and formed a company for our mutual defence, armed with muskets. For a while we met for drill weekly, then monthly, and soon not at all.”
Lloydtown, although the seat of disaffection, had its loyalists, too; but as they were in the face of such odds they had to temper the exhibition of their loyalty with discretion. One of themselves says that when the call came for their aid they made a prompt response, but took the precaution to leave the village in small parties.
But loyalty was a term on a sliding scale, and a Scotchman whose vote was Reform was every whit as loyal as his Tory acquaintance who “suspicioned” him.
“Loyal? Of course I was loyal, as every one in our neighbourhood was; but most of us were true Reformers nevertheless, and not ashamed of the name, in spite of Mackenzie’s goings-on. I refused to volunteer in ’38 when the draftings began again, because all trouble in Upper Canada was over, and I could not see that I was called upon to give up important home duties; and besides that, the officers had nothing to do, and thought it would be a fine thing to get a company up and have the recompense for keeping it together. The captain only succeeded in getting a few volunteers, not twenty, and the thing was to be completed by ballot. That was a regular farce, and the ignorance of some of those who drew was ridiculous. A Scotchman, holding his slip in his hand, showed it exultantly to a friend, who did not begrudge him his luck, saying, ‘O-o-aye, ah’ve drawed a prize.’ But I met an Irishman, soon after, who had been sharper than the Scotchman, pretending that he knew the peculiar twist of a paper that was intended not to be ‘drawed.’ The Irishman was rejoicing in his own exemption, and wickedly gloating over his brother who was not up to the twisted paper trick and had ‘drawed.’ One man, now our most prominent citizen, and certainly one of the oldest, refused either to draw or volunteer, for reasons the same as mine; he had fought in ’37 on the loyalist side, and now in ’38 a warrant was out for him on the score of disloyalty! They tried to arrest him, thinking he would submit quietly, but he fought the thing on every point, and these so-called loyalists found they had no legal ground to stand on. They dare not press the matter, so my friend was let alone.”