A History of the British Army, Vol. 2 / First Part—to the Close of the Seven Years' War

by Sir J. W. Fortescue

From the East the course of our history leads us by rapid transition to the great continent of the West. The English claim to the sovereignty of North America dated from the reign of Henry the Seventh, under whose patronage Sebastian Cabot had made his great discoveries; but it was the Spaniards who first approached the unknown land and gave it the name of Florida, and it was a Frenchman, Denis of Honfleur, who first explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence. So also it was a Frenchman, Jacques Cartier, who gave its name to that noble river, and the name of Mount Royal or Montreal to the hill on which the city now stands. Full sixty years passed away before further attempt was made to found European settlements on the North American continent, and then English and French took the work in hand well-nigh simultaneously. In 1603 De Monts obtained permission from the French king to colonise Acadia,[237] discovered and planted the harbour called by him Port Royal and by the English at a later date Annapolis Royal, and explored the coast southward as far as that Plymouth where the Pilgrim Fathers were to land in 1621. The attempt of De Monts was a failure, and it was left to Samuel Champlain to begin the work anew by the founding of Quebec and by the establishment of Montreal at once as a gateway for Indian trade and a bulwark against Indian invasion. To him was due the exploration of the river Richelieu and of the lake which bears his name, as far as the two headlands which were afterwards to become famous under the names of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. In Champlain's wake followed the Jesuit missionaries, whose history presents so curious a mixture of that which is highest and lowest in human nature. Lastly, to Champlain must be ascribed not only the final settlement of the French in Canada but the initiation of the French policy of meddling with the internal politics of the Indian tribes.

1613.

Meanwhile an English Company of Adventurers for Virginia had established a first settlement on the James river, just three-and-twenty years after Raleigh's abortive attempt to accomplish the same feat. The rival nations had not been settled in North America five years before they came into collision. The English claimed the whole continent in virtue of Cabot's discoveries, and the English Governor of Virginia enforced the claim by sending a ship to Acadia, which demolished the Jesuit settlement at Port Royal and carried the settlers prisoners to Jamestown.

1621.

A few years later a Scottish nobleman, Sir William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Stirling, obtained a grant from James the First of the territory which, in compliment to his native land, he christened Nova Scotia, and planted a colony there. Finally, in 1627, during the war with France, a company of London merchants, inspired chiefly by two brothers named Kirke, sent an expedition up the St. Lawrence, which captured Quebec, established settlements in Cape Breton, and in a word made the conquest of Canada. Unfortunately, however, Charles the First, then as always impecunious, allowed these important acquisitions to be restored to France at the Peace of 1632 for the paltry sum of fifty thousand pounds. The conquering merchants protested but in vain, pleading passionately for the retention at any rate of Quebec. "If the King keep it," they wrote, "we do not care what the French or any other can do, though they have an hundred sail of ships and ten thousand men."[238] So truly was appreciated, even in the seventeenth century, the strategic value of that famous and romantic fortress.

1654.
1667.

Still even so Acadia[239] was not yet permanently lost, for in 1654 Major Sedgwicke, who had been sent by Cromwell to attack the Dutch settlements on the Hudson, took the opportunity to capture the French ports at St. Johns, Port Royal and Penobscot, and restored Acadia to England once more. With England it remained until 1667, when it was finally made over to France by the Treaty of Breda. Thus was established the French dominion in what is now called Canada.

1621.

Meanwhile, in the same year as had seen the first British settlement in Nova Scotia, English emigrants had landed at New Plymouth and founded the New England which was destined to swallow up New France. King James granted the infant settlement a charter of incorporation, encouraged it, and in 1625 declared by proclamation that the territories of Virginia and New England should form part of his empire.[240] The next step was the foundation of a distinct colony at Massachusetts Bay in 1628, which was erected into a corporation two years later and soon increased to a thousand persons. In 1635 yet another settlement was formed at Connecticut by emigrants from Massachusetts; and in the same year the intolerance of his fellow-settlers in Massachusetts drove Roger Williams afield to found the colony of Rhode Island. Finally, in 1638, another secession brought about the establishment of New Haven. The settlers had left England, as they pleaded, to find liberty of conscience; but as the majority understood by this phrase no more than licence to coerce the consciences of others, the few that really sought religious liberty wandered far before they found it.