REGENCY APPOINTED.
The general uneasiness, on account of his majesty’s departure, was greatly increased by an apprehension that there would, during his absence, be no good agreement amongst the regency, which consisted of the following persons: his royal highness William duke of Cumberland; Thomas lord archbishop of Canterbury; Philip earl of Hardwicke, lord high chancellor; John earl of Granville, president of the council; Charles duke of Marlborough, lord privy-seal; John duke of Rutland, steward of the household; Charles duke of Grafton, lord-chamberlain; Archibald duke of Argyle; the duke of Newcastle, first commissioner to the treasury; the duke of Dorset, master of the horse; the earl of Holdernesse, one of the secretaries of state; the earl of Rochford, groom of the stole; the marquis of Hartington, lord lieutenant of Ireland; lord Anson, first commissioner of the admiralty; sir Thomas Eobinson, secretary of state; and Henry Fox, esq., secretary at war. His majesty set out from St. James’ on the twenty-eighth of April early in the morning, and embarked at Harwich in the afternoon, landed the next day at Helvoetsluys, and arrived in Hanover on the second of May.
BOSCAWEN’S EXPEDITION.
Admiral Boscawen, with eleven ships of the line and a frigate, having taken on board two regiments at Plymouth, sailed from thence on the twenty-seventh of April for the banks of Newfoundland, and in a few days after his arrival there, the French fleet from Brest came to the same station, under the command of M. Bois de la Mothe. But the thick fogs which prevail upon these coasts, especially at that time of the year, kept the two armaments from seeing each other; and part of the French squadron escaped up the river St. Lawrence, whilst another part of them went round, and got into the same river through the straits of Belleisle, by a way which was never known to be attempted before by ships of the line. However, whilst the English fleet lay off Cape Race, which is the southernmost point of Newfoundland, and was thought to be the most proper situation for intercepting the enemy, two French ships, the Alcide, of sixty-four guns and four hundred and eighty men, and the Lys, pierced for fifty-four guns, but mounting only twenty-two, having eight companies of land-forces on board, being separated from the rest of their fleet in the fog, fell in with the Dunkirk, captain Howe, and the Defiance, captain Andrews, two sixty gun ships of the English squadron; and after a smart engagement, which lasted some hours, and in which captain (afterwards lord) Howe behaved with the greatest skill and intrepidity, were both taken, with several considerable officers and engineers, and about eight thousand pounds in money. Though the capture of these ships, from which the commencement of the war may in fact be dated, fell greatly short of what was hoped for from this expedition; yet, when the news of it reached England, it was of infinite service to the public credit of every kind, and animated the whole nation, who now saw plainly that the government was determined to keep no further measures with the French, but justly to repel force by force, and put a stop to their sending more men and arms to invade the property of the English in America, as they had hitherto done with impunity. The French, who, for some time, did not even attempt to make reprisals on our shipping, would gladly have chosen to avoid a war at that time, and to have continued extending their encroachments on our settlements, till they had executed their grand plan of securing a communication from the Mississippi to Canada, by a line of forts, many of which they had already erected.
FRENCH AMBASSADOR RECALLED.
Upon the arrival of the news of this action at Paris, the French ambassador, M. de Mirepoix, was recalled from London, and M. de Bussy from Hanover, where he had just arrived, to attend the king of England in a public character. They complained loudly of Boscawen’s attacking the ships, as a breach of national faith; but it was justly retorted on the part of England, that their encroachments in America had rendered reprisals both justifiable and necessary. The resolution of making them was the effect of mature deliberation in the English council. The vast increase of the French marine of late years, which in all probability would soon be employed against Great Britain, occasioned an order for making reprisals general in Europe as well as in America; and that all French ships, whether outward or homeward bound, should be stopped, and brought into British ports. To give the greater weight to these orders, it was resolved to send out those admirals who had distinguished themselves most towards the end of the last war. Accordingly, on the twenty-first of July, sir Edward Hawke sailed on a cruise to the westward, with eighteen ships of the line, a frigate, and a sloop; but, not meeting with the French fleet, these ships returned to England about the latter end of September and the beginning of October; on the fourteenth of which last month another fleet, consisting of twenty-two ships of the line, two frigates, and two sloops, sailed again on a cruise to the westward, under admiral Byng, in hopes of intercepting the French squadron under Duguay, and likewise that commanded by La Mothe, in case of its return from America. But this fleet likewise returned to Spithead on the twenty-second of November, without having been able to effect any thing, though it was allowed by all that the admiral had acted judiciously in the choice of his stations.
While these measures were pursued, for the general security of the British coasts and trade in Europe, several new ships of war were begun, and finished with the utmost expedition, in his majesty’s docks: twelve frigates and sloops, contracted for in private yards, were completed by the month of August; and twenty-four ships and twelve colliers were then taken into the service of the government, to be fitted out as vessels of war, to carry twenty guns and one hundred and twenty men each. In the meantime the French trade was so annoyed by the English cruisers, that before the end of this year three hundred of their merchant ships, many of which, from St. Domingo and Martinique, were extremely rich, and eight thousand of their sailors were brought into English ports. By these captures the British ministry answered many purposes: they deprived the French of a great body of seamen, and withheld from them a very large property, the want of which greatly distressed their people, and ruined many of their traders. Their outward-bound merchant ships were insured at the rate of thirty per cent., whilst the English paid no more than the common insurance. This intolerable burden was felt by all degrees of people amongst them: their ministry was publicly reviled, even by their parliaments; and the French name, from being the terror, began to be the contempt of Europe. Their uneasiness was also not a little heightened by new broils between their king and the parliament of Paris, occasioned by the obstinacy of the clergy of that kingdom, who seemed determined to support the church, in all events, against the secular tribunals, and as much as possible to enforce the observance of the bull Unigenitus, which had long been the occasion of so many disputes among them. However, the parliament continuing firm, and the French king approving of its conduct, the ecclesiastics thought proper to submit for the present, and in their general assembly this year, granted him a free gift of sixteen millions of livres, which he demanded of them—a greater sum than they had ever given before, even in time of war.