[156] The occasion of Mills’ Report on the boundaries of Ontario (1873) was an order requiring him to act as a special commissioner to inquire into the location of the western and northern bounds of Ontario,—the Imperial Parliament having set up (1871), as it was claimed, the new Province of Manitoba within the legal limits of Ontario, which held by transmission the claims westward of the Province of Quebec and later those of Upper Canada.
[157] They might well have gone on under this confirmation till the king supplanted them, but they suffered themselves to be continued in office by the popular vote in three successive annual elections.
[158] This Order of King William, with fac-simile of the signature, is in the Mass. Hist. Coll., xxxviii. 711, the original being in the cabinet of that society.
[159] John Marshall’s diary notes under July 20, 1700, the death of Ichabod Wiswall at Duxbury, “a man of eminent accomplishment for the service of the Sanctuary.” Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., April, 1884, p. 154. Cf. Winsor’s Duxbury, p. 180.
[160] Mr. Chas. W. Tuttle’s paper, “New Hampshire without provincial government, 1689-90,” in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., October, 1879, was also printed (50 copies) separately.
[161] Palfrey, iv. 375.
[162] Diary, i. 329.
[163] Vol. IV. p. 364.
[164] Hudson’s Amer. Journalism, p. 45; Mem. Hist. Boston, ii. 387; Haven’s Pre-Revolutionary Bibliog., 333 (in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Collections). This innocent attempt to correct the floating rumors gave offence to the magistrates, as a license that should be resisted, or much worse might happen. Sewall refers to it as giving “much distaste, because not licensed, and because of passage referring to the French king and Maquas.” On the 1st of October the governor and council “disallowed” it. Mather attacked its impudence in a sharp letter the next day; and the little over-ambitious chronicle never came to a second issue. (Sewall’s Diary, i. 332.)
[165] See Vol. IV. p. 357; and for sources, p. 361. Sewall, under date of December 29, 1690 (Letter book, p. 115), writes, “I have discoursed with all sorts, and find that neither activity nor courage were wanting in him [Phips], and the form of the attack was agreed on by the Council of War.” A significant utterance of Frontenac is instanced in the same letter: “When the French injuries were objected to Count Frontenack by ours at Canada, his answer was that we were all one people; so if Albany or Hartford provoke them, they hold it just to fall on Massachusetts, Plimouth, Rode Island, or any other English plantation. In time of distress the Massachusetts are chiefly depended on for help;” and Sewall urges Mather to procure the sending of three frigates,—one to be stationed in the Vineyard Sound, another at Nantasket, and a third at Portsmouth.