[301] N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1870.
[302] Shirley was commissioned in 1754, as was Pepperrell also, to raise a regiment in America for the regular service. His instructions are in the Penna. Archives, ii. 178. Cf. Sir Thomas Robinson’s letter about enlistments in Shirley’s regiment, in New Jersey Archives, viii. Part 2d, p. 17.
[303] Cf. various pamphlets on the state of Conn. at this time, noted by Haven (in Thomas), ii. p. 524-5.
[304] What seem to be the best figures to be reached regarding the population of the English colonies at the opening of the war would place the total at something over a million. This sum is reached thus: In 1749 Maryland had 100,000. In 1752, Georgia had 3,000, and South Carolina 25,000. In 1754, Nova Scotia had 4,000. In 1755, North Carolina had 50,000; Virginia, 125,000; New Jersey, 75,000; New Hampshire, 75,000. Estimates must be made for the others: Pennsylvania, 220,000 (including 100,000 German and other foreign immigrants); Connecticut, 100,000; Rhode Island, 30,000; New York, 55,000, and Massachusetts, 200,000. This foots up 1,062,000.
[305] Quite in keeping with the fervor of the hour was a pamphlet which the last London ship had brought, A scheme to drive the French out of all the Continent of America [by T. C.], which Fowle, the Boston printer, immediately reissued. (Harv. Coll. lib., 4376.31.)
[306] For his military conduct during the following campaign, the reader must turn to chapters vii. and viii.
[307] While they were watching at Boston every tidings of the war from the east and from the west, the gossips were weaving about the trial of Phillis and Mark for the poisoning of their master all the suspicions which unsettle the sense of social security; and when in September the common law of England asserted its dominance, the man was hanged, while the woman was burned, the last instance in our criminal history of this dread penalty for petit treason was recorded. Cf. A. C. Goodell, Jr., in Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc. (March, 1883), and in a separate enlarged issue of the same paper. It is well not to forget that while in old England at this time there were 160 capital offences, there were less than one tenth as many in Massachusetts. These are enumerated by H. B. Staples in his paper on the Province Laws (1884), p. 10.
[308] A lecture on earthquakes; read in Cambridge, November 26th, 1755, on occasion of the earthquake which shook New-England the week before. Boston, 1755. 38 pp. 8o. Haven’s Ante-Revolutionary bibliography in Thomas’s Hist. of Printing (Amer. Antiq. Soc. ed.), ii. pp. 524-532, 549, shows numerous publications occasioned by this earthquake. Cf. Drake’s Boston, p. 640.
[309] It is not unlikely that enlistments were impeded by a breach of faith with the New England troops, for they had been detained at the eastward beyond their term of enlistment. Shirley remonstrated about it to Gov. Lawrence, of Nova Scotia. Cf. Akins’ Pub. Doc. of Nov. Scotia, 421, 428. Gov. Livingston in 1756 wrote: “The New England colonies take the lead in all military matters.... In these governments lies the main strength of the British interests upon this continent.”
[310] For a portrait of Pownall see Mem. Hist. of Boston, ii. 63. Cf. Catal. Cabinet Mass. Hist. Soc., no. 6. Pownall’s private letter book, covering his correspondence during the war, was in a sale at Bangs’s in New York, February, 1854 (no. 1342).