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CHAPTER and D'Aulney was chiefly occasioned, no doubt, by rivalry in trade, though La Tour, who claimed the rank 1643. of a nobleman, complained that a man of D'Aulney's inferior birth, a mere former clerk of Razzillai, should have been made governor over his head. The dispute between these rival traders was presently carried to the French court, where La Tour obtained a royal letter confirming to him the possession of his fort and trading house at the mouth of the St. John's, together with the whole Acadien peninsula except Port Royal and La Hâve. 1641. D'Aulney procured, however, some three years after, a royal letter to arrest his rival and send him to France. La Tour had formerly had some sharp encounters with the New England traders; it was he who had broken up the Plymouth trading house at Machias. But, finding himself in a precarious position, and his intercourse with France in danger of being cut off, he presently sent a messenger to Massachusetts, asking assistance against D'Aulney, and proposing free trade and a supply of goods from London through the Boston merchants, and the shipment of furs thither by the same conveyance. Boston ship commenced a trade with St. John's, and La Tour's wife obtained passage at Boston for France; whereupon D'Aulney sent word that La Tour was a rebel, and that he should seize all vessels trading with him.

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1643. La Tour himself entered Boston harbor the next May 4. spring in a large armed ship full of men, and sent a boat ashore at an island where Governor Winthrop and his family were residing. The sudden appearance of this vessel caused a great alarm. The townspeople ran to arms, and three shallops were fitted out to escort the governor home. La Tour, however, came as a suppliant. This vessel, sent from Rochelle by La Tour's wife, an active assistant in his affairs, had not been able to enter

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the harbor of St. John's, which D'Aulney was blockading CHAPTER with two ships, three pinnaces, a galliot, and five hundred men. So La Tour had stolen out in his shallop, got on 1643. board, and steered for Boston. He exhibited a commission and letters, which seemed to show that he still had interest in France. He also asked and obtained leave to land and refresh his men, but with the restriction of landing them in small companies, "that our women, &c., might not be affrighted." A "training day soon falling out," and La Tour having asked permission to exercise his soldiers on shore, by leave of the magistrates he landed forty men in full equipments. in full equipments. "They were brought into the field by our train-band, consisting of one hundred and fifty, and in the forenoon they only beheld our men exercise. When they had dined-La Tour and his officers with our officers, and his soldiers. invited home by the private soldiers in the afternoon they were permitted to exercise, our governor and other of the magistrates coming then into the field, and all ours stood and beheld them. They were very expert in their postures and motions;" but one of their maneuvers, representing the preparation for a sudden attack, greatly frightened the women and children, and probably some of the men also. Many, indeed, judged it highly imprudent to allow such a body of popish soldiers to land in the town. La Tour ingratiated himself with some of the Boston merchants, and, though he hardly pretended to be a Huguenot, he put on a great air of piety, went regularly to meetings and lectures, and earnestly entreated Winthrop to allow him to charter vessels and hire men for the relief of St. John's.

Neither the General Court nor the Commissioners for the United Colonies, to whose province the affair properly belonged, were called together, as they should have

CHAPTER been on this occasion. Winthrop, however, did not act X. without consulting the magistrates and elders; but they 1643. were by no means unanimous in their advice. Some of them opposed any "popish leagues," quoting, along with other texts, the speech of Jehu, the seer, to Jehoshaphat: "Shouldst thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord ?" And also from Proverbs: "He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears." It was answered, however, that Joshua aided the Gibeonites. against the rest of the Canaanites, and that Jehoshaphat assisted the ungodly Jehoram against the Moabites, without any reproach from the prophet Elisha, who was himself present in the expedition. Nor were more worldly reasons wanting. Winthrop thought it would be good policy to uphold La Tour against D'Aulney, and so to prevent the whole eastern coast from falling under the sole control of a zealous Catholic and active fur trader, who rigidly excluded New England ships from any trade to the eastward, which La Tour promised to allow. This view of the case found favor, also, with the Boston merchants. These arguments prevailed; La Tour was Aug. allowed to hire at Boston four ships and a pinnace, with eighty men; and, thus re-enforced, he raised the blockade of St. John's, and pursued D'Aulney to Port Royal, where the Boston men landed and committed some depredations. Against all these proceedings D'Aulney earnestly protested.

Winthrop's conduct in this affair had not given entire satisfaction; several of the ministers and magistrates had 1644. remonstrated against it, and, at the next election, EnMay. dicott, who looked with very suspicious eyes on the "idol

atrous French," was chosen governor, Winthrop being elected deputy. With the help of some adventurers from

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New England, La Tour had attacked D'Aulney's estab- CHAPTER lishment at Penobscot; but hearing from his wife in France that the interest of his rival was entirely in the 1644. ascendant there, he came again to Boston to beg for aid. July. The magistrates and elders again discussed at length whether it were lawful" for a true Christian to aid an anti-Christian," and whether, in this particular case, "it were safe in point of prudence." These deliberations. resulted in a letter to D'Aulney, in reply to his reclamations, demanding redress for the seizure of Penobscot, and some other old matters; denying, upon what ground hardly appears, that the armament which La Tour had obtained at Boston had been fitted out "by any counsel or act of permission" on the part of the colony, but proffering, however, redress if D'Aulney could show himself to have been injured. La Tour's request for aid was not granted, but he was entertained with much attention, and at his departure was escorted to his vessel by the Boston train-bands. He was hardly gone when Madame

La Tour arrived in an English vessel which she had Sept. chartered to take her to St. John's; but the captain, after great delays, trading in the St. Lawrence, had brought her, not to St. John's, but to Boston. She sued him there for damages, and, by the help of her husband's Boston creditors, recovered £2000, part of which was levied on the ship's cargo; and with the money so obtained, Madame La Tour hired three stranger vessels then in the harbor of Boston, and sailed with them for St. John's. While this affair was still pending, a messenger from D'Aulney arrived at Boston, "supposed to be a friar, but habited like a gentleman," with whom, after many mutual recriminations, an agreement was finally made for trade and Oct. peace; but this arrangement was necessarily referred for ratification to the Commissioners for the United Colonies.

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Those commissioners, at their third meeting, lately

held at Hartford, taking into consideration the late pro1644. ceedings in the matter of La Tour, had forbidden the Sept. fitting out of any volunteer military expeditions from any of the United Colonies without their express consent. They had recommended, also, to the colonies the drawing up of a confession of faith and scheme of church discipline, and the agreement upon some common method of supporting the ministers. They had also ordered a road to be laid out from Boston to Connecticut-thus exercising the important power of internal improvement.

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Advantage had been taken of the unpopularity of Winthrop's conduct in relation to La Tour, in a movement on the part of the deputies toward the appointment of a committee of their body to share with the magis trates the management of affairs in the intervals of the General Courts. On a former occasion, the magistrates had very strenuously resisted a similar movement; and now, with the help of the elders, the point was decided in their favor.

In the same vessel that brought Madame La Tour to Boston, Roger Williams had come passenger. Not long after his arrival in England, the civil war being in 1643. full progress, a parliamentary ordinance had appointed Nov. 3. the Earl of Warwick "governor in chief and lord high

admiral of all those islands and plantations inhabited, planted, and belonging to any of his majesty's the King of England's subjects, within the bounds and upon the coast of America," to be assisted by a council composed of five peers, the Earls of Pembroke and Manchester, Viscount Say and Seal, Lords Wharton and Roberts, and twelve members of the House of Commons-among whom were Sir Henry Vane, late governor of Massachusetts, Samuel Vassall, one of the original patentees of

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