Many unpleasant and harassing complications and annoyances had arisen between the French and English colonists, in the more northern plantations, when, in 1643, in June, Governor La Tour surprised his English neighbors by landing in Boston “with two friars and two women sent to wait upon La Tour His Lady”--and strange sights they truly were in Boston. He came ashore at Governor Winthrop’s garden (now Fort Winthrop), and his arrival was heralded by a frightened woman, one Mrs. Gibbons, who chanced to be sailing in the bay, and saw the approach of the French boat, and hastened to warn the Governor. Perhaps Mrs. Gibbons had a premonitory warning of the twenty-five hundred pounds her husband was to lose at a later date through his confidence in the persuasive Frenchman. Governor and Madam Winthrop and their two sons and a daughter-in-law were sitting in the Governor’s garden in the summer sunshine, and though thoroughly surprised, they greeted the unexpected visitor, La Tour, with civilities, and escorted him to Boston town, not without some internal tremors and much deep mortification of the Governor when he thought of the weakness and poverty of Boston, with Castle Island deserted, as was plainly shown to the foreigner by the lack of any response to his salute of guns; and the inference was quick to come that the Frenchman “might have spoiled Boston.” But La Tour’s visit was most friendly; all he wished was free mercature and the coöperation of the English colony. And he desired to land his men for a short time, that they might refresh themselves after their long voyage; “so they landed in small companies that our women might not be affrighted with them.” And the Governor dined the French officers, and the New England warriors of the train-band entertained the visiting Gallic soldiers, and they exercised and trained before each other, all in true Boston hospitable fashion, as is the custom to this day. And the Governor bourgeoned with as much of an air of importance as possible, “being regularly attended with a good guard of halberts and musketeers;” and thus tried to live down the undignified heralding of a fellow-governor by a badly scared woman neighbor. And the cunning Frenchman, as did another of his race, “with sugared words sought to addulce all matters.” He flattered the sober Boston magistrates, and praised everything about the Boston army, and “showed much admiration professing he could not have believed it, if he had not seen it.” And the foreigners were so well treated (though Winthrop was blamed afterwards by stern Endicott and the Rome-hating ministers) that they came again the following summer, when La Tour asked material assistance. He received it, and he lingered till autumn, and barely eight days after he left, Madam La Tour landed in Boston from London; and strange and sad must the little town have seemed to her after her past life. She was in a state of much anger, and at once brought suit