France and England in North America, Part I: Pioneers of France in the New WorldParkman, Francis
History
France and England in North America, Part I: Pioneers of France in the New World
Parkman, Francis
Canada -- History -- To 1763 (New France); Champlain, Samuel de, 1574-1635; Florida -- History -- Huguenot colony, 1562-1565
His work done, and, as he thought, the French settlements of Acadia
effectually blotted out, Argall set sail for Virginia on the thirteenth
of November. Scarcely was he at sea when a storm scattered the vessels.
Of the smallest of the three nothing was ever heard. Argall, severely
buffeted, reached his port in safety, having first, it is said,
compelled the Dutch at Manhattan to acknowledge for a time the
sovereignty of King James. The captured ship of La Saussaye, with Biard
and his colleague Quentin on board, was forced to yield to the fury of
the western gales and bear away for the Azores. To Biard the change
of destination was not unwelcome. He stood in fear of the truculent
Governor of Virginia, and his tempest-rocked slumbers were haunted with
unpleasant visions of a rope's end. It seems that some of the French at
Port Royal, disappointed in their hope of hanging him, had commended
him to Sir Thomas Dale as a proper subject for the gallows drawing up
a paper, signed by six of them, and containing allegations of a nature
well fitted to kindle the wrath of that vehement official. The vessel
was commanded by Turnel, Argall's lieutenant, apparently an officer of
merit, a scholar and linguist. He had treated his prisoner with great
kindness, because, says the latter, "he esteemed and loved him for
his naive simplicity and ingenuous candor." But of late, thinking
his kindness misplaced, he had changed it for an extreme coldness,
preferring, in the words of Biard himself, "to think that the Jesuit had
lied, rather than so many who accused him."
Water ran low, provisions began to fail, and they eked out their meagre
supply by butchering the horses taken at Port Royal. At length they came
within sight of Fayal, when a new terror seized the minds of the two
Jesuits. Might not the Englishmen fear that their prisoners would
denounce them to the fervent Catholics of that island as pirates and
sacrilegious kidnappers of priests? From such hazard the escape was
obvious. What more simple than to drop the priests into the sea? In
truth, the English had no little dread of the results of conference
between the Jesuits and the Portuguese authorities of Fayal; but
the conscience or humanity of Turnel revolted at the expedient which
awakened such apprehension in the troubled mind of Biard. He contented
himself with requiring that the two priests should remain hidden while
the ship lay off the port: Biard does not say that he enforced the
demand either by threats or by the imposition of oaths. He and his
companion, however, rigidly complied with it, lying close in the hold or
under the boats, while suspicious officials searched the ship, a proof,
he triumphantly declares, of the audacious malice which has asserted it
as a tenet of Rome that no faith need be kept with heretics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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