"In the evening seriously discoursed with Captain Eliot and Frary signifying my inability to hold, and reading Mr. Cotton Mather's arguments to them about the cross, and say'd that to introduce it into Boston at this time was much, seeing that it had been kept out more than my lifetime, and now the cross much set by in England and here; and it scarce could be put in, but I must have a hand in it. I fetch home the silk Elizur Holyoke had of me to make the cross, last Friday morn, and went and discourse Mr. Mather. He judged it sin to have it put in, but the captain not in fault, but I could hardly understand how the command of others could wholly excuse them, at least me who had spoken so much against it in April, 1681, and that summer and forward, upon occasion of Captain Walley's putting the cross in his colours."[91] [91] Sewall Papers, Massachusetts Historical Collections, Fifth Series, Vol. V. [Illustration: 36. MEDAL OF LOUIS XIV., "_Kebeca Liberata_," 1690.] But the crosses were restored, and it was under this single cross Ensign Red that, during the war between William III. and Mary and Louis XIV., the nine colonies[92] united together, and, in 1690, of their own motion and at their own expense,[93] sent out a naval expedition from Boston, under Admiral William Phips, against the French in Canada. The fleet successfully attacked and again captured Port Royal,[94] but arriving before Quebec, above whose ramparts was flying the white flag and _fleur-de-lis_ of France, was repulsed by the redoubtable Count Frontenac. The records of the expedition, and of the episode of the capture of the flag of the Admiral, which, being shot away from its halliards and falling into the water, was swum after and brought to shore by the venturesome French,[95] attest that this fleet of the United Colonies was sailing under the cross of St. George. A copy of the medal (36), issued by Louis XIV. of France in commemoration of the event, is given in the narrative,[96] showing three _fleur-de-lis_ of France, and the cross of St. George on a flag reversed. [92] Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, the two Jerseys, New York, Connecticut, and Plymouth and Rhode Island. [93] Sir Wm. Phips: "Account of Expedition against Quebec." Colonial Entry Books. London. [94] Acadie was restored to the French by the Treaty of Ryswick, 25th September, 1697. [95] It was afterwards placed, with much ceremony, in the Cathedral. [96] Ernest Myrand: "Phips devant Quebec," p. 341. [Illustration: 37. NEW ENGLAND ENSIGN. (From a Dutch publication of 1711.)]