after some hesitancy, pronounced the charges against him a “scandalous accusation.” It can hardly be determined that he was implicated, and Palfrey gives him the benefit of the doubt.[199] [Illustration: JEAN BAPTISTE HERTEL, SEIGNEUR DE ROUVILLE. This likeness of the leader of the assault on Deerfield follows one given in Daniel’s _Nos Gloires Nationales_, i. p. 278, where is an account of the Hertel family. He was thirty-four at the time of his attack.] The war was a fearful one. In 1703, month by month fresh tidings of its horrors among the frontier towns reached Boston. In January it was of Berwick, in Maine. In February came sad tidings from Haverhill. In March there was the story of Deerfield, and how Hertel de Rouville had dashed upon the village. With the early summer Dudley went to Canso to confer with the Indians (June 20); and not long after (July 8), Bombazeen, a noted Indian, appeared in Boston with rumors of the French landing near Pemaquid. In August there were sad messages from Wells, and Capt. Southack was sent off by sea with chaplain and surgeon. With all this need of her troops at home, the colony also despatched two companies of foot to help the British forces at Jamaica. Samuel Sewall mourned as ever, when on Sunday (April 23, 1704) great guns at the Castle signalized the Coronation-Day. “Down Sabbath! Up St. George!” he says. The very next day the first number of the _Boston News-Letter_ (April 24)[200] brought to the minister’s study and to his neighbor’s keeping-room the gossip and news of the town which was witnessing this startling proof of progress. Ten days later Dudley signed Benjamin Church’s instructions (May 4), and the old soldier, whose exploits in Philip’s war were not forgotten, set off by land to Piscataqua, where he was met by Cyprian Southack in his brigantine, who carried him to the eastern garrisons. In the _News-Letter_, people read of the tribulations at Lancaster; of the affairs at Port Royal; of the new cannon which Dudley got from England for the Castle; of the French captives, whose presence in Boston so disturbed the selectmen that they petitioned the governor to restrain the strangers, and whose imagined spiritual needs prompted Cotton Mather to print in his tentative French his _Le vrai patron des saines paroles_. News of this sort was varied by a rumor (December 18, 1705), which a sloop from the English Plymouth had brought, that Sir Charles Hobby was to be made governor,—which meant that the agents of the colony in London were trying to oust Dudley with a new man; but in this they failed. [Illustration]