Every government official was obliged to abjure the special tenets of Catholicism. In 1755 Governor Darrell commanded all masters of vessels who brought out Irish passengers to carry them back at the close of the fishing season. A special tax was levied on Roman Catholics, and the celebration of mass was made a penal offence. At Harbor Main, Sept. 25, 1755, the magistrates were ordered to fine a certain man L50 because he had allowed a priest to celebrate mass in one of his fishing-rooms. The room was ordered to be demolished, and the owner to sell his possessions and quit the harbor. Another who was present at the same mass was fined L20, and his house and stage destroyed by fire. Other Catholics who had not been present, were fined L10 each, and ordered to leave the settlement. These infamies were not altered until the Tory government was humiliated by the victory of the United States and their allies. But even then the Newfoundland settlers were taught that England treats her loyal colonist more harshly than the possible rebel. The Newfoundland settlers, Catholic or Protestant, had proved the most loyal men in the colony. When the French, under D'Iberville, captured St. John's, and all Newfoundland lay at their feet, the solitary exception was the little Island of Carbonear in Conception Bay, where the persecuted settler John Pynn and his gallant band still held aloft the British flag. In 1704-5 St. John's was again laid waste by the French, under Subercase; and, although Colonel Moody successfully defended the fort, the town was burned, and all the settlements about Conception Bay were raided by the French and their Indian allies. But Pynn and Davis bravely and successfully defended their island Gibraltar in Conception Bay. In 1708 Saint Ovide surprised and captured St. John's, but again old John Pynn held the fort at Carbonear. In the American War one of Pynn's descendants, a clerk at Harbor Grace, raised a company of grenadiers from Conception Bay; and they fought with such success in Canada that he was knighted as Sir Henry Pynn, and raised to the rank of general. But the selfish government at home cared nothing for Newfoundland. The first Congress of the United States, Sept. 5, 1774, forbade all exports to the British possessions. This would not have hurt Newfoundland if the settlers had been allowed to carry on agricultural pursuits there. But these had always been discouraged by the English; and so they were dependent on the New England States for their supplies, and were threatened with absolute famine as soon as the war broke out. Had they been disloyal, they might have gained their rights from England; but their very loyalty to such a government was their worst misfortune.