While Lawrence was formulating his policy with regard to the Acadians, events were at the same time rapidly moving towards a renewal of war between France and Great Britain in North America. Indeed, though as yet there had been no formal declaration, the American phase of the momentous Seven Years' War had already begun. France had been dreaming of a colonial empire stretching from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico. She had asserted her ownership of the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi; and she had set before herself the object of confining the English colonies within limits as narrow as possible. In May 1754 Shirley, the governor of Massachusetts, had advised the home government that he had received intelligence from Halifax 'that some of the rebel inhabitants of Chignecto, together with the Indians of the Peninsula and St John River, are through the influence of the French garrison at Beausejour engaged in an enterprise to break up all the eastern settlements,' and he pointed out that 'if the advices are true, they will afford ... one instance of the many mischievous consequences to the colonists of New England as well as to His Majesty's Province of Nova Scotia which must proceed from the French of Canada having possessed themselves of the isthmus of the Peninsula and St John's river in the Bay of Fundy, and continuing their encroachments within His Majesty's territories.' [Footnote: Nova Scotia Documents, p. 382. Shirley to Sir T. Robinson, May 23, 1754.] To this communication the government had replied in July 1754 that it was the king's wish that Shirley should co-operate with Lawrence in attacking the French forts in Nova Scotia.