The Adventurers of England on Hudson Bay: A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the NorthLaut, Agnes C.
History
The Adventurers of England on Hudson Bay: A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
Laut, Agnes C.
Fur trade -- Canada; Hudson's Bay Company; Northwest, Canadian -- History
Radisson found small comfort in Paris. Possibly Colbert's death had
deprived him of a sympathetic protector, and the French court was as
reluctant now to interfere with the actions of the colonial authorities
at Quebec as it had been twenty years before. After petitioning vainly
for consideration, Groseilliers seems to have given up the contest and
retired for the remainder of his life to a small patrimony near Three
Rivers. Not so Radisson! He was bound to the Old World by marriage; and
now international complications came to bind him yet more completely.
'It is impossible,' wrote Louis XIV to Governor La Barre, 'to imagine
what you mean by releasing Gillam's boat and relinquishing claim to the
North Sea,' At the same time Louis was in a quandary. He would not
relinquish the French claim to the North Sea; but he dared not risk a
rupture of his secret treaty with England by openly countenancing
Radisson's exploit on the Nelson river. Radisson was secretly ordered to
go back to the Bay and, unofficially, in his private capacity, restore
the Nelson river fur posts to the Hudson's Bay Company. The words of the
order in part are: 'To put an end to the differences between the two
Nations touching the settlements made by Messrs Groseilliers and
Radisson on Hudson's Bay, the said Groseilliers and Radisson shall
return and withdraw the French with all effects belonging to them and
shall restore to the English Company the Habitation by them settled to
be enjoyed by the English without molestation.'
At the very same time that these royal orders sent Radisson to restore
the forts, a privateering frigate was dispatched from France to Quebec
with equally secret orders to attack and sink English vessels on the
Bay. The 'Adventurers of England,' too, were involved in a game of
international duplicity. While Mr Young, the fashionable man about town,
wrote letters imploring Radisson to come back to England, Sir James
Hayes bombarded the French court with demands that the Frenchman be
punished. 'I am confirmed,' he wrote, 'in our worst fears. M. Radisson,
who was at the head of the action at Port Nelson, is arrived in France
the 8th of this month and is in all post haste to undermine us on the
Bay. Nothing can mend but to cause ye French King to have exemplary
justice done on ye said Radisson.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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