This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan. CHRONICLES OF CANADA Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton In thirty-two volumes Volume 12 THE FATHER OF BRITISH CANADA A Chronicle of Carleton By WILLIAM WOOD TORONTO, 1916 CONTENTS I. GUY CARLETON, 1724-1759 II. GENERAL MURRAY, 1759-1766 III. GOVERNOR CARLETON, 1766-1774 IV. INVASION, 1776 V. BELEAGUERMENT, 1775-1776 VI. DELIVERANCE, 1776 VII. THE COUNTERSTROKE, 1776-1778 VIII. GUARDING THE LOYALISTS, 1782-1783 IX. FOUNDING MODERN CANADA, 1786-1796 X. 'NUNC DIMITTIS,' 1796-1808 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE CHAPTER I GUY CARLETON 1724-1759 Guy Carleton, first Baron Dorchester, was born at Strabane, County Tyrone, on the 3rd of September 1724, the anniversary of Cromwell's two great victories and death. He came of a very old family of English country gentlemen which had migrated to Ireland in the seventeenth century and intermarried with other Anglo-Irish families equally devoted to the service of the British Crown. Guy's father was Christopher Carleton of Newry in County Down. His mother was Catherine Ball of County Donegal. His father died comparatively young; and, when he was himself fifteen, his mother married the rector of Newry, the Reverend Thomas Skelton, whose influence over the six step-children of the household worked wholly for their good. At eighteen Guy received his first commission as ensign in the 25th Foot, then known as Lord Rothes' regiment and now as the King's Own Scottish Borderers. At twenty-three he fought gallantly at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. Four years later (1751) he was a lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards. He was one of those quiet men whose sterling value is appreciated only by the few till some crisis makes it stand forth before the world at large. Pitt, Wolfe, and George II all recognized his solid virtues. At thirty he was still some way down the list of lieutenants in the Grenadiers, while Wolfe, two years his junior in age, had been four years in command of a battalion with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Yet he had long been 'my friend Carleton' to Wolfe, he was soon to become one of 'Pitt's Young Men,' and he was enough of a 'coming man' to incur the king's displeasure. He had criticized the Hanoverians; and the king never forgave him. The third George 'gloried in the name of Englishman.' But the first two were Hanoverian all through. And for an English guardsman to disparage the Hanoverian army was considered next door to _lese-majeste_.