The capture of Acadia was to Nicholson merely a stepping-stone towards the greater defeat of the French and the final subjugation of New France. He returned to England to further his schemes and was there ably supported by Jeremiah Dummer, who was at that time in the service of Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke. The Sacheverell trial of 1710 had, amongst other things, caused the fall of the Whigs and concluded Marlborough's warlike schemes. The Tories, champions of peace, were left in power with St John and Harley as their leaders; but so ably did the two colonials plead the cause of their brethren, that in April 1711 fifteen men-of-war and forty-six transports, containing five thousand regular troops, sailed for America. To their intense surprise the officers of this great armament found on their arrival that they were regarded by the colonists with the strongest suspicion. The ships had only been provisioned to reach America; definite orders as to their further destination had not been issued; and the French had attempted to poison the minds of the Bostonians by the idea that the British forces were to subvert colonial liberties and reduce Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire to the position of Crown colonies. One Frenchman wrote, "There is an antipathy between the English of Europe and those of America, who will not endure troops from England even to guard their forts."[261] Another, Costobelle, had said as early as December 1709, "I do not think that they are so blind as not to see that they will insensibly be brought under the yoke of the Parliament of Old England; but by the cruelties that the Canadians and Indians exercise in continual incursions upon their lands, I judge that they would rather be delivered from the inhumanity of such neighbours than preserve all the former powers of their little republic."[262] For the reasons stated in this report the New England colonists were on the horns of a dilemma; they feared the British troops, but they were equally afraid of their French neighbours.