Charles Lawrence

Charles Lawrence (December 14th 1709 - October 19th 1760) was a military officer British which, as a Lieutenant governor and then Gouverneur of the Nova Scotia, was responsible to manage the expulsion of the Acadien S of the colony at the time of the Grand Disturbance. Born with Plymouth in England and died with Halifax.

Origins of Lawrence

Lawrence followed the traces of his/her father by undertaking a military career. His/her father, the general Charles John Lawrence would have been used in the Flandres under the orders as John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough.

The first years of the life of Charles Lawrence are obscure. It was used in the 11th Regiment off Foot in 1727 and with the the Western Indies of 1733 for 1737. It was used then for the War Office . It was made lieutenant in 1741 and then captain in 1742. It was wounded in the Bataille of Fontenoy in 1745. It accompanied its Régiment until in Nova Scotia, newcomer with Louisbourg in 1747. It built Strong Lawrence on southern bank of the Missaguash river to the autumn 1750. In 1753, it directed the establishment of Protesting S Europeans on the southern part of Halifax. After the order of William Shirley, governor of the Massachusetts, it helped to raise an army which, under the orders of Robert Monckton, captured the Fort Beauséjour (close to Sackville, in New Brunswick) on June 16th, 1755. The implication of Lawrence in the deportation of Acadian was connected to the desire to maintain this conquest.

Governor of Nova Scotia

Charles Lawrence was named Lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia at the end of 1753 when the governor Peregrine Thomas Hopson left on November first for health issues. He officially took up duty the October 21st 1754, keeping this position until 1756, when Hopson cancelled the station and Lawrence was made governor. There remained governor until his death in 1760.

It attracted itself the mistrust of the French. The Acadien S of Nova Scotia became prone Britanniques after the Traité of Utrecht in 1713, but did not show any interest to take part in the Guerre Seven Year old which made rage in the area then at the time. Lawrence adopted a point of view which it found in the correspondence of old governors: that even if the Acadian ones should not be punished, they should be obliged to lend oath of allegiance. In July 1755, it tried to force a delegation in visit of the area of the Mines to lend oath. When the delegation refused to submit itself without consulting the people, Lawrence imprisoned them. The council decided then that the expulsion of people refusing to lend oath was adapted, and that " it would be suitable to separate them and to send them towards the various colonies on the continent." Even if there were no military plan in Great Britain to elect expulsion, Lawrence were never blamed to have acts without orders.

As a lieutenant-governor, it is him which was responsible to write the order of deportation of Acadian in 1755, making sure of the approval and the co-operation of William Shirley, the governor of the Massachusetts. With the refusal to take the oath of honesty, one of the main reasons to off-set the Acadian ones was that they continued to make trade with the French. The deportation, known at the Acadian ones like the Great Disturbance , was an ethnic form of Nettoyage; the historians estimate that approximately half of Acadian died, mainly because of the shipwrecks, the diseases and cold. Certain survivors found refuge in the south of the Louisiana where they are now known under the name of Cajun S.

As a governor of Nova Scotia, Lawrence saw the colonization of the Acadiennes grounds like an important task. It entered in conflict with going important like Joshua Mauger, and was the object of official complaints in the shape of petitions deposited in Board off Trade. Lawrence writes proclamations in 1758 and 1759 seeking colonists for the acadian grounds, targeting the inhabitants of New England especially. As the colonists were reticent to clear new grounds, it combined old women and new grounds in each batch. The especially interested merchants to take advantage on the old acadian grounds, like those interested to use the grounds like rewards for the military veterans, were opposed to this policy. On the other hand, Lawrence personally wrote with Lord Halifax that bad habits as idleness made veterans of bad colonists.

In 1757, Lawrence was promoted Brigadier general under and ordered the seat of the Forteresse of Louisbourg, on the Royal Island (the Île of the Cape Breton) in 1758.

It was during its mandate, but without its approval, that the Nova Scotia obtained its first legislative Assemblée elected which meets for the first time in 1758. This elected body is the oldest representative body in Canada. One says that Lawrence will die of a pneumonia 1760, after having celebrated too extremely in a banquet with Halifax; some others believe that he died " after having caught a rhume."

After the death of Lawrence, Board off Trade ordered an investigation into the complaints about it. It was criticized to have approved gifts of excessively large grounds and to hide the true cost of its land policy, but was exonerated from the majority of the loads the most serious ranges against him. Its role in the deportation of Acadian caused few comments at the time.

Sources

Brasseaux, Founding off New Acadia (1987); Brasseaux, Scattered to the Wind (1991); Dominick Graham, Dictionary off Canadian Biography Online (2000); Rushton, The Cajuns (1979).

External bonds

'' Blupete.com '' biography
Biography At the '' Dictionary off Canadian Biography Online ''
Bartleby
Girouard
Cajun

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