Charles Lawrence (British Army officer)
Charles Lawrence (December 14, 1709 – October 19, 1760) was a British military officer who, as lieutenant governor and subsequently governor of Nova Scotia, was responsible for overseeing the expulsion of Acadians from the colony in the Great Upheaval. He was born in Plymouth, England and died in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Lawrence's background
Lawrence followed his father into a military career. His father was General Charles John Lawrence and is said to have served in Flanders under John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough.
Charles Lawrence's earlier life is obscure. He was commissioned in the 11th Regiment of Foot in 1727, and served in the West Indies from 1733 until 1737. He then served in the War Office. He was made lieutenant in 1741 and then captain in 1742. He was wounded in the battle of Fontenoy in 1745. He accompanied his regiment to Nova Scotia, arriving at Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) in 1747. He built Fort Lawrence on the south bank of the Missaguash River in the fall of 1750. In 1753 he directed the settlement of European Protestants on the coast south of Halifax. At the behest of Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts, he helped raise forces that under Robert Monckton captured the French Fort Beauséjour (near Sackville, New Brunswick) on June 16, 1755, and Lawrence's involvement with the expulsion of the Acadians was connected to a desire to maintain that conquest.
Governor of Nova Scotia
Charles Lawrence was named lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia in late 1753 when Governor Peregrine Thomas Hopson left on November 1 due to health problems. Lawrence was officially sworn in on October 21, 1754, holding this position until 1756, when Hopson resigned the post and Lawrence was made governor. He served as governor until his death in 1760.
To his new post he brought considerable distrust of the French. The French Acadians of Nova Scotia had become British subjects by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), but exhibited no willingness to participate in the British-French quarrels that were ongoing in the region at the time. Lawrence adopted a view that he found in the correspondence of previous governors: that though the Acadians should not antagonized, they should be required to take an oath of allegiance. In July 1755, without much prior reflection, he attempted to implement this policy upon a visiting delegation from Minas (Grand Pré region). When the delegation refused to submit without consulting the population they represented, Lawrence imprisoned them. The council then decided the expulsion of individuals refusing the oath was appropriate, and that "it would be most proper to send them to be distributed amongst the Several Colonies on the Continent." Although there was no military plan in Britain mandating the expulsion, Lawrence was never rebuked for acting without orders.
As lieutenant governor it was he who was responsible for writing the 1755 Acadian deportation order, securing the approval and co-operation of William Shirley, the governor of Massachusetts. One of the major reasons for the deportation was because the Acadians were aiding and abetting the French indirectly by trading agricultural supplies with the French. This deportation, known to Acadians as the Grand dérangement (see Great Upheaval), was a form of ethnic cleansing; historians estimate that approximately half of all Acadians died as a direct result of it, primarily due to shipwrecks, disease, and exposure. Some survivors eventually reached sanctuary in south Louisiana where they formed the basis for what would become the Cajuns.
As governor of Nova Scotia, Lawrence saw the settlement of the Acadian lands as his most important task. He fell into conflict with merchants like Joshua Mauger, and was the object of former complaints against him in the form of petitions to the Board of Trade. Lawrence issued proclamations in 1758 and 1759 seeking settlers for the Acadian lands, directed mainly at New Englanders. Since settlers were reluctant to break new forest land, he combined new and old land in each grant; merchants interested chiefly in taking advantage of the lands the expelled Acadians had settled, as well as those interested in using the lands as awards for military veteran, opposed this policy. But Lawrence wrote privately to Lord Halifax that "drunken, dissolute, and abandoned" habits, especially the habit of idleness, made veterans bad settlers.
In 1757 Lawrence was further promoted to the title of brigadier general and commanded the successful siege of the French fortress at Louisbourg on Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) in 1758.
It was during his tenure, but not with his approval, that Nova Scotia had its first elected legislative assembly which met in 1758. This elected body is the oldest representative body in Canada. He is said to have died of pneumonia in 1760 after over-indulging in a local Halifax banquet; others report that he died "after catching a chill."
After Lawrence's death, the Board of Trade ordered an investigation into complaints against him. He was criticized for approving excessively large land grants and concealing of the true cost of his land policy, but was exonerated from the most serious charges. His role in the expulsion of the Acadians occasioned very little commentary at the time of his demise.
Sources
- Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia (1987); Brasseaux, Scattered to the Wind (1991); Dominick Graham, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (2000); Rushton, The Cajuns (1979).