Jesuits ensnaring them on the spiritual side, and the intermarrying system
on the other. The English Secretary of State was Bolingbroke--or
Saint-John as he was then--a man of three and thirty, brilliant, graceful,
gifted, versatile; but without principle or constancy, who never
emancipated his superb intellect from his restless and sensuous nature.
After hearing what the American envoys had to say, and thinking the matter
over, Saint-John made up his mind that it could do no harm, as a
beginning, to capture Quebec; and that being safe in English hands, the
rest of the programme could be finished at leisure. Seven regiments of
Marlborough's veterans, the best soldiers in the world at that time, a
battalion of marines, and fifteen men-of-war, were intrusted to the
utterly incompetent and preposterous Hovenden Walker, with the not less
absurd Jack Hill, brother of Mrs. Masham, as second in command. In short,
the expedition was what would now be called a "job" for the favorites and
hangers-on of the Court; the taking of the Canadian fortress was deemed so
easy a feat that even fools and Merry-Andrews could accomplish it. The
Americans had meantime made their preparations to co-operate with this
imposing armada; an army of colonists and Iroquois were at Albany, ready
for a dash on Montreal. But week after week passed away, and the fleet,
having got to Boston, seemed unable to get away from it. No doubt
Hovenden, Hill and the rest of the rabble were enjoying themselves in the
Puritan capital. The Boston of stern-visaged, sad-garmented,
scripture-quoting men and women, of unpaved streets and mean houses, was
gone; Boston in the first quarter of the Eighteenth Century was a city--a
place of gayety, fashion and almost luxury. The scarlet coats of the
British officers made the narrow but briskly-moving streets brilliant; but
even without them, the embroidered coats, silken small clothes and clocked
stockings, powdered wigs and cocked hats of the fine gentlemen, and the
wide hoops and imposing head-dresses of the women, made a handsome show.
People of many nationalities mingled in the throng, for commerce had