The Father of British Canada

The Father of British Canada

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Father of British Canada: A
Chronicle
of Carleton, by William Wood. [This is Volume Twelve in the
32-volume Chronicles of Canada, Edited by George M. Wrong and H.
H. Langton]
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton
Author: William Wood
Release Date: November 11, 2003 [EBook #10044]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FATHER
OF BRITISH CANADA ***

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.
Lady Dorchester burnt all her husband's private papers after his death
in 1808; so we have lost some of the most intimate records concerning
him. But 'grave Carleton' appears so frequently in the letters of his
friend Wolfe that we can see his character as a young man in almost
any aspect short of self-revelation. The first reference has nothing to do
with affairs of state. In 1747 Wolfe, aged twenty, writing to Miss Lacey,
an English girl in Brussels, and signing himself 'most sincerely your
friend and admirer,' says: 'I was doing the greatest injustice to the dear
girls to admit the least doubt of their constancy. Perhaps with respect to
ourselves there may be cause of complaint. Carleton, I'm afraid, is a
recent example of it.' From this we may infer that Carleton was less
'grave' as a young man than Wolfe found him later on. Six years
afterwards Wolfe strongly recommended him for a position which he
had himself been asked to fill, that of military tutor to the young Duke
of Richmond, who was to get a company in Wolfe's own regiment.
Writing home from Paris in 1753 Wolfe tells his mother that the duke
'wants some skilful man to travel with him through the Low Countries
and into Lorraine. I have proposed my friend Carleton, whom Lord
Albemarle approves of.' Lord Albemarle was the British ambassador to
France; so Carleton got the post and travelled under the happiest
auspices, while learning the frontier on which the Belgian, French, and

British allies were to fight the Germans in the Great World War of
1914. It was during this military tour of