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“ To his Excellency CHARLES LAWRENCE, Esqr., Governor General and Commander in chief of the province of Nova Scotia or Acadie, and Colonel of a regiment in His Majesty's Service in the said province.
distance, who had not left the Country on the surrender of the place, took the Oath unconditionally. This was while Sir Charles Hobby was in command. No reference was made in the capitulation, to the rest of the inhabitants of the province. They, however, made terms that winter, with Col. Vetch, then Lt. Governor of the Fort, who received their submission but required no Oath from them. The right to remain on their lands, thus reserved to those inhabitants in the neighborhood of Port Royal who had taken the Oath, terminated in Oct. 1712. As however, in the year 1711, while under the obligation of their Oath, they united with the Indians in an attack on the Fort, they were considered to have forfeited both their lives and property by that act of Treason. Govs. letters to Board of Trade among N.S. Archives. Murdoch's Hist. N.S., 342.
In the year 1713, the treaty of Utrecht was concluded between France and Great Britain, by the Twelfth article of which all Acadia was ceded to the British Crown; and the fourteenth article expressed: "That the subjects of the King of France may have liberty to remove themselves within a year to any other place with all their moveable effects. But those who are willing to remain and to be subject to the Kingdom of Great Britain, are to enjoy the free exercise of their religion according to the usages of the Church of Rome, as far as the laws of Great Britain do allow the same."
Queen Anne's letter to General Nicholson, of 23rd June 1713, directed him "to permit such of them" (the subjects of the King of France) "as have any lands or tenements in the places under your government in Acadia and Newfoundland, that have been or are to be yielded to us by virtue of the late treaty of peace, and are willing to continue our subjects, to retain and enjoy their said lands and tenements without any molestation, as fully and freely as other our subjects do or may possess their lands or estates, or to sell the same if they shall rather choose to remove elsewhere." No mention is made, either in the Treaty or the Queen's letter, of a qualified allegiance. It is therefore clearly obvious that those who chose to remain, thereby became subjects of Great Britain, and
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