ved in March, 1706, and
returned with forty-four of his released countrymen, who, says Williams,
were chiefly adults permitted to go because there was no hope of
converting them. The English governor had by this time seen the
necessity of greater concessions, and had even consented to release the
noted Captain Baptiste, whom the Boston merchants regarded as a pirate.
In the same summer Samuel Appleton and John Bonner, in the brigantine
"Hope," brought a considerable number of French prisoners to Quebec, and
returned to Boston at the end of October with fifty-seven English, of
all ages. For three, at least, of this number money was paid by the
English, probably on account of prisoners bought by Frenchmen from the
Indians. The minister, Williams, was exchanged for Baptiste, the
so-called pirate, and two of his children were also redeemed, though the
Caughnawagas, or their missionaries, refused to part with his daughter
Eunice. Williams says that the priests made great efforts to induce the
prisoners to remain in Canada, tempting some with the prospect of
pensions from the King, and frightening others with promises of
damnation, joined with predictions of shipwreck on the way home. He
thinks that about one hundred were left in Canada, many of whom were
children in the hands of the Indians, who could easily hide them in the
woods, and who were known in some cases to have done so. Seven more were
redeemed in the following year by the indefatigable Sheldon, on a third
visit to Canada.[71]

The exchanged prisoners had been captured at various times and places.
Those from Deerfield amounted in all to about sixty, or a little more
than half the whole number carried off. Most of the others were dead or
converted. Some married Canadians, and others their fellow-captives. The
history of some of them can be traced with certainty. Thus, Thomas
French, blacksmith and town clerk of Deerfield, and deacon of the
church, was captured, with his wife and six children. His wife and
infant child were killed on the way to Canada. He and his two eldest
children were exchanged and brought home. His daughter Freedom was
converted, baptized under the name of Marie Francoise, and married to
Jean Daulnay, a Canadian. His daughter Martha was baptized as
Marguerite, and married to Jacques Roy, on whose death she married Jean
Louis Menard, by whom she became ancestress of Joseph Plessis, eleventh
bishop of Quebec. Elizabeth Corse, eight years old when