of the theatres;
were lodged and feasted as the guests of the nation, driven about London
in coaches with liveried servants, conducted to dockyards, arsenals, and
reviews, and saluted with cannon by ships of war. The Duke of Shrewsbury
presented them to Queen Anne,--one as emperor of the Mohawks, and the
other three as kings,--and the Archbishop of Canterbury solemnly gave
each of them a Bible. Steele and Addison wrote essays about them, and
the Dutch artist Verelst painted their portraits, which were engraved in
mezzotint.[139] Their presence and the speech made in their name before
the court seem to have had no small effect in drawing attention to the
war in America and inclining the ministry towards the proposals of
Nicholson. These were accepted, and he sailed for America commissioned
to command the enterprise against Port Royal, with Vetch as
adjutant-general.[140]

Colonel Francis Nicholson had held some modest military positions, but
never, it is said, seen active service. In colonial affairs he had
played an important part, and in the course of his life governed, at
different times, Virginia, New York, Maryland, and Carolina. He had a
robust, practical brain, capable of broad views and large schemes. One
of his plans was a confederacy of the provinces to resist the French,
which, to his great indignation, Virginia rejected. He had Jacobite
leanings, and had been an adherent of James II.; but being no idealist,
and little apt to let his political principles block the path of his
interests, he turned his back on the fallen cause and offered his
services to the Revolution. Though no pattern of domestic morals, he
seems to have been officially upright, and he wished well to the
colonies, saving always the dominant interests of England. He was bold,
ambitious, vehement, and sometimes headstrong and perverse.

Though the English ministry had promised aid, it was long in coming. The
Massachusetts Assembly had asked that the ships should be at Boston
before the end of March; but it was past the middle of May before they
sailed from Plymouth. Then, towards midsummer, a strange spasm of
martial energy seems to have seized the ministry, for Viscount Shannon
was ordered to Boston with an additional force, commissioned to take the
chief command and attack, not Port Royal, but Quebec.[141] This
ill-advised change of plan seems to have been reconsidered; at least, it
came to nothing.[142]

Meanwhile, the New England people