This was the state of affairs at Beausejour while Shirley and Lawrence were planning its destruction.  Lawrence had empowered his agent, Monckton, to draw without limit on two Boston merchants, Apthorp and Hancock.  Shirley, as commander-in-chief of the province of Massachusetts, commissioned John Winslow to raise two thousand volunteers.  Winslow was sprung from the early governors of Plymouth colony; but, though well-born, he was ill-educated, which did not prevent him from being both popular and influential.  He had strong military inclinations, had led a company of his own raising in the luckless attack on Carthagena, had commanded the force sent in the preceding summer to occupy the Kennebec, and on various other occasions had left his Marshfield farm to serve his country.  The men enlisted readily at his call, and were formed into a regiment, of which Shirley made himself the nominal colonel.  It had two battalions, of which Winslow, as lieutenant-colonel, commanded the first, and George Scott the second, both under the orders of Monckton.  Country villages far and near, from the western borders of the Connecticut to uttermost Cape Cod, lent soldiers to the new regiment.  The muster-rolls preserve their names, vocations, birthplaces, and abode.  Obadiah, Nehemiah, Jedediah, Jonathan, Ebenezer, Joshua, and the like Old Testament names abound upon the list.  Some are set down as “farmers,” “yeomen,” or “husbandmen;” others as “shopkeepers,” others as “fishermen,” and many as “laborers;” while a great number were handicraftsmen of various trades, from blacksmiths to wig-makers.  They mustered at Boston early in April, where clothing, haversacks, and blankets were served out to them at the charge of the King; and the crooked streets of the New England capital were filled with staring young rustics.  On the next Saturday the following mandate went forth:  “The men will behave very orderly on the Sabbath Day, and either stay on board their transports, or else go to church, and not stroll up and down the streets.”  The transports, consisting of about forty sloops and schooners, lay at Long Wharf; and here on Monday a grand review took place,—­to the gratification, no doubt, of a populace whose amusements were few.  All was ready except the muskets, which were expected from England, but did not come.  Hence the delay of a month, threatening to ruin the enterprise.  When Shirley returned from Alexandria he found, to his disgust, that the transports still lay at the wharf where he had left them on his departure.[253] The muskets arrived at length, and the fleet sailed on the twenty-second of May.  Three small frigates, the “Success,” the “Mermaid,” and the “Siren,” commanded by the ex-privateersman, Captain Rous, acted as convoy; and on the twenty-sixth the whole force safely reached Annapolis.  Thence after some delay they sailed up the Bay of Fundy, and at sunset on the first of June anchored within five miles of the hill of Beausejour.