Monckton sent accordingly to all the neighboring settlements, commanding the male inhabitants to meet him at Beausejour.  Scarcely a third part of their number obeyed.  These arrived on the tenth, and were told to stay all night under the guns of the fort.  What then befell them will appear from an entry in the diary of Winslow under date of August eleventh:  “This day was one extraordinary to the inhabitants of Tantemar, Oueskak, Aulac, Baye Verte, Beausejour, and places adjacent; the male inhabitants, or the principal of them, being collected together in Fort Cumberland to hear the sentence, which determined their property, from the Governor and Council of Halifax; which was that they were declared rebels, their lands, goods, and chattels forfeited to the Crown, and their bodies to be imprisoned.  Upon which the gates of the fort were shut, and they all confined, to the amount of four hundred men and upwards.”  Parties were sent to gather more, but caught very few, the rest escaping to the woods.

Some of the prisoners were no doubt among those who had joined the garrison at Beausejour, and had been pardoned for doing so by the terms of the capitulation.  It was held, however, that, though forgiven this special offence, they were not exempted from the doom that had gone forth against the great body of their countrymen.  We must look closely at the motives and execution of this stern sentence.

At any time up to the spring of 1755 the emigrant Acadians were free to return to their homes on taking the ordinary oath of allegiance required of British subjects.  The English authorities of Halifax used every means to persuade them to do so; yet the greater part refused.  This was due not only to Le Loutre and his brother priests, backed by the military power, but also to the Bishop of Quebec, who enjoined the Acadians to demand of the English certain concessions, the chief of which were that the priests should exercise their functions without being required to ask leave of the Governor, and that the inhabitants should not be called upon for military service of any kind.  The Bishop added that the provisions of the treaty of Utrecht were insufficient, and that others ought to be exacted.[264] The oral declaration of the English authorities, that for the present the Acadians should not be required to bear arms, was not thought enough.  They, or rather their prompters, demanded a written pledge.

[Footnote 264:  L’Eveque de Quebec a Le Loutre, Nov. 1754, in Public Documents of Nova Scotia, 240.]

The refusal to take the oath without reservation was not confined to the emigrants.  Those who remained in the peninsula equally refused it, though most of them were born and had always lived under the British flag.  Far from pledging themselves to complete allegiance, they showed continual signs of hostility.  In May three pretended French deserters were detected among them inciting them to take arms against the English.[265]