“I am determined,” wrote Lawrence to the Lords of Trade, “to bring the inhabitants to a compliance, or rid the province of such perfidious subjects."[273] First, in answer to the summons of the Council, the deputies from Annapolis appeared, declaring that they had always been faithful to the British Crown, but flatly refusing the oath.  They were told that, far from having been faithful subjects, they had always secretly aided the Indians, and that many of them had been in arms against the English; that the French were threatening the province; and that its affairs had reached a crisis when its inhabitants must either pledge themselves without equivocation to be true to the British Crown, or else must leave the country.  They all declared that they would lose their lands rather than take the oath.  The Council urged them to consider the matter seriously, warning them that, if they now persisted in refusal, no farther choice would be allowed them; and they were given till ten o’clock on the following Monday to make their final answer.

[Footnote 273:  Lawrence to Lords of Trade, 18 July, 1755.]

When that day came, another body of deputies had arrived from Grand Pre and the other settlements of the Basin of Mines; and being called before the Council, both they and the former deputation absolutely refused to take the oath of allegiance.  These two bodies represented nine tenths of the Acadian population within the peninsula.  “Nothing,” pursues the record of the Council, “now remained to be considered but what measures should be taken to send the inhabitants away, and where they should be sent to.”  If they were sent to Canada, Cape Breton, or the neighboring islands, they would strengthen the enemy, and still threaten the province.  It was therefore resolved to distribute them among the various English colonies, and to hire vessels for the purpose with all despatch.[274]

[Footnote 274:  Minutes of Council, 4 July—­28 July, in Public Documents of Nova Scotia, 255-267.  Copies of these and other parts of the record were sent at the time to England, and are now in the Public Record Office, along with the letters of Lawrence.]

The oath, the refusal of which had brought such consequences, was a simple pledge of fidelity and allegiance to King George II. and his successors.  Many of the Acadians had already taken an oath of fidelity, though with the omission of the word “allegiance,” and, as they insisted, with a saving clause exempting them from bearing arms.  The effect of this was that they did not regard themselves as British subjects, and claimed, falsely as regards most of them, the character of neutrals.  It was to put an end to this anomalous state of things that the oath without reserve had been demanded of them.  Their rejection of it, reiterated in full view of the consequences, is to be ascribed partly to a fixed belief that the English would not execute their threats, partly to ties of race and kin, but mainly to superstition.  They feared to take part with heretics against the King of France, whose cause, as already stated, they had been taught to regard as one with the cause of God; they were constrained by the dread of perdition.  “If the Acadians are miserable, remember that the priests are the cause of it,” writes the French officer Boishebert to the missionary Manach.[275]