62 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
bearer hereof, Mr. Nutt [McNutt] arrived here last night from New 
London with a letter to me from Gov’r Pownall setting forth your having 
wrote to him that as you supposed some part of the New England levies 
(of troops) would be sent to Nova Scotia; if they should, and I would 
agree to the measure, that the persons engaged as settlers might act as 
those troops.”’ Lawrence it seems had requested Pownall to give 
McNutt “beating orders” to raise recruits to go to Nova Scotia in the 
dual capacity of settlers and soldiers. Amherst did not like the pro- 
posal and advised that every effort should be made to induce the Mas- 
sachusetts troops, then in Nova Scotia, to remain until the crisis at 
Quebec had passed. Measures were being planned for the final subjuga- 
tion of Canada and the operations were to be vigorous and decisive. 
Amherst thought that with the present New England troops at Fort 
Cumberland, Fort Edward, Fort Frederick and Annapolis Royal and 
his two companies of Rangers, Lawrence should have strength sufficient 
to protect and defend the settlers. This, he adds, McNutt himself 
seemed well convinced of. He wrote in similar terms to Governor 
Pownall, expressing his great desire that the troops from Massachusetts 
should continue a little longer. Colonel McNutt proceeded to Boston, 
on his way to Halifax, bearing the letters Amherst had written to 
Pownall and Lawrence. 
A month later the Massachusetts troops began to leave the garri- 
sons in large numbers. From Fort Frederick, at the mouth of the River 
St. John, seventy men came away in one schooner and eighty in another. 
To render the situation still more perplexing Amherst was obliged to 
send the British regulars to Quebec, which was invested by the French 
under de Levis. In this emergency Governor Pownall with some 
difficulty, induced the legislature of his province to authorize the raising 
of 300 men for Louisbourg and 200 for Nova Scotia. Lieut. Governor 
Hutchinson wrote from Boston that the men for Louisbourg would 
embark by the 10th of June. They had been, it seems, enlisted with 
difficulty, for the people were growing weary of war. 
Who was instrumental in raising the men for the garrison of Louis- 
bourg? Alexander McNutt! This we learn from his memorial to the 
Lords of Trade of the 19th January, 1763,! in which he declares that 
he raised three hundred men for His Majesty’s service at Louisbourg 
at the time it was necessary to draw the regular troops from thence for 
the relief of Quebec, when invested by the enemy. Colonel McNutt, 
in the same memorial, makes the further assertion that he procured 
more than one thousand families to go to Nova Scotia to settle, in the 
year 1760, from the provinces of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, 
1 See Appendix, No. VIII. 
