1693.] ENGLISH PLOT. 359 



board his ship, and was possibly the occasion of 

 his inaction. 1 



Thus far successful, the authorities of Boston 

 undertook an enterprise little to their credit. They 

 employed the two deserters, joined with two Aca- 

 dian prisoners, to kidnap Saint-Castin, whom, next 

 to the priest Thury, they regarded as their most 

 insidious enemy. The Acaclians revealed the plot, 

 and the two soldiers were shot at Mount Desert. 

 Nelson was sent to France, imprisoned two years 

 in a dungeon of the Chateau of Angouleme, and 

 then placed in the Bastile. Ten years passed 

 before he was allowed to return to his family at 

 Boston. 2 



The French failure at Pemaquid completed the 

 discontent of the Abenakis ; and despondency and 



1 Frontenac au Ministre, 25 Oct., 1693. 



2 Lagny, Me'moire surl'Acadie, 1692 ; Memoire sur V Enlevement de Saint- 

 Castin; Frontenac au Ministre, 25 Oct., 1693; Relation de ce qui s' 'est pause 

 de plus remarquable, 1690, 1691 (capture of Nelson) ; Frontenac au Min- 

 istre, 15 Sept., 1692; Champigny au Ministre, 15 Oct., 161)2. Chainpigny 

 here speaks of Nelson as the most audacious of the English, and the most 

 determined on the destruction of the French. Nelson's letter to the 

 authorities of Boston is printed in Hutchinson, I. 338. It does not warn 

 them of an attempt against Pemaquid, of the rebuilding of which he 

 seems not to have heard, but only of a design against the seaboard towns. 

 Compare N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 555. In the same collection is a Me- 

 morial on the Northern Colonies, by Nelson, a paper showing much good 

 sense and penetration. After an imprisonment of four and a half years, 

 he was allowed to go to England on parole ; a friend in France giving 

 security of 15,000 livres for his return, in case of his failure to procure 

 from the king an order for the fulfilment of the terms of the capitulation 

 of Port Royal. (Le Ministre a Be'gon, 13 Jan., 1694.) He did not succeed, 

 and the king forbade him to return. It is characteristic of him that he 

 preferred to disobey the royal order, and thus incur the high displeasure 

 of his sovereign, rather than break his parole and involve his friend in 

 loss. La Hontan calls him a "fort galant homme." There is a portrait 

 of him at Boston, where his descendants are represented by the prom- 

 inent families of Derby and Borland. 



