﻿REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I9IO 139 



mission to change the name of the islands from Brion to Made- 

 leine, which was the name of his wife. So this name has come 

 down to the present, a memorial of conjugal devotion, though 

 Doublet's attempts at settlement failed totally and have been 

 almost forgotten. 1 



Like Doublet, Denys failed in his efforts to induce coloniza- 

 tion and in 1720 the islands with S. Jean and Miscou, were con- 

 ceded by letters patent to the Count de Saint-Pierre, Equerry to 

 the Duchess of Orleans. He was commissioned not alone to 

 carry on the fisheries but to cultivate the soil and cut the timber. 

 So far as we know the attempted colonization under this patent 

 effected little and the islands were lost sight of until after the 

 fall of Louisburg and the evacuation by the Acadians of Grand 

 Pre and other settlements when many of the homeless families 

 came here and here their descendants today constitute the 

 majority of the population. In 1763, after the fall of New 

 France, the English government annexed the island to Newfound- 

 land, but by the Quebec Act they were soon after attached to 

 that province where they now belong. 



A new era in their history, however, began in 1798, when they 

 were granted by George III under letters patent to Admiral 

 Isaac Coffin, in recognition of his service during the American 

 war and the new proprietor established there a feudal system of 

 land tenure which has remained close to the present day as the 

 last flickering expression of medievalism in the English lands of 

 the western world. Sir Isaac Coffin required the occupants of 

 the islands to take titles in the nature of perpetual leases at an 

 irredeemable rent or emphyteutic leases. The islands cover 

 nearly 100,000 acres and at the usual return of 20 cents per acre 

 per year this would have produced a considerable ground rent 



1 They probably would be entirely forgotten if it were not for a short, 

 sharp passage in Denys's Description Geographique et Historique des Costes 

 d l'Amerique Septentrionale, 1672, and had not the departmental archives at 

 Rouen afforded in recent years the manuscript journal of Doublet's son, 

 which was edited and printed in 1883 by Breard, under the title Journal du 

 Corsaire Jean Doublet de Honfleur. This is a remarkable story of a free- 

 booter's life in every quarter of the watery globe, beginning with his success- 

 ful attempt, at the age of seven, to stow himself away aboard his father's 

 ship which came out to the Madeleines in 1663, the experience of the colony 

 there, the return next year to find the colony demoralized, the place aban- 

 doned and the venture wholly lost. Only the name of the islands has 

 remained to record in the geography of the place the first attempt at per- 

 manent settlement. 



