After His Return From This Voyage In 1683 He Felt Himself Again
Unfairly Treated By The French Court, And In
1684, as he relates in his
narrative, he "passed over to England for good, and of engaging myself so
strongly
To the service of his Majesty, and to the interests of the Nation,
that any other consideration was never able to detach me from it."
We again hear of Radisson in Hudson's Bay in 1685; and this is his last
appearance in public records or documents as far as is known. A Canadian,
Captain Berger, states that in the beginning of June, 1685, "he and his
crew ascended four leagues above the English in Hudson's Bay, where they
made a Small Settlement. On the 15th of July they set out to return to
Quebec. On the 17th they met with a vessel of ten or twelve guns, commanded
by Captain Oslar, on board of which was the man named Bridgar, the
Governor, who was going to relieve the Governor at the head of the Bay. He
is the same that Radisson brought to Quebec three years ago in the ship
Monsieur de la Barre restored to him. Berger also says he asked a parley
with the captain of Mr Bridgar's bark, who told him that Radisson had gone
with Mr Chouart, his nephew, fifteen days ago, to winter in the River Santa
Theresa, where they wintered a year." [Footnote: New York Colonial
Documents, Vol. IX.]
After this date the English and the French frequently came into hostile
collision in Hudson's Bay. In 1686 King James demanded satisfaction from
France for losses inflicted upon the Company. Then the Jesuits procured
neutrality for America, and knew by that time they were in possession of
Fort Albany. In 1687 the French took the "Hayes" sloop, an infraction of
the treaty. In 1688 they took three ships, valued, in all, at L. 15,000; L.
113,000 damage in time of peace. In 1692 the Company set out four ships to
recover Fort Albany, taken in 1686. In 1694 the French took York, alias
Fort Bourbon. In 1696 the English retook it from them. On the 4th
September, 1697, the French retook it and kept it. The peace was made
September 20, 1697. [Footnote: Minutes Relating to Hudson's Bay Company.]
In 1680 the stock rose from L. 100 to near L. 1,000. Notwithstanding the
losses sustained by the Company, amounting to L. 118,014 between 1682 and
1688, they were able to pay in 1684 the shareholders a dividend of fifty
per cent. Radisson brought home in 1684 a cargo of 20,000 beaver skins.
Oldmixon says, "10,000 Beavers, in all their factories, was one of the best
years of Trade they ever had, besides other peltry." Again in 1688 a
dividend of fifty per cent was made, and in 1689 one of twenty-five per
cent. In 1690, without any call being made, the stock was trebled, while at
the same time a dividend of twenty-five per cent was paid on the increased
or newly created stock. At the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, the forts
captured by the French in 1697 were restored to the Company, who by 1720
had again trebled their capital, with a call of only ten per cent. After a
long and fierce rivalry with the Northwest Fur Company, the two companies
were amalgamated in 1821. [Footnote: Encyclopaedia Britannica.]
Radisson commences his narrative of 1652 in a reverent spirit, by
inscribing it "a la plus grande gloire de Dieu." All his manuscripts have
been handed down in perfect preservation. They are written out in a clear
and excellent handwriting, showing the writer to have been a person of good
education, who had also travelled in Turkey and Italy, and who had been in
London, and perhaps learned his English there in his early life. The
narrative of travels between the years 1652 and 1664 was for some time the
property of Samuel Pepys, the well-known diarist, and Secretary of the
Admiralty to Charles II. and James II. He probably received it from Sir
George Cartaret, the Vice-Chamberlain of the King and Treasurer of the
Navy, for whom it was no doubt carefully copied out from his rough notes by
the author, So that it might, through him, be brought under the notice of
Charles II. Some years after the death of Pepys, in 1703, his collection of
manuscripts was dispersed and fell into the hands of various London
tradesmen, who bought parcels of it to use in their shops as waste-paper.
The most valuable portions were carefully reclaimed by the celebrated
collector, Richard Rawlinson, who in writing to his friend T. Rawlins,
from. "London house, January 25th, 1749/50," says: "I have purchased the
best part of the fine collection of Mr Pepys, Secretary to the Admiralty
during the reigns of Charles 2d and James 2d. Some are as old as King Henry
VIII. They were collected with a design for a Lord High Admiral such as he
should approve; but those times are not yet come, and so little care was
taken of them that they were redeemed from thus et adores vendentibus."
The manuscript containing Radisson's narrative for the years 1682 and 1683
was "purchased of Rodd, 8th July, 1839," by the British Museum. The
narrative in French, for the year 1684, was bought by Sir Hans Sloane from
the collection of "Nicolai Joseph Foucault, Comitis Consistoriani," as his
bookplate informs us. With the manuscript this gentleman had bound up in
the same volume a religious treatise in manuscript, highly illuminated, in
Italian, relating to some of the saints of the Catholic Church. [Footnote:
I am under obligations to Mr. John Gilmary Shea for valuable information.]
VOYAGES
OF
PETER ESPRIT RADISSON.
The Relation of my Voyage, being in Bondage in the Lands of the Irokoits,
which was the next yeare after my coming into Canada, in the yeare 1651,
the 24th day of May.
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