George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[103] the scene of the experiment, and Sir Danvers Os-

chap. IV.} 1753.

borne, brother-in-law to the Earl of Halifax, having Thomas Pownall for his secretary, was commissioned as its governor, with instructions which were principally ‘advised’¹ by Halifax and Charles Townshend, and were confirmed by the Privy Council,² in the presence of the king.

The new governor, just as he was embarking, was also charged ‘to apply his thoughts very closely to Indian affairs;’³ and hardly had he sailed, when, in September, the Lords of Trade directed commissioners from the northern colonies to meet the next summer at Albany, and make a common treaty with the Six Nations. On the relations of France and England with those tribes and their Western allies, hung the issues of universal peace and American union.

During the voyage across the Atlantic, the agitated mind of Osborne, already reeling with private grief, brooded despondingly over the task he had assumed. On the tenth of October, he took the oaths of office at New York; and the people who welcomed him with acclamations, hooted his predecessor. ‘I expect the like treatment,’ said he to Clinton, ‘before I leave the government.’ On the same day, he was startled by an address from the city council, who declared they would not ‘brook any infringement of their inestimable liberties, civil and religious.’ On the next, he communicated to the Council his instructions, which required the Assembly ‘to recede from all encroachments on the prerogative,’ and ‘to ’