Charles Lawrence. (1709-1760). Born in Plymouth, England December 14, 1709. His father was also in the British military, in the naval Section. General Charles John Lawrence served in Flanders under John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough.

After being commissioned in 1727 he served in the West Indies from 1729 until 1737. He was made lieutenant in 1741 and then captain in 1745. He participated in the battle of Fontenoy in the Austrian Netherlands in 1745. He accompanied his regiment to Nova Scotia in 1747.

Governor of Nova Scotia

He was named lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia in 1754, being officially sworn in on October 21, holding this position until 1756. In 1756 he was made governor, serving until 1760.

To his new post he brought an over exaggerated sense of fear of the French. The French Acadians of Nova Scotia who had become British subjects by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) did not want to participate in the British-French quarrels going on around them at the time. Lawrence considered the French colonists to be fifth columnists. He forced them to take an oath of allegiance to George II of Great Britain. It was after this failure to take the oath that ideas of deportation for the defense of the Crown was considered and later carried out.

As lieutenant governor it was he who was responsible for writing the 1755 Acadian deportation order, securing the approval and co-operation of William Shirley, the governor of Massachusetts. One of the major reasons for the deportation was because the Acadians were aiding and abetting the French indirectly by trading agricultural supplies with the French. This deportation known to Acadians as the Grand dérangement (see Great Upheaval) was a benign form of ethnic cleansing which did not involve bloodshed, but which places Lawrence as a villain in the history of Acadia.

In 1757 he was further promoted to the title of brigadier general and commanded the siege of the French fortress at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island (Île Royale).

It was during his tenure, but not with his approval, that Nova Scotia had its first elected legislative assembly which met in 1758. This elected body is the oldest representative body in Canada.

He died of pneumonia in 1760 after over-indulging in a local Halifax banquet.

Sources

• Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia (1987); Brasseaux, Scattered to the Wind (1991); Rushton, The Cajuns (1979).

External links

• Biography at the Canadian Dictionary of Biography Online
• Bartleby
• Girouard
• Cajun