CHAPTER XIV

1688-1710

WHAT BECAME OF RADISSON? NEW FACTS ON THE LAST DAYS OF THE FAMOUS PATHFINDER

Whatbecame of Radisson? It seems impossible that the man, who set France and England by the ears for a century, and led the way to the pathfinding of half America, should have dropped so completely into oblivion that not a scrap is recorded concerning the last twenty-five years of his life. Was he run to earth by the bailiffs of London, like Thackeray’s “Virginian?” Or did he become the lion tamed, the eagle with its wings clipped, to be patronized by supercilious nonentities? Or did he die like Ledyard of a heart broken by hope deferred?

Radisson, the boy, slim and swarth as an Indian, running a mad race for life through mountain torrents that would throw his savage pursuers off the trail—we can imagine; but not Radisson running from a London bailiff. Leading flotillas of fur brigades up the Ottawa across Lake Superior to theGreat Northwest—he is a familiar figure, but not stroked and petted and patronized by the frowzy duchesses of Charles the Second’s slovenly court. Yet from the time Radisson ceased to come to Hudson Bay during Iberville’s raids, he drops as completely out of history as if he had been lost in Milton’s Serbonian Bog. One historian describes him as assassinated in Quebec, another as dying destitute. Both statements are guesses, but from the dusty records of the Hudson’s Bay Company—many of them undisturbed since Radisson’s time—can be gleaned a complete account of the game pathfinder’s life to the time of his death.

The very front page of the first minute book kept by the Company, contains account of Radisson—an order for Alderman Portman to pay Radisson and Groseillers £5 a year for expenses—chiefly wine and fresh fruit, as later entries show. There were present at this meeting of the Company, adventurers of as romantic a glamor as Robert Louis Stevenson’s heroes or a Captain Kidd. There was the Earl of Craven, married to the Queen of Bohemia. There was Ashley, ambitious for the earldom that came later, and with the reputation that “he would rob the devil, himself, and the church altars.” It was Ashley, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, who charged a bribe of £100 to every man appointed inthe government services, though he concealed his peculations under stately manners and gold lace. Notoriety was the stock in trade of the court beauties at that time, and Ashley’s wife earned public notice by ostentatiously driving in a glass coach that was forever splintering in collision with some other carriage or going to bits over the clumsy cobblestones. Old Sir George Carterett of New Jersey was now treasurer of the Navy. Sir John Robinson was commander of the Tower. Griffith was known as the handsome dandy of court balls. Sir John Kirke, the Huguenot, was a royal pensioner of fighting blood, whose ancestors had captured Quebec. The meeting of the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers was held at the house of Sir Robert Viner, Lord Mayor of London, renowned for the richest wife, the finest art galleries, the handsomest conservatories in England. It was to Viner’s that Charles the Second came with his drunken crew to fiddle and muddle and run the giddy course, that danced the Stuart’s off the throne. Mr. Young was a man of fashion as well as a merchant, so famous for amateur acting that he often took the place of the court actors at a moment’s notice.

Radisson’s House on Seething Lane in 1679. (1) St. Olave Hart’s Church; (2) Radisson’s House: (3) Pepys’ House.

These were Radisson’s associates, the Frenchman’s friends when he came to London fresh from the wilderness in his thirtieth year with the explorationof the North and the West to his credit. None knew better than he, the money value of his discoveries. And Radisson knew the way to this land. By the lifting of his hand, he could turn this wealth into the coffers of the court adventurers. If the fur trade was a gamble—and everything on earth was gamble in the reign of Charles—Radisson held the winning cards. The gamesters of that gambling age gathered round him like rooks round a pigeon, to pick his pockets—politely and according to the codes of good breeding, of course—and to pump his brain of every secret, that could be turned into pounds sterling—politely, also, of course. Very generous, very pleasant, very suave of fair promises were the gay adventurers, but withal slippery as the finery of their silk ruffles or powdered periwigs.

Did Radisson keep his head? Steadier heads have gone giddy with the sudden plunge from wilderness ways to court pomp. Sir James Hayes, Prince Rupert’s secretary, declares in a private document that the French explorer at this time “deludedthe daughter of Sir John Kirke into secretly marrying him,” so that Radisson may have been caught in the madcap doings of the court dissipations when no rake’s progress was complete unless he persuaded some errant damsel to jump over the back wall and elope, though there was probably no hindrance inthe world to ordinary lovers walking openly out of the front door and being married properly. The fact that Radisson was a penniless adventurer and a Catholic, while his bride was the daughter of a rich Puritan, may have been the explanation of the secrecy, if indeed, there is any truth at all in the rumor repeated by Hayes.

For seven years after he came to London, the love of wilderness places, of strange new lands, clung to Radisson. He spent the summers on Hudson Bay for the Company, opening new forts, cruising up the unknown coasts, bartering with new tribes of Indians, and while not acting as governor of any fur post, seems to have been a sort of general superintendent, to keep check on the Company’s officers and prevent fraud, for when the cargoes arrived at Portsmouth, orders were given for the Captains not to stir without convoy to come to the Thames, but for “Mr. Radisson to take horse” and ride to London with the secret reports. During the winters in London, Sir John Robinson of the Tower and Radisson attended to the sales of the beaver, bought the goods for the next year’s ships, examined the cannon that were to man the forts on the bay and attended to the general business of the Company. Merchants, who were shareholders, advanced goods for the yearly outfit. Other shareholders, who owned ships, loaned or gave vesselsfor the voyage. Wages were paid as money came in from the beaver sales. So far, Radisson and his associates were share and share alike, all laying the foundations of a future prosperity. Radisson and his brother-in-law drew from the beaver sales during these seven years (1667-1673) £287, about $2,000 each for living expenses.

But now came a change. The Company’s ships were bought and paid for, the Company’s forts built and equipped—all from the sales of the cargoes brought home under Radisson’s superintendence. Now that profits were to be paid, what share was his? The King had given him a gold chain and medal for his services, but to him the Company owed its existence. What was his share to be? In a word, was he to be one of the Adventurers or an outsider? Radisson had asked the Adventurers for an agreement. Agreement? A year passed, Radisson hung on, living from hand to mouth in London, receiving £10 one month, £2 the next, an average of $5 a week, compelled to supplicate the Company for every penny he needed—a very excellent arrangement for the Gentlemen Adventurers. It compelled Radisson to go to them for favors, instead of their going to Radisson; though from Radisson’s point of view, the boot may have seemed to be on the wrong leg. Finally, as told in a preceding chapterthe committee met and voted him “£100per ann. from the time of his arrival in London,and if it shall please God to bless this company with good success,they will then resume the consideration of Mr. Radisson.” One hundred pounds was just half of one per cent. of the yearly cargoes. It was the salary of the captains and petty governors on the bay.

Radisson probably had his own opinion of a contract that was to depend more on the will of Heaven than on the legal bond of his partners. He quit England in disgust for the French navy. Then came the raids on Nelson, the order of the French Court to return to England and his resumption of service with the Hudson’s Bay Company up to the time Iberville drove the English from the bay and French traders were not wanted in the English service.

For changing his flag the last time, such abuse was heaped on Radisson that the Hudson’s Bay Company was finally constrained to protest: “that the said Radisson doth not deserve those ill names the French give him. If the English doe not give him all his Due, he may rely on the justice of his cause.”

Indeed, the English company might date the beginning of the French raids that harried their forts for a hundred years from Radisson’s first raid at Port Nelson; but they did not foresee this.

The man was as irrepressible as a disturbed hornets’ nest—break up his plans, and it only seemed to scatter them with wider mischief. How the French Court ordered Radisson back to England has already been told. He was the scapegoat for court intrigue. Nothing now was too good for Radisson—with the English. The Adventurers presented him with a purse “for his extraordinary services to their great liking and satisfaction.” A dealer is ordered “to keep Mr. Radisson in stock of fresh provisions,” and the Company desires “that Mr. Radisson shall have a hogshead of claret” presumably to drown his memory of the former treatment. My Lord Preston is given a present of furs for persuading Radisson to return. So is “Esquire Young,” the gay merchant of Cornhill, who was Radisson’s best friend in England, and Sir James Hayes, who had been so furious against him only a few months before, begs Monsieur to accept that silver tankard as a token of esteem from the Adventurers (£10 4s, I found it cost by the account books.)

Only one doubt seemed to linger in the minds of the Company. In spite of King Louis’ edict forbidding French interlopers on Hudson’s Bay, secret instructions of an opposite tenor were directing Iberville’s raiders overland. If Radisson was to act as superintendent on the bay, chief councillorat Port Nelson, the Company must have bonds as well as oath for his fidelity, and so the entry in the minute books of 1685 records: “At this committee, Mons. Pierre Radisson signed and sealed the covenants with the company, and signed a bond of £2,000 to perform covenants with the company, dated 11 May.... Dwelling at the end of Seething Lane in Tower Street.”

I think it was less than ten minutes from the time I found that entry when I was over in Seething Lane. It is in a part of old London untouched by the Great Fire running up from the famous road to the Tower, in length not greater than between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, New York. Opening off Great Tower Street, it ends at Crutched Friars. At the foot of the lane is the old church of All Hallows Barking, whose dial only was burned by the fire; at the top, the little antiquated church of St. Olave Hart’s, whose motley architecture with leaning walls dates from the days of the Normans. If Radisson lived “at the end of Seething Lane,” his house must have been just opposite St. Olave Hart’s, for the quaint church with its graveyard occupies the entire left corner. In this lane dwelt the merchant princes of London. Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Navy, who thought his own style of living “mighty fine”—as he describes it—preening and pluming himselfon the beautiful panels he had placed in his mansion, must have been a near neighbor of Radisson’s; for in the diarist’s description of the fire, he speaks of it coming to Barking Church “at the bottom of our lane.” But a stone’s throw away is the Tower, in those days commanded by Radisson’s friend, Sir John Robinson. The Kirkes, the Colletons, Griffith the dandy of the balls, Sir Robert Viner, the rich Lord-Mayor; Esquire Young of Cornhill—all had dwellings within a few minutes’ walk of Seething Lane.

The whereabouts of Radisson in London explain how the journals of his first four voyages were lost for exactly two hundred years and then found in the Pepys Collection of the Bodleian Library. He had given them either directly or through the mutual friend Carterett, to his neighbor Pepys, who was a keen collector of all matter appertaining to the navy, and after being lost for years, the Pepys Collection only passed to the Bodleian in recent days.

The place where Radisson lived shows, too, that he was no back-stairs sycophant hanging on the favor of the great, no beggarly renegade hungry for the crumbs that fell from the tables of those merchant princes. It proves Radisson a front-door acquaintance of the Gentlemen Adventurers. Sir Christopher Wren, the famous architect who was a share-holderin the Hudson’s Bay Company at this time, thought himself well paid at £200 a year for superintending the building of St. Paul’s. Radisson’s agreement on returning to the Adventurers from France, was for a salary of £50 a year, paid quarterly, £50 paid yearly and dividends—running as high as 50 per cent.—on £200 of stock—making in all, practically the same income as a man of Wren’s standing.

Second-rate warehouses and dingy business offices have replaced the mansions of the great merchants on Seething Lane, but the two old churches stand the same as in the days of Radisson, with the massive weather-stained stone work uncouth, as if built by the Saxons, inner pillars and pointed arches showing the work of the Normans. Both have an antique flavor as of old wine. The Past seems to reach forward and touch you tangibly from the moldering brass plates on the walls, and the flagstone of the aisles so very old the chiseled names of the dead below are peeling off like paper. The great merchant princes—the Colletons, the Kirkes, the Robinsons, Radisson’s friends—lie in effigy around the church above their graves. It was to St. Olave’s across the way, Pepys used to come to hear Hawkins, the great Oxford scholar, also one of the Adventurers—preach; and a tablet tells where the body of Pepys’gay wife lies. From the walls, a memorial tablet to Pepys, himself, smiles down in beplumed hat and curled periwig and velvet cloak, perhaps that very cloak made in imitation of the one worn in Hyde Park by the King and of which he was—as he writes—“so mighty proud.” The roar of a world’s traffic beats against the tranquil walls of the little church; but where sleeps Radisson, the Catholic and alien, in this Babylon of hurrying feet? His friends and his neighbors lie here, but the gravestones give no clue of him. Pepys, the annalist of the age, with his gossip of court and his fair wife and his fine clothes—thought Radisson’s voyages interesting enough as a curio but never seems to have dreamed that the countries Radisson discovered would become a dominant factor in the world’s progress when that royal house on whose breath Pepys hung for favor as for life, lay rotting in a shameful oblivion. If the dead could dream where they lie forgotten, could Radisson believe his own dream—that the seas of the world are freighted with the wealth of the countries he discovered; that “the country so pleasant, so beautiful ... so fruitful ... so plentiful of all things”—as he described the Great Northwest when he first saw it—is now peopled by a race that all the nations of Europe woo; that the hope of the empire, which ignored him when he lived, is nowcentered on “that fair and fruitful and pleasant land” which he discovered?

For ten years Radisson continued to go to the bay, Esquire Young acting as his attorney to draw the allowance of £100 a year and the dividends on £200 stock for Radisson’s wife, Mary Kirke. The minutes contain accounts of wine presented to Mr. Radisson, of furs sent home as a gift to Mistress Radisson, of heavy guns bought for the forts on the advice of Mr. Radisson, of a fancy pistol delivered to Monsieur Radisson. Then a change fell.

The Stuarts between vice and folly had danced themselves off the throne. The courtiers, who were Adventurers, scattered like straws before the wind. The names of the shareholders changed. Of Radisson’s old friends, only Esquire Young remained. Besides, Iberville was now campaigning on the bay, sweeping the English as dust before a broom. Dividends stopped. The Company became embarrassed. By motion of the shareholders, Radisson’s pension was cut from £100 to £50 a year. In vain Esquire Young and Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, now governor of the Company, urged Radisson’s claims. The new shareholders did not know his name.

These were dark days for the old pathfinder. He must have been compelled to move from SeethingLane, for a petition describes him as in the Parish of St. James “in a low and mean condition” in great want and mental distress lest his family should be driven to the poorhouse. It was at this period three papers were put on file that forever place beyond dispute the main facts of his life. He filed a suit in Chancery against the Company for a resumption of his full salary pending the discontinuance of dividends. He petitioned Parliament to make the continuance of the Company’s charter dependent on recognition of his rights as having laid the foundations of the Company. And he took an oath regarding the main episodes of his life to be used in the treaty of peace with France. A fighter he was to the end, though haunted by that terrible Fear of Want which undermined his courage as no Phantom Fright ever shook him in the wilderness. No doubt he felt himself growing old, nearly seventy now with four children to support and naught between them and destitution but the paltry payment of £12 10s a quarter.

Again the wheel of fortune turned. Radisson won his suit against the Company. His income of £100 was resumed and arrears of £150 paid. Also, in the treaty pending with France, his evidence was absolutely requisite to establish what the boundaries ought to be between Canada and Hudson Bay; so theAdventurers became suddenly very courteous, very suave, very considerate of the old man they had kept standing outside their office door; and the committee of August 17, 1697, bade “the secretary take coach and fetch Mr. Radisson who may be very useful at this time as to affairs between the French and the Company.” The old war horse was once more in harness. In addition to his salary, gratuities of £10 and £8 and £20 “for reliable services” are found in the minutes. Regularly his £50 were paid to him at the end of each year. Regularly, the £12 10s were paid each quarter to March 29, 1710. When the next quarter came round, this entry is recorded in the minute book:

“Att A Comitte the 12th July 1710—

The Sec is ordered to pay Mr. Radisson’s widow as charity the sum of six pounds.”

Between the end of March and the beginning of July, the old pathfinder had set forth on his last voyage.

But I think the saddest record of all is the one that comes nineteen years later:

“24 Sept. 1729 Att A Comitte—

The Sec. is ordered to pay Mrs. Radisson, widow of Mr. Peter Esprit Radisson, who was formerly employed in the company’s service, the sum of £10 as charity, she being very ill and in very great want, the said sum to be paid her at such times as the Sec. shall think most convenient.”

This was the widow of the man who had explored the West to the Mississippi; who had explored the North to Nelson River; who had twice saved New France from bankruptcy by the furs he brought from the wilderness, and who had laid the foundations of the most prosperous chartered company the world has ever known.

Notes on Chapter XIV.—It need scarcely be explained that the data for this chapter are all drawn from thousands of sheets of scattered records in Hudson’s Bay House, London. Within the limits of this book, it is quite impossible to quote all the references of this chapter. Details of Radisson’s early life are to be found in “Pathfinders of the West.” One of Radisson’s petitions has been given in a former chapter. Another of his petitions runs as follows:“Copy of Peter Esprit Radisson’s peticon to ye Parleamt. presented ye 11th of March 1697-8.“To ye Hon’ble the Knights Citizens & Burgesses in Parliament Assembled——“The Humble Peticon of Peter Esprit Radisson Humbly sheweth“That your petitioner is a native of France, who with a brother of his (since deceased) spent many years of their youths among the Indians in and about Hudson’s Bay, by reason whereof they became absolute masters of the trade and language of the said Indians in those parts of America“That about the year 1666 King Charles the Second sent yr. Pet’r and his said brother with two ships on purpose to settle English colonies & factories on the sd. Day, wh. they effected soe well by the said King’s satisfaction that he gave each of them a gold chain & medell as a marke of his Royale favour & recommended them to the Comp’y of Adventurers of England Trading unto Hudson’s Bay to be well gratified and rewarded by them for their services aforesaid.“That since the death of yr. Petr. Brother, the sd. compy have settled on your Petr: six actions in the joint stock of ye sd. compy and one hundred pounds per annum during yr. Petr: life“That your Petr is now 62 years of age (being grown old in the compys service) & hath not recd any Benefits of the sd. sixshares in the compys stock for more than 7 years last past & hath had nothing but the sd. 100 pds. Per annum to maintain himselfe and four small children all borne in England.“That during the late Reign a Price was set upon your Petr head by the French & several attempts were made upon him to assassinate him & that for none other reasons but for quitting his owne country & serving the compy.“That your Petr: dares not return to his Native country for the reasons aforesaid: & seeing all his subsistance depends on the sd. compy & is shortly to Determine with the life of your Petr and his four smalle children must consequently fall to be maintained by the Alms of the Parish altho’ the company hath had many thousand pounds effects by his procurement & some that he conceives he had himselfe a good tytle to——“Your Petr therefore most humbly prays that this House will comiserate the condition of yr. Petr said children, and whereas he hath now the said six actions & £100 only for his life, that you will Vouchsafe to direct a provisoe in the Bill depending to grant the sd. annuity to be paid quarterly & the dividends of the sd. Actions as often as any shall become due to your Petr: his Heirs for Ever during the joint stock of the said compy.“And yr. Petr shall forever pray“Peter Esprit Radisson.”The occasion of this petition by Radisson was when the Stuarts had lost the throne and the Company was petitioning for a confirmation of its royal charter by an act of Parliament. “The many thousand pounds which he conceived himself to have a title to,” refers to 1684, when the French Court compelled him to turn over all the £20,000 in his fort at Nelson to the English. That beaver had been procured in the trade of goods for which Radisson and Groseillers and young Chouart and La Fôrest and De la Chesnay and Dame Sorrell had advanced the money. As a matter of fact, the Company never gave Radisson any stock. They simply granted him the right to dividends on a small amount of stock—a wrong which he was powerless to right as he dared not return to France. It was during Iberville’s raids that the Company stopped paying Radisson dividends or salary, when he filed a suit against them in Chancery and won it. It is quite true the Company was unable to pay him at this time, but then they had their own niggardly policy to thank for having driven him across to France in the first place.When the Company presented a bill of damages against France for the raids, Radisson’s evidence was necessary to prove that the French King gave up all claims to the bay when he ordered Radisson back to England, so the old man was nolonger kept cooling his heels in the outer halls of the Company’s Council Room. The bill of damages was made up as follows:1682—Port Nelson taken with Gov. Bridgar & Zechariah Gillam & 5 men perished.£25,0001684—damage to trade at Nelson.10,0001685—Perpetuanataken with 14 seamen.5,000loss of life and wages.1,2551686—forts captured at the bottom of the bay50,000loss in trade.10,0001688—loss ofChurchillCaptain BondYoung—Stimson15,000cargo to Canada.70,0001692—forts lost.20,000_______£206,255The French King had said, “You may rely on me getting out of this affair,” and the bill of damages, however absurdly exaggerated, was never paid. The French raiders proved an expensive experiment.Radisson’s other affidavit was made to prove that the French had quitted all pretensions to the bay when he was ordered back to Nelson. The French responded by denying that he had ever been ordered back to Nelson and by calling him “a liar,” “a renegade,” “a turn coat.” To this, the English answered in formal memorial: “The Mr. Radisson mentioned in this paper doth not deserve the ill names heaped upon him,” following up with the proof that the French had sent him back to England.The real reason that the Company were so remiss to Radisson in his latter days was their own desperate straits. Besides, the old shareholders of the Stuart days had scattered like the wind. Radisson was unknown to the new men, so completely unknown that in one committee order his wife is spoken of as Madam Gwodet (Godey) instead of Mary Kirke. Now Madam Godey was the damsel whom Lord Preston offered to Radisson in marriage (with a dowry) despite the fact that he already had a wife—if he would go back from Paris to London. De la Potherie tells the story and adds that Radisson married her—another of the numerous fictions about the explorer. This mass of notes may give the impression that I am a protagonist of Radisson. My answer is that he badly needs one, when such staunch modern defenders of his as Drs. Bryce, and Dionne, and Judge Prudhomme refuse to excuse him for his last desertion of the French flag. In that case, Radisson was as much a victim of official red tape as Dreyfus in modern days.

“Copy of Peter Esprit Radisson’s peticon to ye Parleamt. presented ye 11th of March 1697-8.

“To ye Hon’ble the Knights Citizens & Burgesses in Parliament Assembled——

“The Humble Peticon of Peter Esprit Radisson Humbly sheweth

“That your petitioner is a native of France, who with a brother of his (since deceased) spent many years of their youths among the Indians in and about Hudson’s Bay, by reason whereof they became absolute masters of the trade and language of the said Indians in those parts of America

“That about the year 1666 King Charles the Second sent yr. Pet’r and his said brother with two ships on purpose to settle English colonies & factories on the sd. Day, wh. they effected soe well by the said King’s satisfaction that he gave each of them a gold chain & medell as a marke of his Royale favour & recommended them to the Comp’y of Adventurers of England Trading unto Hudson’s Bay to be well gratified and rewarded by them for their services aforesaid.

“That since the death of yr. Petr. Brother, the sd. compy have settled on your Petr: six actions in the joint stock of ye sd. compy and one hundred pounds per annum during yr. Petr: life

“That your Petr is now 62 years of age (being grown old in the compys service) & hath not recd any Benefits of the sd. sixshares in the compys stock for more than 7 years last past & hath had nothing but the sd. 100 pds. Per annum to maintain himselfe and four small children all borne in England.

“That during the late Reign a Price was set upon your Petr head by the French & several attempts were made upon him to assassinate him & that for none other reasons but for quitting his owne country & serving the compy.

“That your Petr: dares not return to his Native country for the reasons aforesaid: & seeing all his subsistance depends on the sd. compy & is shortly to Determine with the life of your Petr and his four smalle children must consequently fall to be maintained by the Alms of the Parish altho’ the company hath had many thousand pounds effects by his procurement & some that he conceives he had himselfe a good tytle to——

“Your Petr therefore most humbly prays that this House will comiserate the condition of yr. Petr said children, and whereas he hath now the said six actions & £100 only for his life, that you will Vouchsafe to direct a provisoe in the Bill depending to grant the sd. annuity to be paid quarterly & the dividends of the sd. Actions as often as any shall become due to your Petr: his Heirs for Ever during the joint stock of the said compy.

“And yr. Petr shall forever pray

“Peter Esprit Radisson.”

The occasion of this petition by Radisson was when the Stuarts had lost the throne and the Company was petitioning for a confirmation of its royal charter by an act of Parliament. “The many thousand pounds which he conceived himself to have a title to,” refers to 1684, when the French Court compelled him to turn over all the £20,000 in his fort at Nelson to the English. That beaver had been procured in the trade of goods for which Radisson and Groseillers and young Chouart and La Fôrest and De la Chesnay and Dame Sorrell had advanced the money. As a matter of fact, the Company never gave Radisson any stock. They simply granted him the right to dividends on a small amount of stock—a wrong which he was powerless to right as he dared not return to France. It was during Iberville’s raids that the Company stopped paying Radisson dividends or salary, when he filed a suit against them in Chancery and won it. It is quite true the Company was unable to pay him at this time, but then they had their own niggardly policy to thank for having driven him across to France in the first place.

When the Company presented a bill of damages against France for the raids, Radisson’s evidence was necessary to prove that the French King gave up all claims to the bay when he ordered Radisson back to England, so the old man was nolonger kept cooling his heels in the outer halls of the Company’s Council Room. The bill of damages was made up as follows:

The French King had said, “You may rely on me getting out of this affair,” and the bill of damages, however absurdly exaggerated, was never paid. The French raiders proved an expensive experiment.

Radisson’s other affidavit was made to prove that the French had quitted all pretensions to the bay when he was ordered back to Nelson. The French responded by denying that he had ever been ordered back to Nelson and by calling him “a liar,” “a renegade,” “a turn coat.” To this, the English answered in formal memorial: “The Mr. Radisson mentioned in this paper doth not deserve the ill names heaped upon him,” following up with the proof that the French had sent him back to England.

The real reason that the Company were so remiss to Radisson in his latter days was their own desperate straits. Besides, the old shareholders of the Stuart days had scattered like the wind. Radisson was unknown to the new men, so completely unknown that in one committee order his wife is spoken of as Madam Gwodet (Godey) instead of Mary Kirke. Now Madam Godey was the damsel whom Lord Preston offered to Radisson in marriage (with a dowry) despite the fact that he already had a wife—if he would go back from Paris to London. De la Potherie tells the story and adds that Radisson married her—another of the numerous fictions about the explorer. This mass of notes may give the impression that I am a protagonist of Radisson. My answer is that he badly needs one, when such staunch modern defenders of his as Drs. Bryce, and Dionne, and Judge Prudhomme refuse to excuse him for his last desertion of the French flag. In that case, Radisson was as much a victim of official red tape as Dreyfus in modern days.

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