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Charles Lawrence was born in England on December 14, 1709. He was a career soldier who first
came to North America in 1729 and by 1754 had risen to the rank of Lieutenant-Governor
and of Governor two years later. It is he who wrote the deportation order and received
the cooperation of Shirley, the Governor of Massachusetts, to have
it carried out.The main reasons for the deportation were that Lawrence feared that the common
links of language and religion that bound the Acadians and the French together, or
yet still an alliance between the Acadians and Micmacs, would be the cause of a British
defeat in Nova Scotia. Complicating this scenario was the Acadians' refusal to sign
an unqualified oath of allegiance to the British Crown. Lawrence died in 1760. |
