Background
Guy Carleton was born on September 3, 1724, at Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland. When he was fourteen his father, Christopher Carleton died, and his mother Catherine Carleton remarried. He received a limited education.
administrator military statesman
Guy Carleton was born on September 3, 1724, at Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland. When he was fourteen his father, Christopher Carleton died, and his mother Catherine Carleton remarried. He received a limited education.
In 1742, at the age of seventeen, Carleton was commissioned as an ensign into the 25th Regiment of Foot, in which in 1745 he was promoted lieutenant.
Guy Carleton was commissioned as an officer in the Twenty-fifth Foot at 18 years of age, and by 1753 had become a lieutenant colonel commanding the Seventy-second Foot, later the Seaforth Highlanders. He sailed for Halifax in 1759 with General James Wolfe, under whom he served in the victorious attack on Quebec made in the same year. After the French ceded their Canadian empire to England in the next year, an act formalized in the Treaty of Paris signed in 1763, Carleton, in 1766, was appointed lieutenant governor, and in 1768 governor, of the Province of Quebec. As governor, he became convinced that the province would remain predominantly French Canadian and, discarding the program of anglicization which had prevailed since 1763, he instituted a policy of conciliation designed to win over the inhabitants to the new British regime. The Quebec Act passed by the House of Lords in 1774, which has been called the "Magna Carta of the French Canadians," expressed this new policy. In accordance with its terms, French Canadians became eligible for official posts French forms of land law and land tenure were reestablished; and the Roman Catholic Church was placed on a regularized basis.
In 1775 and 1776 much of the Province of Quebec was occupied by forces of the American Continental Congress. Carleton, however, was able to defend the city of Quebec until he was relieved in the spring of 1776 by vessels of the British navy. Difficulties for Carleton increased because of a change in colonial secretaries in England, and in 1778 he resigned all of his offices in Canada and returned to England. In 1782, however, he was sent to New York as commander in chief of all the royal forces there, with orders to evacuate all British troops and loyalists. He accomplished this mission by November 1783. Until 1786 he then lived quietly at his home in England; in that year he was created Baron Dorchester and was sent back to Canada as governor of the Province of Quebec. In 1791 he went to England on a two-year leave of absence, returning to Canada in 1793. Together with Chief Justice William Smith, a New York loyalist, Carleton drew up the Constitutional Act of 1791.In 1796 he resigned, for the second time, as governor of Quebec and returned to England.
On May 22, 1772, at the age of nearly 48, Guy Carleton was married to Lady Maria Howard, third daughter of the Earl of Effingham, she bore him nine sons and two daughters, and survived him for twenty-eight years.