Reluctant Pioneer: How I Survived Five Years in the Canadian Bush
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Thomas Osborne delivers a gripping account of 1870s Ont...)
Thomas Osborne delivers a gripping account of 1870s Ontario pioneer life.
The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.
For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents with axes and boats, and narrow escapes from wolves and bears. Many years later, after returning to the United States, Osborne wrote down all his adventures in a graphic memoir that has become, in the words of author and journalist Roy MacGregor, "an undiscovered Canadian classic."
Reluctant Pioneer provides a brooding sense of adventure and un- sentimental realism to deliver a powerful account of pioneer life where tragedies arrive as naturally as rain and where humour resides in irony.
Thomas Osborne was an English politician who was part of the 'Immortal Seven' group that invited William III, Prince of Orange to depose James II of England as monarch during the Glorious Revolution.
Background
Thomas Osborne was born on February 20, 1632. Osborne was great-grandson of Sir Edward Osborne (d. 1591), lord mayor of London, who, according to the accepted account, while apprentice to Sir William Hewett, cloth worker and lord mayor in 1559, made the fortunes of the family by leaping from London Bridge into the river and rescuing Anne (d. 1585), the daughter of hisemployer, whom he afterwards married. 1 Thomas Osborne, the future lord treasurer, succeeded to the baronetcy and estates in Yorkshire on his father's death in 1647, and after unsuccessfully courting his cousin Dorothy Osborne, married Lady Bridget Bertie, daughter of the earl of Lindsey.
Career
Thomas Osborne succeeded Sir William Coventry as commissioner for the state treasury in 1669, and in 1673 was appointed a commissioner for the admiralty.
He was appointed the same year lord-Iieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in 1677 received the Garter. Danby was a statesman of very different calibre from the1 Chronicles of London Bridge, by R. Thomson (1827), 313, quoting Stow. leaders of the Cabal ministry, Buckingham and Arlington.
A member of the old cavalier party, a confidential friend and correspondent of the despotic Lauderdale, he desired to strengthen the executive and the royal authority.
At the same time he was a keen partisan of the established church, an enemy of both Roman Catholics and dissenters, and an opponent of all toleration.
In 1673 he opposed the Indulgence, supported the Test Act, and spoke against the proposal for giving relief to the dissenters.
This national policy, however, could only be pursued, and the minister could only maintain himself in power, by acquiescence in the king's personal relations with the king of France settled by the disgraceful Treaty of Dover in 1670, which included Charles's acceptance of a pension, and bound him to a policy exactly opposite to Danby's, one furthering French and Roman ascendancy.
In any case, in 1676, together with Lauderdale alone, he consented to a treaty between Charles and Louis according to which the foreign policy of both kings was to be conducted in union, and Charles received an annual subsidy of £100, 000.
In 1678 Charles, taking advantage of the growing hostility to France in the nation and parliament, raised his price, and Danby by his directions demanded through Ralph Montagu (afterwards duke of Montagu) six million livres a year (£300, 000) for three years.
Simultaneously Danby guided through parliament a bili for raising money for a war against France; a league was concluded with Holland, and troops were actually sent there.
That Danby, in spite of these compromising transactions, remained in intention faithful to the national interests, appears clearly from the hostility with which he was still regarded by France.
In 1678, on the rupture of relations between Charles and Louis, a splendid opportunity was afforded Louis of paying off old scores by disclosing Danby's participation in the king's demands for French gold. Every circumstance now conspired to effect his fall.
Although both abroad and at home his policy had generally embodied the wishes of the ascendant party in the state, Danby had never obtained the confidence of the nation.
Charles is said to have told him when he made him treasurer that he had only two friends in the world, himself and his own merit.
He was described to Pepys on his acquiring office as " one of a broken sort of people that have not much to lose and therefore will venture all, " and as " a beggar having £1100 or £1200 a year, but owes above £10, 000. "
His office brought him in £20, 000 a year, and he was known to be making large profits by the sale of offices; he maintained his power by corruption and by jealously excluding from office men of high standing and ability.
Worse men had been less detested, but Danby had none of the amiable virtues which often counteract the odium incurred by serious faults.
Evelyn, who knew him intimately from his youth, describes him as " a man of excellent natural parts but nothing of generous or grateful. "
Shaftesbury, doubtless no friendly witness, speaks of him as an inveterate liar, "proud, ambitious, revengeful, false, prodigal and covetous to the highest degree, " and Burnet supports his unfavourable judgment to a great extent.
He immediately went over to the opposition, and in concert with Louis XIV and Barillon, the French ambassador, by whom he was supplied with a large sum of money, arranged a plan for effecting Danby's ruin.
He obtained a seat in parliament; and in spite of Danby's endeavour to seize his papers by an order in council, on the 20th of December 1678 caused two of the incriminating letters written by Danby to him to be read aloud to the House of Commons by the Speaker.
The House immediately resolved on Danby's impeachment.
At the foot of each of the letters appeared the king's postscripts, " I approve of this letter.
C. R. ," in his own handwriting; but they were not read by the Speaker, and were entirely neglected in the proceedings against the minister, thus emphasizing the constitutional principle that obedience to the orders of the sovereign can be no bar to an impeachment.
Danby, while communicating the "Popish Plot" to the parliament, had from the first expressed his disbelief in the so-called revelations of Titus Oates, and his backwardness in the matter now furnished an additional charge of having "traitorously concealed the plot. "
He was voted guilty by the Commons; but while the Lords were disputing whether the accused peer should have bail, and whether the charges amounted to more than a misdemeanour, parliament was prorogued on the 30th of December and dissolved three weeks later.
In March 1679 a new parliament hostile to Danby was returned, and he was forced to resign the treasurership; but he received a pardon from the king under the Great Seal, and a warrant for a mar- quessate. 7 His proposed advancement in rank was severely reflected upon in the Lords, Halifax declaring it in the king's presence the recompense of treason, " not to be borne and in the Commons his retirement from office by no means appeased his antagonists.
The proceedings against him were revived, a committee of privileges deciding on the 19th of March 1679 that the dissolution of parliament was no abatement of an im- peachmerg.
A motion was passed for his committal by the Lords, wno, as in Clarendon's case, voted his banishment.
This was, however, rejected by the Commons, who now passed an act of attainder.
This declaration was again repeated by the Commons in 1689 on the occasion of another attack made upon Danby in that year, and was finally embodied in the Act of Settlement in 1701.
The Commons now demanded judgment against the prisoner from the Lords.
Further proceedings, however, were stopped by the dissolution of parliament again in July; but for nearly five years Danby remained a prisoner in the Tower.
A number of pamphlets asserting the complicity of the fallen minister in the Popish Plot, and even accusing him of the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, were published in 1679 and 1680; they were answered by Danby's secretary, Edward Christian, in Reflections; and in May 1681 Danby was actually indicted by the Grand Jury of Middlesex for Godfrey's murder on the • accusation of Edward FitzHarris.
His petition to the king for a trial by his peers on this indictment was refused, and an attempt to prosecute the publishers of the false evidence in the king's bench was unsuccessful.
For some time all appeals to the king, to parliament, and to the courts of justice were unavailing; but on the 12th of February 1684 his application to Chief Justice Jeffreys was at last successful, and he was set at liberty on finding bail to the amount of £40, 000, tc appear in the House of Lords in the following session.
He visited the king at court the same day; but took no part in public affairs for the rest of the reign. After James's accession Danby was discharged from his bail by the Lords on the 19th of May 1685, and the order declaring a dissolution of parliament to be no abatement of an impeachment was reversed.
Though a strong Tory and supporter of the hereditary principle, James's attacks on Protestantism soon drove him into opposition.
He was visited by Dykvelt, William of Orange's agent; and in June 1687 he wrote to William assuring him of his support.
On the 30th of June 1688 he was one of the seven leaders of the Revolution who signed the invitation to William.
In November he occupied York in the prince's interest, returning to London to meet William on the 26th of December.
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Thomas Osborne delivers a gripping account of 1870s Ont...)
Religion
The king himself as a Roman Catholic secretly opposed and also doubted the wisdom and practicability of this " thorough ''policy of repression.
Danby therefore ordered a return from every diocese of the numbers of dissenters, both Romanist and Protestant, in order by a proof of their insignificance to remove the royal scruples. 3 In December 1676 he issued a proclamation for the suppression of coffee-houses because of the " defamation of His Majesty's Government " which took place in them, but this was soon withdrawn.
Politics
Leeds' principal aim was no doubt the maintenance and increase of his own influence and party, but his ambition corresponded with definite political views.
He again took his seat in the Lords as a leader of the moderate Tory party.
Personality
Osborne was a determined enemy both to Roman influence and to French ascendancy.
Connections
In 1677, t° secure Protestantism in case of a Roman Catholic succession, he introduced a bill by which ecclesiastical patronage and the care of the royal children were entrusted to the bishops; but this measure, like the other, was thrown out. In foreign affairs Danby showed a stronger grasp of essentials.
His corruption, his mean submission to a tyrant wife, his greed, his pale face and lean person, which had succeeded to the handsome features and comeliness of earlier days, were the subject of ridicule, from the witty sneers of Halifax to the coarse jests of the anonymous writers of innumerable lampoons.