Chapter 20: 1655-1757
Marauding Expeditions; Settlement of Louisburg

Mohawks Hostile to the French—Dover Attacked; Major Waldron—Schenectady Captured and Burned—The Inhuman Frontenac—The Colonists Act for Themselves—Invasion of Canada—Settlements in Maine Abandoned—Heroism of Hannah Dustin—Deerfield Taken; Eunice Williams—D’Ibberville Plants a Colony on the Pascagoula—Trading Posts on the Illinois and the Mississippi—The Chocktaws; the Natchez; Attempts to Subdue the Chickasaws—King George’s War—Capture of Louisburg—The English Ministry Alarmed—Jonathan Edwards—The "Great Revival"—Princeton College.

Peace had continued for some time between the Five Nations and the French, but now the former were suspicious of the expeditions of La Salle. James II had instructed Dongan, the Catholic governor of New York, to conciliate the French, to influence the Mohawks to receive Jesuit missionaries, and to quietly introduce the Catholic religion into the colony. But Dongan felt more interest in the fur trade, which the French seemed to be monopolizing, than in Jesuit missions among the Mohawks, and he rather encouraged the latter in their hostility. An act of treachery increased this feeling. Some of their chiefs, who were enticed to enter Fort Frontenac, were seized and forcibly carried to France, and there made slaves.

When the indignant people of England drove the bigoted James from his throne and invited William of Orange to fill it, Louis XI took up the quarrel in behalf of James, or of legitimacy, as he termed it. He believed in the divine right of kings to rule, and denied the right of a people to change their form of government. Louis had for years greatly abused his power, and all Europe had suffered from his rapacity. Religious feeling exerted its influence in giving character to the war, and Protestant Holland joined heart and hand with Protestant England in opposing Catholic France.

Though the colonies were thus involved in war by the mother countries, they had different ends in view. The New Englanders had an eye to the fisheries and the protection of their northern frontiers; the French wished to extend their influence over the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and to monopolize the fisheries as well as the fur trade. The latter object could be obtained only by the aid of the Indians, and they were untiring in their efforts to make them friends. They could never conciliate the Mohawks, nor induce them to join in an invasion of New York. On the contrary, fifteen hundred of them suddenly appeared before Montreal, and in a few days captured that place, and committed horrible outrages upon the people.

Thus stood matters when Frontenac, for the second time, appeared as governor of New France. To make the savages respect him as a warrior, he set on foot a series of incursions against the English colonies. The eastern Indians were incited to attack Dover in New Hampshire;—incited by the French, and also by a cherished desire for revenge. There, at the head of the garrison, was that Major Waldron who, thirteen years before, during King Philip’s war, had treacherously seized two hundred of their friends, who came to him to treat of peace. He had proposed to these unsuspecting Indians a mock fight by way of entertainment; when their guns were all discharged he made them prisoners and sent them to Boston. Some of them were hanged, and others sold into slavery. The Indians in their turn employed stratagem and treachery. Two squaws came to Dover; they asked of the aged Waldron, now fourscore, a night’s lodging. In the night they arose, unbarred the gates, and let in their friends; who lay in ambush. Their hour for vengeance had come; they made the pangs of death as bitter as possible to the brave old Waldron; his white hairs claimed from them no pity. In derision, they placed him in a chair on a table, and scored his body with gashes equal in number to their friends he had betrayed; they jeeringly asked him, "who will judge Indians now? who will hang our brothers? Will the pale-faced Waldron give us life for life?" They burned all the houses, murdered nearly half the inhabitants, and carried the remainder into captivity.

This was only the beginning of a series of horrors inflicted upon the frontier towns. The inhabitants of Schenectady, as they slept in fancied security, were startled at midnight by the terrible war-whoops of the savage—the harbinger of untold horrors. The enemy found easy access, as the gates of the palisades were open. The houses were set on fire, more than sixty persons were killed, and many helpless women and children were carried into captivity. A few escaped and fled half clad through the snow to Albany. This attack was made by a party of French and Indians from Montreal, who had toiled for twenty-two days through the snows of winter, breaking the track with snow shoes, and using, when they could, the frozen streams as a pathway. At Salmon Falls, on the Piscataqua, and at Casco, similar scenes were enacted.

Such were the means the inhuman Frontenac, now almost fourscore, took to inspire terror in the minds of the English colonists, and to acquire the name of a great warrior among the Indians,—they would follow none but a successful leader. Among the early Jesuit missionaries who taught the Indians of New France, there were undoubtedly many good men. The priests of that generation had passed away, and others had taken their places; these incited the recently converted savage, not to practice Christian charity and love, but to pillage and murder the heretical English.

King William was busy in maintaining his own cause in England, and left the colonists to defend themselves. Massachusetts proposed that they should combine, and remove the cause of their trouble by conquering Canada. Commissioners from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York met to deliberate on what course to pursue. They resolved to invade that province from New York by way of Lake Champlain, and from Massachusetts by way of the St. Lawrence. The expedition from New York failed. Colonel Peter Schuyler led the advance with a company of Mohawks, but the ever-watchful Frontenac was prepared; his Indian allies flocked in crowds to aid him in defending Montreal. The Mohawks were repulsed and could not recover their position, as the army sent to support them was compelled to stop short; the small-pox broke out among the soldiers, and they were in want of provisions.

Meantime, the fleet of thirty-two vessels, and two thousand men, which had sailed from Boston, was endeavoring to find its way up the St. Lawrence. It was under the command of Sir William Phipps, to whose incompetency may be attributed the failure of the enterprise. An Indian runner cut across the woods from Piscataqua, and in twelve days brought the news of the intended attack to the French. Frontend hastened to Quebec, where he arrived three days before the fleet. When it came in sight he was prepared to make a vigorous defense. A party landed, but after some skirmishing the enterprise was abandoned. While returning, the men suffered much from sickness, and storms disabled the fleet. The disappointment of the people of Massachusetts was very great; many lives had been lost, and the colony was laden with debt.

The Eastern Indians, in the mean time, were held in check by Captain Church, celebrated in King Philip’s war. At one time, he so far forgot himself as to put to death his prisoners, some of whom were women and children. Such cruelty was inexcusable; and it was avenged by the savages with tenfold fury. Nearly all the settlements of what is now Maine were destroyed or abandoned. The enemy were continually prowling around the farms, watching an opportunity to shoot the men at their work. All went armed, and even the women learned to handle effectively the musket and the rifle. It was a great inducement for the Indians to go on these marauding expeditions, because they could sell for slaves to the French of Canada the women and children they took prisoners.

Peace was at length made with the Abenakis, or Eastern Indians, and there was a lull in the storm of desolation. It lasted but a year, the Indians broke the treaty. They were incited to this by their teachers, two Jesuits, Thury and Bigot, who even took pride in their atrocious work.

Heroic deeds were performed by men and women. A small band of Indians attacked the house of a farmer named Dustin, near Haverhill. When in the fields he heard the war-whoop and the cry of distress. He hastened to the rescue, met his children, and threw himself between them and their pursuers, whom he held at bay by well-directed shots till the children were in a place of safety. His house was burned; a child only a few days old was dashed against a tree, and his wife, Hannah Dustin, and her nurse, were carried away captive. A toilsome march brought them to an island in the Merrimac, just above Concord, where their captors lived. There Mrs. Dustin, with the nurse and a boy, also a captive, planned an escape. She wished revenge, as well as to be secure from pursuit. The Indians, twelve in number, were asleep. She arose, assigned to each of her companions whom to strike; their hands were steady and their hearts firm; they struck for their lives. Ten Indians were killed, one woman was wounded, and a child was purposely saved. The heroic woman wished to preserve a trophy of the deed, and she scalped the dead. Then in a canoe the three floated down the Merrimac to Haverhill, much to the astonishment of their friends, who had given them up for lost. Such were the toils and sufferings and such the heroism of the mothers in those days.

The friendly Mohawks had intimated to the inhabitants of Deerfield, in the valley of the Connecticut, that the enemy was plotting their destruction. The anxiety of the people was very great, and they resolved during the winter to keep a strict watch; sentinels were placed every night.

On all intensely cold night in February a company of two hundred Frenchmen, and one hundred and forty Indians, lay in ambush, waiting a favorable moment to spring upon their victims. Under the command of Hertel de Rouville, they had come all the way from Canada, on the crust of a deep snow, with the aid of snow shoes. The sentinels, unconscious of danger, retired at dawn of day. The snow had drifted as high as the palisades, thus enabling the party to pass within the enclosure, which consisted of twenty acres. The terrible war-cry startled the inhabitants, the houses were set on fire, and forty-seven persons were ruthlessly murdered; one hundred and twelve were taken captive, among whom were the minister Williams, his wife, and five children. No pen can describe the sufferings of the captives on that dreary winter’s march, driven, as they were, by relentless Frenchmen and savages. Eunice Williams, the wife, drew consolation from her Bible, which she was permitted to read when the party stopped for the night. Her strength soon failed; her husband cheered her by pointing to the "house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." "The mother’s heart rose to her lips as she commended her five captive children, under God, to their father’s care, and then one blow of the tomahawk ended her sorrows." This family, with the exception of one daughter, seven years old, were afterward ransomed, and returned home.

Many years after this, there appeared at Deerfield a white woman wearing the Indian garb; she was the lost daughter of Eunice Williams, and now a Catholic, and the wife of an Indian chief. No entreaties could influence her to remain with her civilized relatives; she chose to return and end her days with her own children.

Humanity shudders at the recital of the horrors that marked those days of savage warfare. Some of the Indians even refused to engage any more in thus murdering the English colonists; but the infamous Hertel, with the approbation of Vaudreuil, then governor of Canada, induced a party to accompany him on a foray. Why repeat the story of the fiendish work, by which the little village of Haverhill, containing about thirty log cabins, was burned, and all the inhabitants either murdered or taken captive. "My heart swells with indignation," wrote Colonel Peter Schuyler of New York to Vaudreuil, "when I think that a war between Christian princes, is degenerating into a savage and boundless butchery; I hold it my duty toward God and my neighbor, to prevent, if possible, these barbarous and heathen cruelties." This reproof was unheeded; the cruelties continued.

Under the feelings excited by such outrages, can we think it strange that the colonists resolved to hunt the Indians like wild beasts, and offered a bounty for their scalps? or that the hostility against the French Jesuit should have thrown suspicion upon the Catholic of Maryland who about this time was disfranchised? or that even in liberal Rhode Island, he should have been deprived of the privilege of becoming a freeman?

With renewed energy the French began to press forward their great design of uniting, by means of trading posts and missions, the region of the Lakes and the valley of the Mississippi. The Spaniards had possession of the territory on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, while they claimed the entire regions lying around that expanse of water.

The energetic mind of Lemoine d’Ibberville conceived a plan for planting a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. He was a native of Canada, and had, on many occasions, distinguished himself by his talents and great courage. Hopes were entertained of his success. The expedition, consisting of four vessels and nearly two hundred colonists, among whom were some women and children, sailed from Canada for the mouth of the Mississippi. D’Ibberville entered the Gulf and approached the north shore, landed at the mouth of the river Pascagoula, and with two barges and forty-eight men went to seek the great river. He found it by following up a current of muddy waters, in which were many floating trees. He passed up the stream to the mouth of Red River, where he was surprised to receive a letter dated fourteen years before. It was from Tonti; he had left it with the Indians for La Salle; they had preserved it carefully, and gave it to the first Frenchman who visited them.

As the shores of the Mississippi in that region are marshy, it was thought best to form a settlement on the Gulf at the mouth of the Pascagoula. This was the first colony planted within the limits of the present state of Mississippi. D’Ibberville sailed for France to obtain supplies and more colonists, leaving one of his brothers, Cauville, to act as governor, and the other, Bienville, to engage in exploring the country and river.

Some fifty miles up the Mississippi Bienville met an English ship sent on the same errand. Seventy years before, Charles I had given to Sir Robert Heath a grant of Carolina, which as usual was to extend to the Pacific. This worthless grant, Coxe, a London physician, had purchased, and to him belonged this vessel.

From the time of La Salle the Jesuits had been busy ingratiating themselves with the tribes along the shores of the Mississippi, and under their direction trading posts were established, at various points, to the mouth of the Illinois, and up that river to the Lakes.

The following year D’Ibberville returned with two ships and sixty colonists, and the aged Tonti had just arrived from the Illinois. Availing himself of his counsel, D’Ibberville ascended the river four hundred miles, and on a bluff built a fort, which, in honor of the Duchess of Pontchartrain, was called Rosalie. These settlements languished for twenty years; the colonists were mere hirelings, unfitted for their work. The whole number of emigrants for ten years did not exceed two hundred persons. Instead of cultivating the soil, and making their homes comfortable, many went to the far west seeking for gold, and others to the northwest on the same errand, while fevers and other diseases were doing the work of death. Meanwhile Mobile became the centre of French influence in the south.

Once more a special effort was made to occupy the territory, and a monopoly of trade was granted to Arthur Crozart, who was to send every year two ships laden with merchandise and emigrants, and also a cargo of slaves from Africa. The French government was to appropriate annually about ten thousand dollars to defray the expense of forts and necessary protection.

A trading house was established up the Red River at Natchitoches, and one up the Alabama near the site of Montgomery; Fort Rosalie became a centre of trade, and the germ of the present city of Natchez—the oldest town on the Mississippi.

Bienville put the convicts to work on a can-brake to remove the trees and shrubs "from a savage and desert place", and build a few huts. Such were the feeble beginnings of New Orleans, which it was prophesied would yet become "a rich city, the metropolis of a great colony." Still the colony did not prosper; instead of obtaining their supplies from that fruitful region, they were dependent on France and St. Domingo. Labor was irksome to the convicts and vagabonds, and the overflowings of the river, and the unhealthiness of the climate retarded progress. The chief hope for labor was based on the importation of negroes from Africa.

Some German settlers, who, a few years before, had been induced by one Law, a great stock-jobbing and land speculator, to emigrate to the banks of the Arkansas, decided to remove. A tract of land, lying twenty miles above New Orleans, known now as the "German coast," was given them. Their settlement was in contrast with the others. They were industrious, and cultivated their farms, raised vegetables, rice and other provisions; also tobacco and indigo. The fig and the orange were now introduced. The Illinois region had been settled by emigrants from Canada, who raised wheat and sent flour to the colonists below. The priests meanwhile were not idle in teaching the Indians, and a convent was founded at New Orleans for the education of girls. As the colonists had not energy enough to protect themselves, a thousand soldiers were sent from France for that purpose.

The Choctaws, the allies of the French, occupied the region between the lower Mississippi and the Alabama. The principal village of the Natchez tribe was on the bluff where now stands the city of that name. They were not a numerous people, unlike the tribes among whom they dwelt, in their language as well as in their religion. Like the Peruvians, they were worshippers of the sun, and in their great wigwam they kept an undying fire. Their principal chief professed to be a descendant of the sun. They became justly alarmed at the encroachments of the French, who having Fort Rosalie, demanded the soil on which stood their principal village, for a farm. They suddenly fell upon the white intruders and killed two hundred of their number, and took captive their women and children. The negro slaves joined the Indians. Their principal chief, the Great Sun, had the heads of the French officers slain in the battle arranged around him, that he might smoke his pipe in triumph;—his triumph was short. A company, consisting of French and Choctaws, under Le Suer, came up from New Orleans, and surprised them while they were yet celebrating their victory. The Great Sun and four hundred of his people were taken captive and sent to St. Domingo as slaves. Some of the Natchez escaped and fled to the Chickasaws, and some fled beyond the Mississippi; their land passed into the hand of strangers, and soon, they as a people were unknown.

The territory of the brave Chickasaws, almost surrounding that of Natchez, extended north to the Ohio, and east to the land of the Cherokees. They were the enemies of the French, whose boats, trading from Canada and Illinois to New Orleans, they were accustomed to plunder. English traders from Carolina were careful to increase this enmity toward their rivals.

Two expeditions were set on foot to chastise these bold marauders. Bienville came up from the south with a fleet of boats and canoes, and a force of twelve hundred Choctaws: he paddled up the Tombecbee as far as he could, and then hastened across the country to surprise one of their fortified places. D’Artaguette hastened down from the Illinois country, of which he was governor, with fifty Frenchmen and a thousand Indians, to attack another of their strongholds. The Chickasaws were too vigilant to be thus surprised. They repulsed Bienville, dispersed the forces of D’Artaguette, took him prisoner, and burned him at the stake. Once more an attempt was made with all the force the French could bring to crush this warlike tribe, but in vain; the patriotic Chickasaw successfully defended their country against the foreign foe.

These reverses did not deter the persevering French from establishing trading houses south of Lake Erie, and down the Alleghany to the Ohio, and thence to the Mississippi. The people of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia became alarmed at these encroachments on their territory. The Iroquois professed to have conquered all the valley of the Ohio, and they claimed a vast region to the northwest as their hunting grounds. Commissioners from the above colonies met the envoys of the Iroquois at Lancaster, and purchased from them for £400 all their claim to the regions which they professed to own between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany mountains.

The colonies had enjoyed nearly thirty years of comparative freedom from French and Indian incursions, when they were involved in what is known as King George’s War.

The first intimation of hostilities was an attack upon the fort at Canso, in which the garrison was captured and carried to Louisburg. Louisburg was the great stronghold of the French on this continent; the centre from which privateering expeditions were fitted out, that had nearly destroyed the commerce as well as the fisheries of New England. To prevent these depredations, and the inroads to which the French incited their Indian allies, Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, proposed to the General Court to take Louisburg. No aid was expected from the mother country—she was too much engaged at home; but the other colonies were invited to enlist in the common cause. New Jersey and Pennsylvania agreed to furnish money, but declined to send men; New York furnished money and some cannon; Connecticut offered five hundred men; Rhode Island and New Hampshire each furnished a regiment. Massachusetts proposed the expedition, was the most interested in its success, bore the greater part of the expense, and furnished the greater portion of the men and vessels. The fishermen, especially those of Marblehead, entered upon the enterprise with alacrity. Their fisheries had been almost ruined and they thrown out of employment, by the continued forays from Louisburg. Farmers, mechanics, lumbermen volunteered in great numbers. Here were citizen soldiers, without a single man whose knowledge of military tactics went beyond bush-fighting with the Indians, and all equally ignorant of the proper means to be used in reducing a fortified place. A wealthy merchant, William Pepperell, of Maine, was elected commander. The artillery was under the direction of Gridley, the same who, thirty years afterward, held a similar position in an American army under very different circumstances. The enthusiasm was great, and what was lacking in means and skill, was supplied by zeal. A strong Protestant sentiment was mingled with the enterprise, and Whitefield, then on his third tour of preaching in the colonies, was urged to furnish a motto for the banner. He promptly suggested, "Nil desperandum, Christo duce,"—"Nothing is to be despaired of when Christ is leader." He also preached to them an inspiring sermon, and they sailed, like the Crusaders of old, confident of success.

In April the fleet arrived at Canso, but owing to the ice, could not enter the harbor of Louisburg. Intelligence of the expedition had been sent to England, and Admiral Warren, who commanded on the West India station, was invited to join the enterprise. He declined for want of explicit orders, but afterward receiving permission, he hastened to join them with four men-of-war.

The whole armament was now put in motion for Louisburg. That stronghold had walls forty feet thick, thirty feet high, and surrounded by a ditch eighty feet wide, with protecting forts around it, manned by nearly two hundred and fifty cannon, small and great, and garrisoned by sixteen hundred men.

As the fleet approached, the French came down to the beach to oppose their landing, but in a moment the "whale boats," filled with armed men, were "flying like eagles" to the shore. Their opposers, panic-stricken, fled; and the following night the soldiers of the royal battery, one of the outside forts, spiked their cannon and retreated to the town. The deserted fort was immediately taken possession of, and the gunsmiths went to work to bore out the spikes. The next day a detachment marched round the town, giving it three cheers as they passed, and took up a position that completely enclosed the place on the land side, while the fleet did the same toward the ocean. They threw up batteries, dragged their cannon over a morass, and brought them to bear upon the fortress.

These amateur soldiers soon became accustomed to encamping in the open air, and sleeping in the woods, as well as to the cannon-balls sent among them by the besieged. They not only prevented ships from entering the harbor, but found means to decoy into the midst of their fleet and capture a man-of-war of sixty-four guns, laden with stores for the fort. This loss so much disheartened the garrison that, after a siege of seven weeks, Louisburg surrendered. The news of this success sent a thrill of joy throughout the colonies. It was the greatest feat of the war, and was accomplished by undisciplined volunteers.

France resolved, at any cost, to recover her stronghold, and also to desolate the English colonies. The fleet sent for the purpose was disabled by storms, while pestilence wasted the men. The commander, the Duke d’Anville, suddenly died, and his successor, a short time after, committed suicide. The next year the fleet, sent for the same purpose, was forced to strike its colors to an English squadron under Admirals Anson and Warren.

Though thus successful, the frontier settlements still suffered greatly, and in self-defense the old project was revived of conquering Canada. The government of England required all the colonies, as far south as Virginia, to furnish men and means. Eight thousand men were raised, of which number Massachusetts furnished nearly one-half. The British ministry suddenly changed their mind, and the enterprise was abandoned. Soon after, the treaty of Aix la Chapelle was concluded, by which all places taken by either party during the war were to be restored. Thus Louisburg, the capture of which was so gratifying to the colonists, and so significant of their daring spirit, passed again into the hands of the French.

The ministry did not relish the ardor and independence of the colonists, who appeared to have, according to Admiral Warren, "the highest notions of the rights and liberties of Englishmen; and, indeed, as almost levelers.’ It was in truth the foreshadowing of their complete independence of the mother country, and measures were taken by her to make them more subservient. They were forbidden to have any manufactures, to trade to any place out of the British dominions, while no other nation than the English was permitted to trade with them. "These oppressions," says an intelligent traveller of that day, "may make, within thirty or fifty years, the colonies entirely independent of England."

For many years there had been a marked decline in religion in New England. A peculiar union of church and state had led to a sort of compromise between the two, known as the "Halfway covenant," by which persons who had been baptized, but without pretensions to personal piety, were admitted to the full privileges of church members.

In the midst of this declension a religious "Awakening," better known as the "Great Revival," commenced at Northampton, in Massachusetts, under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, a young man remarkable for his intellectual endowments. His sermons were doctrinal and strongly Calvinistic. His religious character had been early developed. At thirteen he entered Yale College; thoughtful beyond his years, a metaphysician by nature, at that early age he was enraptured with the perusal of Locke on the "Understanding." Secluded from the world by the love of study, he penetrated far into the mysteries of the workings of the human mind.

Edwards drew from the Bible the knowledge of the true relation between the church and the world. The contest was long and strenuous, but the lines were clearly drawn, and from that day to this the distinction is marked and appreciated. "He repudiated the system of the Halfway covenant," and proclaimed the old doctrines of "the sole right of the sanctified to enjoy the privileges of church members, and of salvation by faith alone." As the influence of the state in religious matters thus began to fade away, a closer spiritual relation of men to men, not as members of a commonwealth alone, but as members of a great brotherhood, gained in importance.

Parties sprang into existence; those who favored a more spiritual life in religion were stigmatized as "New Lights," while the steady conservatives were known as the "Old Lights." So bitter was the feeling that in Connecticut the civil authority was invoked, and severe laws were enacted against the New Lights. The controversy was so warm that Edwards was driven from his congregation—at that time, "the largest Protestant society in the world." He went as a missionary to the Housatonic Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There in a forest, amid toils and privations, he wrote his far-famed treatise on the "Freedom of the Will," which has exerted so much influence in the theological world, while the writer was the first American that obtained a European reputation as an author.

During this period Whitefield came, by invitation, to New England. He had been preaching in the south with unexampled success. At intervals, for more than thirty years, he preached the gospel from colony to colony. "Hundreds of thousands heard the highest evangelical truths uttered with an eloquence probably never equalled." The influence of the awakening spread till all the colonies were visited by the same blessings, and especially the Presbyterians of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and in a less degree in the more southern colonies. These influences were not limited to that age, for similar revivals have continued to our own time.

The Baptists, hitherto but few in numbers, received a new impulse, as many of the New Light churches adopted their views; and the preaching of Whitefield prepared the way for the success of the Methodists.

The revival created a want for ministers of the gospel, to supply which, the Rev. William Tennent established an academy at Neshaminy; an institution where young men professing the religious fervor that characterized those prominent in the revival, could be prepared for the sacred office. This was the germ of Princeton college.

This religious sentiment met with little sympathy from the authorities of the colony, and with difficulty a charter was obtained. The institution was named Nassau Hall, in honor of the great Protestant hero, William III. It was first located at Elizabethtown, then at Newark, and finally at Princeton. Its success was unexampled; in ten years the number of students increased from eight to ninety.