Come and hear the King's orders

What happened

On 2 September 1755 Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow of Massachusetts posted a summons at Grand-Pré: every man and boy of the parish was to come to the church on Friday at three o'clock to hear what His Majesty had ordered. No excuse would be taken. Four hundred and eighteen came, unarmed, and found the church ringed by a palisade and soldiers. Winslow placed himself in the center among the men, with his officers, and read that Governor Lawrence's commission declared their lands, cattle and goods forfeit and that they, with their families, were to be removed from the province. He wrote in his journal that the duty was "Very Disagreable to my natural make & Temper." The men were held in the church under guard while the ships were waited for. Rothbard calls it a ruse: the men "were assembled together, and were then suddenly denounced as rebels" and taken prisoner without warning, and their land, cattle and corn were confiscated by the Crown (CiL, p. 740). Lawrence had issued the order without authority from London. The villages were burned afterward, and by the end of 1755 over six thousand Acadians had been shipped away.