A half-century of conflict. France and England in North America. Part ...

1745.] PREPARATION. 71had no money, and the King had ordered him topermit the issue of no more paper currency. Thesame prohibition had been laid upon Shirley;but he,with sagacious forecast, had persuaded his masters torelent so far as to permit the issue of £50,000 inwhat were called bills of credit to meet any pressingexigency of war. He told this to Wentworth, andsucceeded in convincing him that hisprovince mightstretch her credit like Massachusetts, in case ofsimilar military need. New Hampshire was thusenabled to raise a regiment of five hundred men outof her scanty population, with the condition that ahundred and fifty of them should be paid and fedby Massachusetts.^Shirley was less fortunate in Rhode Island. Thegovernor of that little colony called Massachusetts"our avowed enemy, always trying to defame us."^There was a grudge between the neighbors, duepartly to notorious ill-treatment by the MassachusettsPuritans of Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island,and partly to one of those boundary disputes whichoften produced ill-blood among the colonies. Therepresentatives of Rhode Island, forgetting pastdifferences, voted to raise a hundred and fifty menfor the expedition, till, learning that the projectwas neither ordered nor approved by the Home1 Correspondence of Shirley and "Wentworth, in Belknap Papers.Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, v.2 Governor Wanton to the Agent of Rhode Island, 20 December,1745, in Colony Records a/ Rhode Island, v.