“Crusht the two between crownes”

• Main Author: Johnson, Richard R
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 1991
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195065053.003.0008; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52461092/isbn-9780195065053-book-part-8.pdf

Abstract A few years before his death, in a last letter to Canada’s Governor Vaudreuil, John Nelson sought permission to trade once more with French Acadia. Thereby, he noted, “I might in some measure repaire my family in the great losses I have sustained, being so long a time as it were Crusht between the two Crownes. “1 Nelson was not a man given to lamentation or reflection: active, open, and direct, he displayed none of the anxious concern of a Cotton Mather or a Samuel Sewall for his own or his society’s place in history. Yet his words, with their depiction of personal endeavor storm-tossed by larger forces, come close to encapsulating his life’s central theme-the search for accommodation and response to the clash of emerging European empires in the North Atlantic world.