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Important Fur Trade Document

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Title: Manuscript Document, signed, as Lord Justices of Great Britain regarding negotiating for Hudson's Bay Fur Trade Boundaries with France
Author: Campbell, John; John Ker; James Berkeley & James Craggs
Description: Manuscript Document signed, as Lord Justices of Great Britain by Gen. John Campbell, Duke of Argyll; John Ker, Duke of Roxburghe; Admiral James Berkeley, Earl of Berkeley; and James Craggs, Secretary of State. Warrant, in the name of King George I, to Lord High Chancellor Thomas Parker, to affix the Royal Seal to the appointment of Daniel Pulteney and Marlin Bladen as Commissioners to negotiate with envoys of French King Louis XV. Whitehall (London), September 3, 1719. 1 page, plus attached 3-page handwritten Latin copy of the Commission, possibly signed by Parker. With original sale folder of John Gray Bell, autograph dealer of Manchester, England in the 1850s, who reportedly acquired it from the estate of the Earl of Perth.A British state paper of great historical significance, signed by four of the Regents who ruled Britain whenever King George I, six years on the throne, went home to his native Germany. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht which ended a long War between England, France and Spain, had recognized British sovereignty in Hudson’s Bay, the 600-mile wide inland sea of present-day Canada that was the center of the North American fur trade. But “delicate” questions of exact boundaries had been left unsettled, and the Hudson’s Bay Company which monopolized the British fur trade was pressing Whitehall to settle the question. The appointed envoys confirmed by this document - Bladen, a distinguished general who served as Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, and Pulteney, a practical politician - were about to meet in Paris with their French counterparts to present the Company’s boundary “demands”. Privately, they were instructed "to take especial care” that any agreement with the French should "regard the trade of Hudson's Bay only", and not “recede” from British rights to all other “lands in America.” But the negotiations quickly broke down. Anglo-French fur trade competition would continue for the next forty years until another treaty, ending the French and Indian War, ceded all of French Canada to Britain.
Heading: (Fur Trade)Place Published: Whitehall (London)
Publisher:
Date Published: September 3, 1719