APPOINTMENT OF A GOVERNOR. 163

The Guipuscoans were also, in an ambiguous man- ner, acknowledged to have a claim, as a matter of right, to a participation in the fishery; which the Board of T1ade decla1ed afterwa1ds, 1n 1718, to be ‘ inadmissible.

Government about this time, as well as the mer- chants, began to direct their attention to the trade of the island, with more spirit than they had hitherto shown. A Captain Taverner was commissioned to survey its coasts ; a lieutenant-governor was appointed to command the fort at Placentia, and a ship of war kept cruising round the island, to keep the French at their limits.

In 1729, it was concluded, principally through the representation of Lord Vere Beauclerk, the com- mander on the station, to establish some permanent government, which ended, as Mr Reeves observes, in the appointment, “ not of a person skilled in the law,” as had been proposed, but of a Captain Henry Osborne, commander of his majesty’s ship the Squir- rel. Lord Vere Beauclerk, who set sail for New- foundland with the governor, in the summer of this year, received a box, containing eleven sets of Shaw’s Practical Justice of the Peace, being one for each of the following places, which were respectively impress- ed on the covers in gold letters : “ Placentia, St John’s, Carbonier, Bay of Bulls, Ferryland, Trepasse, Bay de Verd, Trinity Bay, Bonavista, and Old Parlekin, in Newfoundland ;” together with thirteen copies of the statute of King ‘Villiam, and the acts relating to the navigation and trade of the kingdoms.