Except the standing garrison at Annapolis, Acadia was as completely let alone by the British government as Rhode Island or Connecticut. Unfortunately, the traditional British policy of inaction towards her colonies was not applicable in the case of a newly conquered province with a disaffected population and active, enterprising, and martial neighbors bent on recovering what they had lost. Yet it might be supposed that a neglect so invigorating in other cases might have developed among the Acadians habits of self-reliance and faculties of self-care. The reverse took place; for if England neglected Acadia, France did not; and though she had renounced her title to it, she still did her best to master it and make it hers again. The chief instrument of her aggressive policy was the governor of Isle Royale, whose station was the fortress of Louisbourg, and who was charged with the management of Acadian affairs. At all the Acadian settlements he had zealous and efficient agents in the missionary priests, who were sent into the province by the Bishop of Quebec, or in a few cases by their immediate ecclesiastical superiors in Isle Royale.
The Treaty of Utrecht secured freedom of worship to the Acadians under certain conditions. These were that they should accept the sovereignty of the British Crown, and that they and their pastors should keep within the limits of British law.[209] Even supposing that by swearing allegiance to Queen Anne the Acadians had acquired the freedom of worship which the treaty gave them on condition of their becoming British subjects, it would have been an abuse of this freedom to use it for subverting the power that had granted it. Yet this is what the missionaries did. They were not only priests of the Roman Church, they were also agents of the King of France; and from first to last they labored against the British government in the country that France had ceded to the British Crown. So confident were they, and with so much reason, of the weakness of their opponents that they openly avowed that their object was to keep the Acadians faithful to King Louis. When two of their number, Saint-Poncy and Chevereaux, were summoned before the Council at Annapolis, they answered, with great contempt, "We are here on the business of the King of France." They were ordered to leave Acadia. One of them stopped among the Indians at Cape Sable; the other, in defiance of the Council, was sent back to Annapolis by the Governor of Isle Royale.[210] Apparently he was again ordered away; for four years later the French governor, in expectation of speedy war, sent him to Chignecto with orders secretly to prepare the Acadians for an attack on Annapolis.[211]