On January 11, 1764, letters patent were sent to the first justices of the peace at Montreal, including Moses Hazen, J. Grant, John Rowe, Francis McKay, Thomas Lambe, F. Knife, John Burke, Thomas Walker and others. Among these were two Swiss Protestants, Catholics being excluded from the office as yet, owing to the difficulty of their subscribing to the religious test not being yet solved.
The first general quarter sessions of the peace was held on December 27, 1764, and there were present Moses Hazen, J. Dumas, F. McKay, Thomas Lambe and Francis Knife. The court adjourned. The first case was one of battery and assault.
On August 10, 1764, military rule ceased. The new civil government brought to a head much of the ill feeling existing in the city. The tables were now turned, the merchant class, already become the magistrates, were now in the ascendant and rancours prevailed. The old-time antipathies between the soldiers and citizens at New York and Boston were being reproduced in Montreal. There were no barracks, although the troops had been there four years. Consequently the system of billeting became necessary and caused continual annoyance.
The famous Walker outrage grew out of one of these troubles. Captain Fraser had billeted a Captain Payne on a French-Canadian. In the house lodged one of the new justices of the peace who claimed exemption for the house. In reply he was told that the justices’ rooms were exempt but not the other rooms, and on Payne’s persistence in claiming the billet, the magistrate refused to yield his possession. The case was brought before Justice Walker, who, as a magistrate, ordered Payne to vacate the rooms and on his refusing to comply committed him to jail for contempt. He was released on bail. Two days afterwards, on the 6th of December, 1764, occurred the “Walker outrage,” which has been described more or less fully in various histories of Canada, sometimes incorrectly.
Walker was an Englishman who had lived for many years in Boston, coming to Montreal some time after the close of the war in 1760, where he engaged in trade with the upper country. He was a bold, aggressive man, full of democratic notions, who set himself up as the agent of the people, opposed the actions of Governor Murray in every way, and afterwards had endeavoured to use his influence to have Murray recalled. In many ways he showed that he was no great friend of the Military then established in Montreal.