1754 - 1755

• Procédure relative au mariage de Jules Caesar Foelix de la Noue, officier de la garnison de Louisbourg et commandent à la Baie des Espagnols, avec Marguerite Guedry, fille d'une sauvagesse de la Baie. Le mariage a été célébré le 11 février 1754, malgré le refus du commandant, Charles Dailleboust. Ce dernier en demande l'annulation et rend l'aumonier de Port Dauphin qui a célébré la cérémonie [elandestine] complice de rapt. L'enquête menée jusqu'en fevrier 1755 semble conclure à la nullité du dit mariage, pour défaut de publication de bancs, mais le dossier ne contient pas l'arrêt définitif sur cette affaire. (Pièces non cotées.) Folios 270-360: 1754-1755 G2 189 Folios 270-360 H J 31 Archives Nationales, Section Outre-Mer, G2, Volume 189

• F3, Volume 50-2, ff. 504-525, February 17, 1755

Married without permission

• Marriage dissolved

... According to Abbé de l'Isle-Dieu, Pierre Maillard never lacked opportunities to criticize the shortcomings of the Brittany Récollets. In early 1754 Maillard was confronted with a particularly glaring error by one of the friars. The Récollet in question was Hyacinthe Lefebvre, the chaplain at Port Dauphin. In February Lefebvre travelled to Baye des Espagnols following a request from the commandant there, Ensign Jules Caesar Felix Bogard de La Noue, to provide spiritual comfort to people who were critically ill. When Lefebvre reached the settlement de la Noue asked him instead to sanctify a marriage between himself and Marguerite Guedry, daughter of a local family. De la Noue lied to the Récollet by telling him that he had obtained his commander's permission to marry. Lefebvre agreed to the request and the marriage was celebrated shortly after, on I I February, in the bride's house, with only one bann having been read the previous day.

A few hours after the wedding a detachment of soldiers from Louisbourg arrived to arrest de la Noue and take him back to the capital for defying his commander's order not to marry the girl. The marriage was subsequently annulled because permission had not been given and because Hacinthe Lefebvre did not have the authority to perform the service, being from the parish at Port Dauphin. Baye de Espagnols was considered part of the parish of Louisbourg and therefore only the Louisbourg curé or his designate could celebrate marriages there. Moreover, wedding banns could only be dispensed with by someone so empowered by the bishop. Lefebvre did not have that authority so the marriage was invalid on that count as well.

Innocent or kind-hearted as Lefebvre's participation in the de la Noue wedding may have been, it was an extremely unwise act. By giving his blessing to a marriage that broke important rules of both church and state he gave further evidence to the Récollets' detractors of the general ignorance and laxity of the Brittany friars. In fact, one contemporary observed that Abbé Maillard was not at all unhappy with the incident as it gave him additional justification "to get rid of the monks.... Hyacinthe Lefebvre was recalled from Ile Royale for his role in the de la Noue marriage, but whatever hopes there were that the minister of marine would agree to oust all the Récollets in the colony were not realized. As a result, complaints about the Récollets' failings continued. For their part the friars' superiors promised improvements in the future ...

[A. J. B. Johnston, Religion in Life at Louisbourg, 1713 - 1758 (Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1984), pp. 61-62]