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1757 CODFISH Two Pence Mass. Tax Revenue Stamped Legal Document Scott RM-2 ERP-2

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:325.00 USD Estimated At:500.00 - 600.00 USD
1757 CODFISH Two Pence Mass. Tax Revenue Stamped Legal Document Scott RM-2 ERP-2
Colonial America
1757 “CODFISH” II Pence Embossed British Tax Stamp
May 30, 1757-Dated, Colonial Massachusetts Embossed Revenue “CODFISH” Two Pence Tax Stamp, Scott RM-2, ERP-2, Paid on a Partly-Printed Legal Summons Document, Complete, Signed by Moses Pearson, Fine.
May 30, 1757-Dated, Partly-Printed Document, 6.25” x 7.5”, 1 page, York / Falmouth, (ME). with 2p Massachusetts (RM2), clear embossing though somewhat weak at its right side, located at lower left of part-printed Bond dated 1757. This Document reads: “In His Majesty’s Name, you are required to Summon and give Notice unto Ebenezer Gordon of Falmouth aforesaid, Yeoman (if he may be found in your Precinct) that he appear before me Moses Pearson Esq; one of His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace...”. Tone, folds, red wax seal with some transfer when folded yet visually appealing. The Moses Pearson signing this Document, is likely Capt. Moses Pearson who participated in the 1745 Siege of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, and who later founded the township of Pearsontown Plantation (now Standish), Maine.
The Siege of Louisbourg took place in 1745 when a New England colonial force aided by a British fleet captured Louisbourg, the capital of the French province of Ile-Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island) during the War of the Austrian Succession, known as King George's War in the British colonies.

The northern British colonies regarded Louisbourg as a menace, calling it the "American Dunkirk" due to its use as a base for privateers. There was regular, intermittent warfare between the French and the Wabanaki Confederacy on one side and the northern New England colonies on the other (See the Northeast Coast Campaigns of 1688, 1703, 1723, 1724). For the French, the Fortress of Louisbourg also protected the chief entrance to Canada, as well as the nearby French fisheries. The French government had spent 25 years in fortifying it, and the cost of its defenses was reckoned at thirty million livres. Although the fortress's construction and layout was acknowledged as having superior seaward defences, a series of low rises behind them made it vulnerable to a land attack. The low rises provided attackers places to erect siege batteries. The fort's garrison was poorly paid and supplied, and its inexperienced leaders mistrusted them. The colonial attackers were also lacking in experience, but ultimately succeeded in gaining control of the surrounding defences. The defenders surrendered in the face of an imminent assault.

Louisbourg was an important bargaining chip in the peace negotiations to end the war, since it represented a major British success. Factions within the British government were opposed to returning it to the French as part of any peace agreement, but these were eventually overruled, and Louisbourg was returned, over the objections of the victorious British North Americans, to French control after the 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in return for French concessions elsewhere.