The next twenty years might be called St. Augustine’s Golden Age under Spain. Substantial coquina houses and tastefully decorated chapels lined its narrow streets. The inhabitants lived in relative ease and comfort. Social life was gay with colorful carnivals and religious celebrations rivaling those of Havana, Cuba. The capital was now a city of three thousand souls, and would soon be two centuries old. Florida seemed held firmly in the grip of Spain.
But English colonists to the north now numbered almost one million and one hundred thousand Frenchmen had settled in Canada. The struggle for power among European nations was to decide St. Augustine’s fate.
[Illustration: _St. Augustine’s Spanish colonial origin is reflected in its architecture and narrow streets._]
[Illustration: _Photo courtesy National Galleries of Scotland; from portrait by Allan Ramsay, circa 1750, reproduced with permission of its owner, the Duke of Sutherland._
_Colonel James Grant, St. Augustine’s first British governor, served from 1764 to 1771._]
While St. Augustine lived on in apparent security, ominous events were taking place in the world outside. England and France fought the Seven Years’ War, toward the end of which Spain allied itself with France. Far to the north French Quebec fell to English arms in 1759, and to the south Havana, Cuba, on which St. Augustine heavily depended, yielded to an English fleet in 1762. Ministers of the three nations gathered at Paris to decide the terms of peace.
On March 16, 1763, a lieutenant from the English sloop _Bonetta_ came ashore at St. Augustine with important papers for the governor, who was astounded by what he read. Under the terms of the treaty just concluded, Spain ceded Florida to England in exchange for the return of Havana and other territorial concessions.
St. Augustine’s shocked residents soon gathered around the proclamation posted on the government house. It specified they would be given eighteen months in which to settle their affairs, dispose of their property, and evacuate Florida, unless they desired to become subjects of the British Crown. The very thought of remaining under English rule violated their deep devotion to King and Church. All prepared to leave; only eight being designated to remain in an official capacity.