journeyed to London for Mary Kirke. Those were times of an easy change
in faith. Charles II was playing double with Catholics and
Protestants. The Kirkes were closely attached to the court; and it
was, perhaps, not difficult for the Huguenot wife to abjure
Protestantism and declare herself a convert to the religion of her
husband. But when Radisson proposed taking her back to France, that
was another matter. Sir John Kirke forbade his daughter's departure
till the claims of the Kirke family against New France had been paid.
When Radisson returned without his wife, he was reproached by M.
Colbert for disloyalty. The government refused its patronage to his
plans for the fur trade; but M. Colbert sent him to confer with La
Chesnaye, a prominent fur trader and member of the Council in New
France, who happened to be in Paris at that time. La Chesnaye had been
sent out to Canada to look after the affairs of a Rouen fur-trading
company. Soon he became a commissioner of the West Indies Company; and
when the merchants of Quebec organized the Company of the North, La
Chesnaye became a director. No one knew better than he how bitterly
the monopolists of Quebec would oppose Radisson's plans for a trip to
Hudson Bay; but the prospects were alluring. La Chesnaye was deeply
involved in the fur trade and snatched at the chance of profits to
stave off the bankruptcy that reduced him to beggary a few years later.
In defiance of the rival companies and independent of those with which
he was connected, he offered to furnish ships and share profits with
Radisson and Groseillers for a voyage to Hudson Bay.

M. Colbert did not give his patronage to the scheme; but he wished
Radisson a God-speed. The Jesuits advanced Radisson money to pay his
passage; and in the fall of 1681, he arrived in Quebec. La Chesnaye
met him, and Groseillers was summoned. The three then went to the
Chateau Saint-Louis to lay their plans before the governor. Though the
privileges of the West Indies Company had been curtailed, the fur trade
was again regulated by license.[1] Frontenac had granted a license to
the Company of the North for the fur trade of Hudson Bay. He could not
openly favor Radisson; but he winked at the expedition by granting
passports to the explorers, and the three men who were to accompany
him, Jean Baptiste, son of Groseillers, Pierre Allemand, the pilot who
was afterward given a commission to explore the Eskimo country, and
Jean G