the colony under any
conditions. The company was bound to send out immediately a {87}
number of labourers and mechanics, with all their necessary tools, to
the St. Lawrence, and four thousand other colonists in the course of
fifteen years, and to support them for three years. Not only was the
new association a great commercial corporation, but it was a feudal
lord as well. Richelieu introduced in a modified form the old feudal
tenure of France, with the object of creating a Canadian _noblesse_ and
encouraging men of good birth and means to emigrate and develop the
resources of the country. This was the beginning of that seigniorial
tenure which lasted for two centuries and a quarter.

Champlain was re-appointed lieutenant-governor and had every reason to
believe that at last a new spirit would be infused into the affairs of
the colony. Fate, however, was preparing for him a cruel blow. In the
spring of 1628, the half-starved men of Quebec were anxiously looking
for the provisions and men expected from France, when they were
dismayed by the news that an English fleet was off the Saguenay. This
disheartening report was immediately followed by a message to surrender
the fort of Quebec to the English admiral, David Kirk. War had been
declared between England and France, through the scheming chiefly of
Buckingham, the rash favourite of Charles the First, and an intense
hater of the French King for whose queen, Anne of Austria, he had
developed an ardent and unrequited passion. English settlements were
by this time established on Massachusetts Bay and England was ambitious
of extending her dominion over North {88} America, even in those
countries where France had preceded her.

Admiral Kirk, who was the son of a gentleman in Derbyshire, and one of
the pioneers of the colonisation of Newfoundland, did not attempt the
taking of Quebec in 1628, as he was quite satisfied with the capture
off the Saguenay, of a French expedition, consisting of four armed
vessels and eighteen transports, under the command of Claude de
Roquemont, who had been sent by the new company to relieve Quebec.
Next year, however, in July, he brought his fleet again to the
Saguenay, and sent three ships to Quebec under his brothers, Lewis and
Thomas. Champlain immediately surrendered, as his little garrison were
half-starved and incapable of making any resistance, and the English
flag floated for the first time on the fort of St. Louis. Champlain