itans, previously persecuted by Elizabeth, to leave their
country. The Puritans, in November, 1607, had settled in New England.
The year in which the first Franco-Canadian saw the light of day,
Governor Carver, of Plymouth Colony, had entered into a league of
friendship, commerce, and mutual defence with Massassoit, the great
Sachem of the neighbouring Indians. Some years previously (1619) the
Colony of Virginia had received her first Governor General from
England, who had instructions to convoke a general legislature. With
all his impotent stammering, slobbering, weeping, buffoonery, and
pedagoguism, James had an indistinct idea that it was as necessary to
hear the voice of the people as the voice of the king. He chose rather
to direct than to suppress the expression of opinion. But the Governor
General of Virginia was appointed by the London Company, whose
privileges were taken away by James on the year preceding his death,
which occurred in March, 1625, after the company had expended L100,000
in the first attempt to colonize America. James appointed a viceroy or
governor and directed him how to govern. New France, at the breaking
out of such a war, had something to dread from New England, so much
further advanced in colonization. Cardinal Richelieu's plan of Canadian
settlement was roughly interfered with, by the capture of his first
emigrant ships by Sir David Kerk, who afterwards proceeded to Tadousac,
burned the village, and proceeded to Quebec to summon Champlain to
surrender. The brave Frenchman refused and Kerk retreated. But Kerk
came back again. He again appeared before the walls of Fort Quebec, and
summoned it to surrender. Reduced to great distress by famine,
Champlain surrendered, and the whole settlement was taken captive to
England. With the exception of a few houses, a barrack, and a fort at
Quebec, and a few huts at Tadousac, Trois Rivieres, and Mont Royal,
Canada was again as much a wilderness as it ever had been since the
Asiatics had stepped across Behring's Straits to replenish the western
hemisphere. The great curiosity, the first Franco-Canadian baby, now
eight years old, was doubtless carried to the tower, and caged as a
curiosity, near the other lions and tigers of London. It was not until
the restoration of peace in 1633, that Champlain was reappointed
Governor of Canada, which, by the treaty of 1632, was surrendered back
to France, on the supposition that it was almost worthless. This time
col