Regent--who also appointed him Lieutenant-General to the Prince of
Conde, which step was intended to pave the way for his additional title
of Viceroy of New France.

Champlain gave quite a different form to the Mercantile Company of
Canada, and by his influence with Conde, obtained from the King letters
patent and many new privileges. He returned to Canada in 1614 with a
goodly number of colonists, and also a few Recollets to minister to
their spiritual wants. Intending to pass the summer at Montreal, with
some of his companions for the purpose of trading more advantageously
with the savages, he left Quebec. But again his plans met with very
partial success.

In 1620 the Prince of Conde conferred the viceroyalty of Canada on the
Marechal de Montmorenci, his brother-in-law, who in turn bestowed it on
the Duke de Ventadour, his nephew. Until this period the affairs of the
colony had been entirely in the hands of Protestants, who sought nothing
but material wealth. Everything was languishing, and there were not more
than fifty persons at Quebec. Some Jesuit Fathers arrived this year,
having been sent over to assist the Recollets, and it was proposed to
exclude Protestants from the colony, as they were becoming more numerous
than was convenient for a Catholic settlement. Cardinal Richelieu, then
minister of France, during the minority of Louis XIII., lent them his
powerful assistance in their designs for the glory of God. By an edict
dated May, 1627, given at the camp before La Rochelle, all the old
Commercial Companies of Canada were suppressed and dissolved, new ones
being erected in their stead, with the express conditions and
stipulations that the colony was to be exclusively _French_ and
_Catholic_, that the new company should, at its own expense, support a
sufficient number of priests, and that agriculture should be actively