On the death of Henry IV in 1610, his young son, Louis XIII, became King of France. In 1624 Richelieu became his minister. In 1627 the discontent of the Huguenots culminated in the open revolt of the town of La Rochelle; and its fall, after a ten months' siege, gave the King and the cardinal mastery over the Protestants of France. The effect on Canada of this unsuccessful rising was twofold. It involved the exclusion of Huguenot settlers, and it involved also the hostility of England. The patent granted in 1627 to the company of New France, known as the One Hundred Associates, provided that every colonist who went out to Canada must be a Catholic, and when in the following year Richelieu received the submission of the Rochellois, he was well able to enforce this arbitrary provision. It is difficult at the present day to comprehend a policy, initiated and approved by a statesman of consummate ability, which could not but result in blighting the infancy of the greatest French colony. The English colonies were in the main pre-eminently homes of freedom, dwelling-places for men whose political and religious opinions found scant favour in the United Kingdom. For the English race the New World redressed the balance of the Old; and though the {73} colonists who went out from Europe to America, were in their turn prejudiced and narrow-minded, their want of tolerance was not forced upon them from without, and members of one or other unpopular sect, when persecuted in one province, could find refuge in another. Maryland was a British colony, founded under Roman Catholic auspices; its neighbour, Pennsylvania, was founded and dominated by Quaker influence; throughout British North America there were examples of all opinions and of all creeds. The men on the spot quarrelled with and persecuted each other; but persecution and exclusion were not ordained from home. It would have been bad for the British Empire if from all settlements, which the English formed and maintained, Roman Catholics had been rigidly kept out; but it was far worse for France when her Kings and ministers closed the French colonies to the Huguenots. [Sidenote: _Merits of the Huguenots as colonists._] [Sidenote: _War between England and France._]