Meanwhile Champlain at home in France saw with eagle eye that Huguenot and Catholic could never live together in peace across the wide waste of waters. They were always quarrelling. The colony did not grow as it should, in spite of the fact that in a single year 22,000 beaver skins were sent by the De Caens to France. Nor was religion attended to as devoutly as he thought the Huguenots ought to attend to it. But perhaps this was because the Huguenots did not acknowledge the authority of the Pope. So he wrote strongly to De Caen about it, and the letter fell into the hands of the most powerful, most crafty man of that era, far more powerful than King Louis the Thirteenth himself. Cardinal Richelieu was the King's Prime Minister. Having at length accomplished great things for his master in France, Richelieu now turned his attention to Canada. With a stroke of the pen he abolished the monopoly of the De Caens and founded the "Company of the Hundred Associates," with himself at the head. Thence-forward no Huguenot was to be permitted to enter the colony under any conditions. The new Company was given a perpetual monopoly of the fur trade and control of other commerce, besides being made lord of {47} an enormous territory extending from the Arctic Ocean to Florida. Moreover, the Company was bound to send out at once a number of labourers and mechanics and 4000 other colonists. Champlain was made one of the Associates, and continued in his command of Quebec. Canada was now to be governed directly by the King, just as if it were one of the provinces of Old France, and nobles were to be created who would take their titles from their estates.