If Dongan was preparing to trespass upon French rights in the region of the Great Lakes, Denonville himself was acting with even less scruple in another direction. For several years before this, the Hudson's Bay Company, under the charter granted to them by Charles II in the year 1670, had been trading to the bay from which they derived their name, and had established a number of posts along its shores. The charter had been granted in perfect good faith, as the region in question, which had been discovered and explored by navigators sailing under the English flag, Cabot, Hudson, Baffin, and Davis, was regarded as English territory. It is true that a memoir prepared by M. de Callieres, Governor of Montreal, for the minister of marine and colonies,[27] mentions proceedings taken at different times by governors of Canada, between the years 1656 and 1663, to bring the country under French sovereignty; but there is nothing to show that any attempt was made at settlement or even at trading on the coast. The Hudson's Bay Company, on the other hand, had from the date of its charter, not to mention earlier operations, been carrying on trade, and establishing posts in that region without any remonstrance from the French government, and without disturbance of any kind until the year 1682, in the early winter of which two Frenchmen, named Radisson and Des Groseilliers, sailed into Hudson's Bay with two vessels, and took possession of a fort which the English had established near the mouth of the Nelson River. The explanation given by these parties was that they were acting on behalf of the "Compagnie Francaise de la Baie du Nord de Canada," which had previously formed establishments some distance up that river, and that finding that some English had begun to erect dwellings on an island at the mouth of the river, they had forced them to retire, considering their own claim to the river and its outlet the better.