A meeting of the reorganized Sovereign Council was held at Quebec on the 16th September 1675. It is this meeting which fixes for us as nearly as it can be done the date of the arrival of the bishop and intendant, for the minutes show that the former was present, and that part of the business transacted was the registration of the commission of the latter. M. de Laval lost no time in making his influence felt. The Abbe Fenelon, when arraigned before the Sovereign Council the year before, had demanded to be tried by an ecclesiastical tribunal, and reply had been made that there was no such tribunal in Canada. The bishop's first act was to supply this lack by establishing a court consisting of his two grand-vicars, Bernieres and Dudouyt, and a clerk or registrar. The new court soon found work to do. A man was cited before it, upon information of the _cure_ of Montreal, for having failed to perform his Easter duties. He appealed to the Sovereign Council, which at first showed a disposition to assume jurisdiction in the case, but in the end left it in the hands of the ecclesiastics. The bishop wished it to be understood that Canada was not France. Some encroachments of the civil on the spiritual power had, he said, taken place in that country, but "these were things to be guarded against in a country in which a Church is in course of establishment." Manifestly Laval understood the word "Church" in a very absolute sense, and meant to enforce his understanding of it if possible. During his absence from the country the clergy had got into the way, either of their own accord, or at Frontenac's suggestion, of paying the governor certain honours in church which the bishop considered--correctly it appears--unsanctioned by precedent or usage. He ordered that they should be discontinued. A wrangle with the governor ensued, and the matter had to be referred to the king, who must sometimes have wondered whether the colonial game was worth the candles consumed in reading the colonial despatches; for his Majesty, no less than his minister, had often to prolong the work far into the night. The patient monarch replied that the governor had been claiming more than was his due, and more than was accorded to men of his rank in the provinces of the kingdom; he must, therefore, make up his little difference with the bishop of Quebec, by gracefully moderating his pretensions. Three years later there were still some differences of the same nature pending, for we find the king sending directions to the bishop to pay the same honours to the governor of Canada as were paid to the governor of Picardy in the cathedral of Amiens. Frontenac, on his part, was not to claim more.