There was now great stir under the new form of Royal Government. Mézy and Laval were announced as Chiefs of the Council. The inhabitants made offer of their "foi et hommage" for their land tenures. Officers for the administration of justice, according to civil law, were appointed. Regulations for commerce and social progress were promulgated. New France was declared a province or a kingdom and Quebec a "town." A mayor, Legardeur de Repentigny, and two aldermen, Jean Maudry and Claude Charron, were elected, and municipal life seemed promised. These officers met on October 6th, but by November 14th their election was revoked by the council and the office of syndic again restored. This abortive municipal life was apparently too great a stride in the autocratic government then in vogue. Yet Canada was beginning to emerge from its petty parish condition and its struggling state. The privilege granted Laval of exacting one-thirteenth part of the fruits of the earth and of a man's labour on the earth for church establishment was not satisfactory, and finally it was reduced to one-twentieth for the rest of monseigneur's life; later it was reduced by Laval to a twenty-sixth. The taking over of the colony as a royal possession began to affect other places than Quebec. At Montreal, the assumption of the seigneurial duties and privileges was not without difficulty. On August 18th, the commission which had been privately given by M. de Bretonvilliers to M. Souart was publicly ratified. But hardly had the Sovereign Council been installed than it took away the right of the Seigneurs to administer justice in civil and criminal cases, and on September 28th appointed M. Arthur de Sailly as judge, Charles Le Moyne, king's procurator, Bénigne Basset as chief clerk and notary of the sénéchal's court, all of whom took the oath on October 19th. Similar inferior courts of justice were also established at Three Rivers; appeal could be made on trivial causes to the supreme council. The customary law of Paris, or "_coutume de Paris_," based on the civil law of Rome, was the fundamental law of Canada, and still governs the civil rights of the people. Hitherto Maisonneuve had acted as administrator of justice, but now the seigneurs named Charles d'Ailleboust des Musseaux as judge and retained Bénigne Basset as clerk of the Seigneurs.