England in 1667, the two friends were introduced by Lord Arlington, then ambassador in Paris, to Prince Rupert, the natural patron of all adventurers at the time, and who, moreover, was then expecting a grant of territory in America as a reward for his services to the royal cause. Already the merchants of London had been roused to the possibilities of this trade by the recent arrival of the first cargo of furs from New Amsterdam; and now when the two impartial Frenchmen pointed out to them that the trade was being choked in Quebec, and that England had a golden opportunity of profitable enterprise, two vessels, the _Nonsuch_ and the _Eagle_, were fitted out without delay, and one Captain Gillam received instructions to investigate and report. [Illustration: PRINCE OF WALES'S FORT, HUDSON'S BAY, 1777] [Illustration: PRINCE RUPERT] Such was the beginning of the Hudson's Bay Company. Having spent a winter at Fort Charles, the first fort on the Bay, so named after the royal patron, the adventurers returned to England in 1670 with such solid proofs of the soundness of the speculation, that the new Company received a charter from the King under the title of "_The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, Trading into Hudson's Bay_." The Company were constituted lords and proprietors of the territories round Hudson's Bay, now called Rupert's Land, having powers like those of the feudal lords of an earlier time--"to employ ships of war, to erect forts, to make reprisals, to send home English traders who neglected their licenses, and to declare war or make peace with any people not Christian." Although the Declaration of Rights in 1689 limited the rights granted by exclusive charters, and allowed British subjects to trade freely to any quarter, yet the Hudson's Bay Company had in the twenty years previous to that date obtained such a hold upon the new territory, especially by the erection of forts, that they easily left all competitors behind. The spirit of discovery was never so alive among the French as during those years following the expulsion of Radisson and Groseilliers; yet the Government in Quebec was slow to realise the serious nature of the menace in the north; and from the official papers afterwards prepared for the British delegates at Utrecht, their easy confidence is thus described:-- "Mr. Bailey, the Company's first Governor of their factories and settlements in that Bay, entertained a friendly correspondence by letters and otherwise with Monsieur Frontenac, then Governor of Canada, not in the least complaining, in several years, of any pretended injury done to France by the said Company's settling a trade and building a fort at the bottom of Hudson's Bay, nor making pretensions to any right of France on that Bay, or to the countries bordering on it, till long after this time."