The most that Henry IV would do for French pioneers in America was to give them a monopoly of trade in return for an undertaking to transport and establish colonists. In each case where a monopoly was granted the number of colonists was specified. As for their quality, convicts could be taken if more eligible candidates were not forthcoming. The sixty unfortunates landed by La Roche on Sable Island in 1598 were all convicts or sturdy vagrants. Five years later only eleven were left alive. For the story of Champlain it is not necessary to touch upon the relations of the French government with traders at a date earlier than 1599. Immediately following the failure of La Roche's second expedition, Pierre Chauvin of Honfleur secured a monopoly which covered the Laurentian fur trade for ten years. The condition was that he should convey to Canada fifty colonists a year throughout the full period of his grant. So far from carrying out this agreement either in spirit or letter, he shirked it without compunction. After three years the monopoly was withdrawn, less on the ground that he had failed to fulfil his contract than from an outcry on the part of merchants who desired their share of the trade. To {19} adjudicate between Chauvin and his rivals in St Malo and Rouen a commission was appointed at the close of 1602. Its members were De Chastes, governor of Dieppe, and the Sieur de la Cour, first president of the Parlement of Normandy. On their recommendation the terms of the monopoly were so modified as to admit to a share in the privilege certain leading merchants of Rouen and St Malo, who, however, must pay their due share in the expenses of colonizing. Before the ships sailed in 1603 Chauvin had died, and De Chastes at once took his place as the central figure in the group of those to whom a new monopoly had just been conceded.[3]