The right to the fur trade in America had been granted--given away, as the English of the time thought--by the hand of Charles II of England. In prodigal fashion Charles {23} conceded, in 1670, a charter, which conveyed extensive lands, with the privileges of monopoly, to the 'Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay.' But if the courtiers of the Merry Monarch had any notion that he could thus exclude all others from the field, their dream was an empty one. England had an active rival in France, and French traders penetrated into the region granted to the Hudson's Bay Company. Towards the close of the seventeenth century Le Moyne d'Iberville was making conquests on Hudson Bay for the French king, and Greysolon Du Lhut was carrying on successful trading operations in the vicinity of Lakes Nipigon and Superior. Even after the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) had given the Hudson Bay territories to the English, the French-Canadian explorer La Vérendrye entered the forbidden lands, and penetrated to the more remote west. A new situation arose after the British conquest of Canada during the Seven Years' War. Plucky independent traders, mostly of Scottish birth, now began to follow the watercourses which led from the rapids of Lachine on the St Lawrence to the country beyond Lake Superior. These men treated with disdain the royal charter of the Hudson's {24} Bay Company. In 1783 a group of them united to form the North-West Company, with headquarters at Montreal. The organization grew in strength and became the most powerful antagonist of the older company, and the open feud between the two spread through the wide region from the Great Lakes to the slopes of the Rocky Mountains.