With regard to commerce, the company should have perpetual privileges in the peltry traffic of New France, and for fifteen years only, all other commerce by land and sea with the reservation of the cod and whale fishery which should be free to all French traders. The colonists not maintained at the expense of the Associates should be free to trade with the natives for peltry provided that they forthwith hand over the peltry to the company which shall be obliged to purchase at the rate of forty _sols_, Tours currency, for each beaver skin. In consequence, the privileges accorded previously to Guillaume de Caen and his associates were revoked by the same edict, and trade in Canada was interdicted to them and other subjects of the kingdom, under pain of confiscation of their vessels and merchandise to the benefit of the new company. Cardinal Richelieu, however, allowed Guillaume de Caen, the privilege of the peltry trade for one year in indemnification for the loss of his charter.
So started the Company of the One Hundred Associates under the happiest auspices, endowed with almost sovereign power and having a leader of the state as its patron, for at its head was Cardinal Richelieu, who, without the title of lieutenant general which he perhaps thought unnecessary, seeing that he connected the work of colonization with his position as head of the navy, exercised the same authority. On the 27th of April, 1628, Louis XIII sent Champlain his commission as "commander in New France in the absence of our very dear and well beloved cousin, the Cardinal de Richelieu, grand master, chief and superintendent of the navigation and commerce of France." Champlain did not receive his commission on behalf of the company until he reached Dieppe in 1629, after the occupation of Quebec by the English.
The first attempt to carry out the charter was in 1628, when vessels were equipped and victualled under the orders of de Roquemont, one of the chief associates. Their first object was to succour Quebec, then in famine. A number of artisans and their families started and never reached their destination, for in the gulf their ships were seized by David Kerth, a master mariner of Dieppe in pay of the English government and in command of its fleet attacking the colonies. War had broken out between England and France and hostilities soon extended to America, and a fleet of ships was sent to invade the settlements of New France and in particular to capture Quebec.