Frontenac was about to be blamed in his turn. The governor had obtained from the council a decree ordering the king's attorney to be present at the rendering of accounts by the purveyor of the Quebec Seminary, and another decree of March 4th, 1675, declaring that not only, as had been customary since 1668, the judges should have precedence over the churchwardens in public ceremonies, but also that the latter should follow all the officers of justice; at Quebec these officers should have their bench immediately behind that of the council, and in the rest of the country, behind that of the local governors and the seigneurs. This latter decree was posted everywhere. A missionary, M. Thomas Morel, was accused of having prevented its publication at Lévis, and was arrested at once and imprisoned in the Château St. Louis with the clerk of the ecclesiastical court, Romain Becquet, who had refused to deliver to the council the registers of this ecclesiastical tribune. He was kept there a month. MM. de Bernières and Dudouyt protested, declaring that M. Morel was amenable only to the diocesan authority. We see in such an incident some of the reasons which induced Laval to insist upon the immediate constitution of a regular diocese. Summoned to produce forthwith the authority for their pretended ecclesiastical jurisdiction, "they produced a copy of the royal declaration, dated March 27th, 1659, based on the bulls of the Bishop of Petræa, and other documents, establishing incontestably the legal authority of the apostolic vicar." The council had to yield; it restored his freedom to M. Morel, and postponed until later its decision as to the validity of the claims of the ecclesiastical court.
This was a check to the ambitions of the Count de Frontenac. The following letter from Louis XIV dealt a still more cruel blow to his absolutism: "In order to punish M. Perrot for having resisted your authority," the prince wrote to him, "I have had him put into the Bastille for some time; so that when he returns to your country, not only will this punishment render him more circumspect in his duty, but it will serve as an example to restrain others. But if I must inform you of my sentiments, after having thus satisfied my authority which was violated in your person, I will tell you that without absolute need you ought not to have these orders executed throughout the extent of a local jurisdiction like Montreal without communicating with its governor.... I have blamed the action of the Abbé de Fénelon, and have commanded him to return no more to Canada; but I must tell you that it was difficult to enter a criminal procedure against him, or to compel the priests of St. Sulpice to bear witness against him. He should have been delivered over to his bishop or to the grand vicar to suffer the ecclesiastical penalties, or should have been arrested and sent back to France by the first ship. I have been told besides," added the monarch, "that you would not permit ecclesiastics and others to attend to their missions and other duties, or even leave their residence without a passport from Montreal to Quebec; that you often summoned them for very slight causes; that you intercepted their letters and did not allow them liberty to write. If the whole or part of these things be true, you must mend your ways." On his part Colbert enjoined upon the governor a little more calmness and gentleness. "His Majesty," wrote the minister, "has ordered me to explain to you, privately, that it is absolutely necessary for the good of your service to moderate your conduct, and not to single out with too great severity faults committed either against his service or against the respect due to your person or character." Colbert rightly felt that fault-finding letters were not sufficient to keep within bounds a temperament as fiery as that of the governor of Canada; on the other hand, a man of Frontenac's worth was too valuable to the colony to think of dispensing with his services. The wisest course was to renew the Sovereign Council, and in order to withdraw its members from the too preponderant influence of the governor, to put their nomination in the hands of the king.