CHAPTER IV. 1657-1668. THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC.

_Domestic Strife.--Jesuit and Sulpitian.--Abbé Queylus.--Francois de Laval.--The Zealots of Caen.--Gallican and Ultramontane.--The Rival Claimants.--Storm at Quebec--Laval Triumphant._

|Canada, gasping under the Iroquois tomahawk, might, one would suppose, have thought her cup of tribulation full, and, sated with inevitable woe, have sought consolation from the wrath without in a holy calm within. Not so, however; for while the heathen raged at the door, discord rioted at the hearthstone. Her domestic quarrels were wonderful in number, diversity, and bitterness. There was the standing quarrel of Montreal and Quebec, the quarrels of priests with each other, of priests with the governor, and of the governor with the intendant, besides ceaseless wranglings of rival traders and rival peculators.

Some of these disputes were local and of no special significance; while others are very interesting, because, on a remote and obscure theatre, they represent, sometimes in striking forms, the contending passions and principles of a most important epoch of history. To begin with one which even to this day has left a root of bitterness behind it.

The association of pious enthusiasts who had founded Montreal * was reduced in 1657 to a remnant of five or six persons, whose ebbing zeal and overtaxed purses were no longer equal to the devout but arduous enterprise. They begged the priests of the Seminary of St. Sulpice to take it off their hands. The priests consented; and, though the conveyance of the island of Montreal to these its new proprietors did not take effect till some years later, four of the Sulpitian fathers, Queylus, Souart, Galinée, and Allet, came out to the colony and took it in charge. Thus far Canada had had no bishop, and the Sulpitians now aspired to give it one from their own brotherhood. Many years before, when the Recollets had a foothold in the colony, they too, or at least some of them, had cherished the hope of giving Canada a bishop of their own. ** As for the Jesuits, who for nearly thirty years had of themselves constituted the Canadian church, they had been content thus far to dispense with a bishop; for, having no rivals in the field, they had felt no need of episcopal support.

The Sulpitians put forward Queylus as their candidate for the new bishopric. The assembly of French clergy approved, and Cardinal Mazarin

* See Jesuits in North America, chap. xv.

** Mémoire qui faiet pour l’affaire des P.P. Recollects de la province de St Denys ditte de Paris touchant le droigt qu’ils ont depuis l’an 1615, d’aller en Quanada soubs l’authorité de Sa Maiesté, etc. 1637.

himself seemed to sanction, the nomination. The Jesuits saw that their time of action was come. It was they who had borne the heat and burden of the day, the toils, privations, and martyrdoms, while as yet the Sulpitians had done nothing and endured nothing. If any body of ecclesiastics was to have the nomination of a bishop, it clearly belonged to them, the Jesuits. Their might, too, matched their right. They were strong at court; Mazarin withdrew his assent, and the Jesuits were invited to name a bishop to their liking.

Meanwhile the Sulpitians, despairing of the bishopric, had sought their solace elsewhere. Ships bound for Canada had usually sailed from ports within the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Rouen, and the departing missionaries had received their ecclesiastical powers from him, till he had learned to regard Canada as an outlying section of his diocese. Not unwilling to assert his claims, he now made Queylus his vicar-general for all Canada, thus clothing him with episcopal powers, and placing him over the heads of the Jesuits. Queylus, in effect, though not in name, a bishop, left his companion Souart in the spiritual charge of Montreal, came down to Quebec, announced his new dignity, and assumed the curacy of the parish. The Jesuits received him at first with their usual urbanity, an exercise of selfcontrol rendered more easy by their knowledge that one more potent than Queylus would soon arrive to supplant him. *

* A detailed account of the experiences of Queylus at Quebec, immediately after his arrival, as related by himself, will be found in a memoir by the Sulpitian Allet, in Morale Pratique des Jésuites, XXXIV. chap, xii. In