War had at length broken out in France. The Huguenot
revolt had come to a head. Rochelle was in arms against the King; and
Richelieu, with his royal ward, was beleaguering it with the whole
strength of the kingdom. Charles the First of England, urged by the
heated passions of Buckingham, had declared himself for the rebels, and
sent a fleet to their aid. At home, Charles detested the followers of
Calvin as dangerous to his own authority; abroad, he befriended them as
dangerous to the authority of a rival. In France, Richelieu crushed
Protestantism as a curb to the house of Bourbon; in Germany, he nursed
and strengthened it as a curb to the house of Austria.
The attempts of Sir William Alexander to colonize Acadia had of late
turned attention in England towards the New World; and on the breaking
out of the war an expedition was set on foot, under the auspices of that
singular personage, to seize on the French possessions in North America.
It was a private enterprise, undertaken by London merchants, prominent
among whom was Gervase Kirke, an Englishman of Derbyshire, who had long
lived at Dieppe, and had there married a Frenchwoman. Gervase Kirke and
his associates fitted out three small armed ships, commanded
respectively by his sons David, Lewis, and Thomas.
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