10 HISTORY OF NORTON. 



with 8 ships and two pinnaces. They arrived at Great Caspe on 

 the 15th of June, and at Todousac and Quebec between that 

 date and the 3rd of July. Here they traded with the natives 

 for skins. Captain Thomas, with 200 men, demanded the 

 surrender of Quebec, about the 3rd of July, and it was given up 

 to him on the 9th. Upwards of 1,700 beaver skins were taken 

 in the fort, and came into the Company's hands. On the 5th of 

 March, 1630, a commission was issued to inquire what goods, 

 merchandise, and other things, had been taken by Captain David 

 Kirke from the fort of Quebec, the College of Jesuits, and the 

 French Admiral Rochemont, whose arms the Kirkes afterwards 

 took. A month later, the French General, De Caen, petitioned 

 the Privy Council, complaining that Captain Kirke would not 

 give up the beaver skins, for which he had offered the highest 

 price, nor the keys of the warehouse, to the Lord Mayor of 

 London, though application had been made to Mistress Kirke, 

 his mother, (his father, Gervase Kirke, being dead*) to W. 

 Berkeley, and Robert Charlton. In May, 1631, Captain David 

 was examined before Sir H. Marten, the result of his examination 

 being as follows : — He was employed as chief commander in 

 two voyages to Canada, in 1628, at the charge of his late father, 

 Gervase Kirke, and other merchants in London, and in 1629 at 

 that of Sir W. Alexander, the younger, Gervase Kirke, and their 

 partners. He declares that on the first voyage he took 

 possession of all Canada, except Quebec ; and on the second, of 

 Quebec also. He had a commission to expel the French from 

 that country. He was assaulted by a French pinnace, commanded 

 by Emery de Caen, two of his company being killed, and 12 or 

 18 others wounded. He acquired the beaver skins in trading 

 with the natives and the French for victuals, and did not take 

 them from Quebec ; for when the fort surrendered there was 

 nothing but a tub of bitter roots in it. He complains that inter- 

 lopers presume to trade in the ports of Canada, to the great 

 damage of the adventurers. 



* He died in London, and was buried at All Hallows', Bread Street, on the 

 [13th] Dec., 1639. 





