[1] The Colony of New France was officially settled during the reign of Henry IV in 1608 when Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec, and in the following years it came under the control of several fur trading companies, eventually consolidating control under the newly founded Company of One Hundred Associates in 1627, which was made up of investors back in France, who would be charged with supplying ships and provisions to transport a certain number of colonists to settle in the territory every year, as well as covering all administrative costs for the colony, and in return were granted a monopoly on virtually the entire fur trade in Canada.
[2] The small group of businessmen and nobles in the young colony led by Pierre Legardeur and Jean-Paul Godefroy, came up with the idea to take over the mandate of overseeing the settlement of Canada from the Company of One Hundred Associates, whose investors were far removed across the ocean back in France, and in return profit on the monopoly of the fur trade themselves in the colony.
[3] Not long after this, following the protests of several rival and disgruntled Canadian lords and businessmen back in France (which in fact included fellow founder and director Robert Giffard- see section below), the royal authorities in Paris became wary of such large revenues from the North American fur trade being managed and profited on in a far away, sparsely settled territory by such a small group of individuals, and citing "extravagances" by the twelve original owners and directors, took back control of the company just two years later in 1647, and replaced the board of directors with a regulatory council, made up of the Governor and several other officials to act solely as an arbitrary body for oversight, with the company shares and the entire fur trade with it soon after being opened up to the general public.
Matters worsened when the fur trade and subsequently the company went into sharp decline following the French-allied Hurons being pushed further west in a war with their Iroquois enemies in 1652.
[6] The company was founded and initially managed (and virtually entirely owned) by a board of twelve directors that included:[7] Two years after its formation a regulatory council replaced the owners and directors, which was composed of the Governor of New France, the Governor of Montréal, the Superior of the Jesuits in Canada, and they were assisted by the syndics, or locally elected legal representatives, of the three major towns of Québec, Trois-Rivières, and Montréal.