David Kirke

A favourite of Charles I of England, Kirke's downfall came in 1651 when he was arrested after being accused of witholding taxes collected on behalf of the English government.

An English fleet, consisting of six warships and three pinnaces, left Gravesend, Kent in March 1629 with Jacques Michel, a deserter from Samuel Champlain, to act as pilot on the St. Lawrence River.

Champlain sent a party from Quebec, whose residents were on the point of starvation, to meet an expected French relief fleet under Émery de Caen [fr].

Kirke, now aware of the desperate conditions facing the Quebecers, sent his brothers Lewis and Thomas to demand a French surrender.

[5] However, Champlain argued that the seizure of Quebec by the Kirkes was unlawful, as the war had already ended; and he worked to have the colony returned to France.

As part of the ongoing negotiations of their exit from the Anglo-French War, in 1632 Charles I of England agreed to return the lands in exchange for Louis XIII paying his wife's dowry.

[5] Kirke had brought to Quebec an enslaved boy born in Madagascar, and before leaving the colony in July 1632 to return to England, he sold the slave to French clerk Olivier Le Baillif, who had collaborated with the English during the occupation.

Baillif purchased the slave for 50 écus, the equivalent of half a year of wages for a skilled worker, and in 1633 baptised him as Olivier Le Jeune.

A portion of Newfoundland, the Avalon Peninsula, had already been granted to George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, but he was accused of abandoning his colony before his death in 1632, and the lands were transferred to Kirke.

The original governorship of the Avalon Peninsula had passed to Baltimore's son, Cecilius Calvert, who had installed William Hill as governor.

At the time the Grand Banks of Newfoundland were being fished by many European nations, and Kirke's 5% tax gave an advantage to the English fishermen in the area.

Kirke brought the entire trade network south of St. John's under the control of a growing family commercial empire.

[8] In 1651 a team of six commissioners, led by Maryland merchant John Treworgie, was sent to Ferryland to seize Kirke and bring him to England to stand trial.