Now began the preparations on a great scale for the colonization of New France.  By the spring of 1628 a fleet of eighteen or twenty ships belonging to the company assembled in the harbour of Dieppe, laden deep with food, building materials, implements, guns, and ammunition, including about one hundred and fifty pieces of ordnance for the forts at the trading-posts.  Out into the English Channel one bright April day this fleet swept, under the command of Claude de Roquemont, one of the Associates.  On the decks of the ships were men and women looking hopefully to the New World for fortune and happiness, and Recollets and Jesuits going to a field at this time deemed broad enough for the energies of both.  Lalemant, who early in 1627 had followed Noyrot to France, was now returning to his mission with his hopes realized.  A Catholic empire could be built up in the New World, the savages could be christianized, and the Iroquois, the greatest menace of the colony, if they would not listen to reason, could be subdued.  The Dutch and the English on the Atlantic seaboard could be kept within bounds; possibly driven from the continent; then the whole of North America would be French and Catholic.  Thus, perhaps, dreamed Lalemant and his companions, the Jesuit Paul Ragueneau and the Recollets Daniel Boursier and Francois Girard, as they paced the deck of the vessel that bore them westward.

But there was a lion in the path.  The revolt of the Huguenots of La Rochelle had led to war between France and England, and this gave Sir William Alexander (Earl of Stirling) the chance he desired.  In 1621 Alexander had received from James I a grant of Nova Scotia or Acadia, and this grant had been renewed later by Charles I. And it was Alexander’s ambition to drive the French not only from their posts in Acadia but from the whole of North America.  To this end he formed a company under the name of the Adventurers of Canada.  One of its leading members was Gervase Kirke, a wealthy London merchant, who had married a Huguenot maiden, Elizabeth Goudon or Gowding of Dieppe.  Now when war broke out the Adventurers equipped three staunch privateers.  Captain David Kirke, the eldest son of Gervase, commanded the flagship Abigail, and his brothers, Lewis and Thomas, the other two ships.  The fleet, though small, was well suited for the work in hand.  While making ready for sea the Adventurers learned of the much larger fleet of the One Hundred Associates; but they learned, too, that the vessels were chiefly transports, of little use in a sea-fight.  David Kirke was, on the other hand, equipped to fight, and he bore letters of marque from the king of England authorizing him to capture and destroy any French vessels and ’utterly to drive away and root out the French settlements in Nova Scotia and Canada.’  The omens were evil for New France when, early in the spring of 1628, the Kirkes weighed anchor and shaped their course for her shores.