governor to the remaining members of the council, * on which Mézy declared him excluded from all public functions whatever, till the king’s pleasure should be known. ** Thus church and state still frowned on each other, and new disputes soon arose to widen the breach between them. On the first establishment of the council, an order had been passed for the election of a mayor and two aldermen (échevins) for Quebec, which it was proposed to erect into a city, though it had only seventy houses and less than a thousand inhabitants. Repentigny was chosen mayor, and Madry and Charron aldermen; but the choice was not agreeable to the bishop, and the three functionaries declined to act, influence having probably been brought to bear on them to that end. The council now resolved that a mayor was needless, and the people were permitted to choose a syndic in his stead. These municipal elections were always so controlled by the authorities that the element of liberty which they seemed to represent was little but a mockery. On the present occasion, after an unaccountable delay of ten months, twenty-two persons cast their votes in presence of the council, and the choice fell on Charron. The real question was whether the new syndic should belong to the governor or to the bishop. Charron leaned to the governor’s party. The ecclesiastics insisted that the people were dissatisfied, and a new election was ordered, but the voters did not come. The governor now
* Bourdon au Conseil, 13 Mars, 1664.
** Ordre du Gouverneur, 13 Mars, 1664.
sent messages to such of the inhabitants as he knew to be in his interest, who gathered in the council chamber, voted under his eye, and again chose a syndic agreeable to him. Laval’s party protested in vain. *
The councillors held office for a year, and the year had now expired. The governor and the bishop, it will be remembered, had a joint power of appointment; but agreement between them was impossible. Laval was for replacing his partisans, Bourdon, Villeray, Auteuil, and La Ferté. Mézy refused; and on the eighteenth of September he reconstructed the council by his sole authority, retaining of the old councillors only Amours and Tilly, and replacing the rest by Denis, La Tesserie, and Péronne de Maze, the surviving son of Dumesnil.
Again Laval protested; but Mézy proclaimed his choice by sound of drum, and caused placards to be posted, full, according to Father Lalemant, of abuse against the bishop. On this he was excluded from confession and absolution. He complained loudly; “but our reply was,” says the father, “that God knew every thing.” **
This unanswerable but somewhat irrelevant response failed to satisfy him, and it was possibly on this occasion that an incident occurred which is recounted by the bishop’s eulogist, La Tour. He says that Mézy, with some unknown design, appeared before the church at the head of a band of soldiers, while Laval was saying mass. The service over, the bishop presented himself at the door, on which, to
* Registre du Conseil Supérieur.
** Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1664.
the governor's confusion, all the soldiers respectfully saluted him. * The story may have some foundation, but it is not supported by contemporary evidence.
On the Sunday after Mézy’s coup d’etat, the pulpits resounded with denunciations. The people listened, doubtless, with becoming respect; but their sympathies were with the governor; and he, on his part, had made appeals to them at more than one crisis of the quarrel. He now fell into another indiscretion. He banished Bourdon and Villeray, and ordered them home to France.
They carried with them the instruments of their revenge, the accusations of Laval and the Jesuits against the author of their woes. Of these accusations one alone would have sufficed. Mézy had appealed to the people. It is true that he did so from no love of popular liberty, but simply do make head against an opponent; yet the act alone was enough, and he received a peremptory recall. Again Laval had triumphed. He had made one governor and unmade two, if not three. The modest Levite, as one of his biographers calls him in his earlier days, had become the foremost power in Canada.