Hudson’s Bay Company [1670–]

b. 1670 —

From Merk’s introduction to Fur Trade and Empire:

The journal opens with a reference to the “Honble. Committee,” a reminder that there is a charter and a corporation’s history in the background. The charter dates back to the period of the Stuart Restoration. It was conferred by Charles II on his “dear and entirely beloved Cousin, Prince Rupert,” and a group of associates incorporated as “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay.” With the charter the King gave a province named in honor of the cherished kinsman “Rupert’s Land” The bounds of the province no man knew. The grant was described in the deed as embracing the lands and waters draining into Hudson Bay and Hudson Straits. That meant extension on the east nearly to the shores of Labrador; on the south to the northern watershed of the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes and the upper Missouri; on the west to the Rocky Mountain divide of the Saskatchewan River and the eastern divide of the Athabasca River, Great Slave Lake and Back’s River; and on the north to the line of the watershed of Hudson Straits. This immense territory was granted free from seignorial reservations; it was given to the Governor and Company to hold as “absolute lords and proprietors” in “free and common soccage.” The charter gave all mines of gold, silver, gems and other precious stones in Rupert’s Land, and exclusive rights of trade and of fishing. Subjects of the King other than those authorized by the Governor and Company were straitly forbidden to intrude on the Company’s exclusive privileges or to “directly or indirectly visit, haunt, frequent, or trade, traffic or adventure by way of merchandizing into or from any of the said territories” under penalty of forfeiture of all goods brought from thence to England and such other punishment as should seem meet to the King for so high a contempt. For this grant of principality and privilege the price exacted in the charter was two elks and two black beavers, to be paid each year to the King and his successors “whenever they should happen to enter into the said territories.”

Governmental rights over Rupert’s Land, as well as proprietorship, passed with this charter to the Governor and Company, the power to legislate for the territory and for the servants of the Company, the right to impose pains and penalties provided they be reasonable and not repugnant to the laws of England, and the authority to administer justice in all causes, whether civil or criminal, according to the laws of the Kingdom. These were imperial powers, ample for the erection of regular governments as the later history of Red River Colony showed. The Company was entrusted with military authority, the right to enter into peace or war “with any prince or people whatsoever that are not Christian,” to send ships, men and munitions into Rupert’s Land, to build there castles and fortifications and to garrison them, and to choose and commission commanders and officers. Rupert’s Land under this charter was the proprietary colony of the Hudson’s Bay Company and as such for two centuries it was held. But it was not held in peace. The gifts of the charter were challenged in England and abroad. France had claims to the territory as part of the province of New France; she had bestowed the region on one of her colonizing companies much before 67o and she was not disposed to give up her rights there without a struggle. This was one of the questions that was fought over in the long Anglo-French duel for mastery in the New World; and Rupert’s Land, or parts of it, changed hands repeatedly with the fortunes of war before its fate was finally determined in 1763 by the expulsion of France from the continent of North America. (1)