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. . . . arrived suddenly at Saint André one evening in September, 1703, in the hope to recruit there at least some disciples; some clergy to preach the gospel; some laymen to found a colony; his brother offered to accompany him with wife and two children, but he required from the King the grant of two square leagues of land to be held in fief from the crown of France, with water mills, wind mills, the rank of esquire, and finally permission to cross and recross the ocean whenever he thought best.

At Saint-Omer, at Serques, where Thomas went to promote the advantages of his project, he obtained many adherents; but the monks of St. André knew their abbe too well to risk following him in such an adventure. When it became necessary to leave family and country, when on his return from Paris, where he was to organize the voyage, André Thomas made his appeal to the missionaries and the colonists, no one presented himself; he himself, moved by the tears of his parents, hesitated and sought trivial excuses; he wrote to the Bishop of Quebec that an abbe ought not to abandon his community and traverse the seas without the authorization of the Pope, and the Bishop answered him through the minister Pontchartrain, that he ought to fulfil his engagements, and to be at La Rochelle the 12th of June, 1703. The Bishop of Quebec cared little for the colonists recruited by promises, but he counted upon the missionaries and would not start without them; a last time he wrote to André Thomas; then, as time pressed, he dismissed him in disgrace, whilst the Recollets took his place on the ship which made sail for Canada.—From the "Histoire des abbayes de Doumartin et de Saint-André-au-Bois," par le Bon Abberie de Calonne. Arras. Sueur-Charruey, 1875, pp. 191 and following.