Pro

prietaries as sources of profit and revenue. prietary rights in both the colonies were bought and sold so frequently and controlled by so many stockholders that the management of the colonies was neither systematic nor efficient. Controversies among the proprietaries themselves, between the proprietaries and the inhabitants, and between the colonies and their neighbors rendered a rapid and prosperous growth practically impossible.

WHI

CHAPTER IX

FOUNDATION OF THE CAROLINAS

(1663-1671)

HILE New England, New York, and New Jersey were working out the problems of colonization and reorganization, settlement was also in progress in the vacant or sparsely settled regions of the southern coast. There the low land, differing essentially from the coast formations of New England, constituted a plateau but a few feet above the level of the sea, which was traversed by wide-mouthed rivers and skirted by islands often large in extent and identical in soil and verdure with the main-land. The broken and indented coast formed natural harbors, and the rivers, which were navigable from the sea back to the rapids and falls of the second terrace or lower pine belt, made transportation easy. By furnishing a means of internal communication unknown to the people of the northern colonies, they made possible the scattered settlements which characterized the southern colonies, notably Virginia.

To the south of Virginia lay a wide and empty territory stretching indefinitely towards the Spanish

settlement at St. Augustine. After the revoking of the charter of the London Company in 1624 the king was free to make such grant of this southern territory as he pleased, and in 1629 he gave to Sir Robert Heath all the region lying between the thirty-first and thirty-sixth parallels of latitude. Heath's plans fell still-born among colonial ventures. The land was not easily accessible either overland or by sea, and such was its reputation for unwholesomeness that few men from other colonies ventured to explore it. Moreover, it was claimed in part by Spain, and hence was looked upon askance by Englishmen who were seeking homes in the New World.

After the failure of Raleigh's unfortunate expeditions, the first Englishman, so far as we know, to reach Carolina was Henry Taverner, a ship captain employed by English promoters, Vassell and Kingswell, to carry passengers to Virginia. In 1632 Taverner made a voyage of discovery in his ship, the Mayflower, and entered the St. Helena River. In 1634 he came from England in a new ship, the Thomas, with servants, clothing, and provisions for the purpose of taking Kingswell and his company from Virginia to settle in Carolina, but for some reason the plan failed.1 Between 1632 and 1660 only one journey is recorded." About

1 MSS. in Public Record Office, Admiralty Court, Instance and Prize, Examinations, 51, Dec. 12, 17, 1634, April 14, 1635. 2 N. C. Col. Records, I., 19, 20.

1660, however, two efforts were made at settlement, one by colonists from Virginia, who planted a community at Albemarle, on the Chowan River, destined to become the nucleus of the colony of North Carolina; the other by New England traders from Massachusetts, who, after inspecting the lands at the mouth of the Cape Fear River-then known as the Charles-departed, leaving behind them, attached to a post, a warning in which they denounced the country.1

Thus far, therefore, the territory south of Virginia was unoccupied except in the northern border, at a point some seventy miles from the James. Just at this time discontent and uneasiness were rife in Barbadoes. The land there was originally allotted in small parcels, the largest of which seems to have been thirty acres in size, and proved only sufficient for the maintenance of a man and his family: and when the necessities of sugar-planting led to the consolidating of these small estates, many landholders were forced to emigrate to other colonies. In addition, the return of Charles II. to the English throne was followed by restrictive measures which created dissatisfaction, because they were deemed contrary to the liberal terms given to the royalists by the charter of 1652, in consequence of their surrendering the island to the fleet of Parliament. Among those directly interested in the develop

1 N. C. Col. Records, I., 36-38.

Davis, Cavaliers and Roundheads of Barbadoes, 80.

2

ment of the island was Colonel John Colleton, major - general in Barbadoes, a member of the Barbadian council under the protectorate,' and a man of influence and authority in the island. Colleton returned to England in 1660 and was made a member of the newly appointed Council for Foreign Plantations, where he came into friendly relations with Anthony Ashley Cooper (soon after created Lord Ashley), a member of the committee of the Council of State in 1653.9 Both Colleton and Ashley knew of the unoccupied lands of Carolina, and there can be little doubt that when the discontent of many of the Barbadians gave rise to a new project for a settlement elsewhere, Colleton suggested applying to the king for a grant of these continental territories.

As both Colleton and Ashley had served the protectorate, they deemed it wise to associate with themselves others who, by their loyalty to the king in exile, had a greater claim on the king's bounty and were at the same time thoroughly interested in colonial affairs. Of these Clarendon and Carteret stand out most prominently. Consequently, April 3, 1663, probably at the request of Ashley and

4

1 Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, pp. 456, 476.

• Ibid., 1661-1668, §§ 91, 470; N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., III., 48, 49. Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574–1660, p. 412.

4 Ashley's influence seems likely from the known facts as to his procuring the grant of the Bahamas in 1670. See Shaftesbury Papers (S. C. Hist. Soc., Collections, V.), 153, 180, 207-210; Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1669-1674, § 311, 1675-1676, § 384.