CHAPTER XII.

THE CAROLINAS.

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THE CAROLINA PATENTS OF 1663 AND 1665. THE PATENTEES. EARLIER GRANTS AND PROJECTED SETTLEMENTS. - FIRST SETTLERS ON ALBEMARLE SOUND. - NEW ENGLAND MEN AT THE MOUTH OF CAPE FEAR RIVER. THE COLONY UNDER YEAMANS.- ORGANIZATION OF THE ALBEMARLE COLONY. LOCKE'S "FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONS. - INDEPENDENT LEGISLATION AT ALBEMARLE. - GOVERNORS AND PROGRESS OF THE CAPE FEAR SETTLEMENT. JOSEPH WEST. - DISSENSIONS IN THE NORTH UNDER CARTERET AND MILLER. THE PASQUOTANK INSURRECTION.— GOVERNOR SOTHEL

By the capture of New Netherland, that "New English Nation which Raleigh had hoped to see, stretched for the first time in an unbroken line along the Atlantic coast, from James River, in Virginia, to Nova Scotia. And nearly half a century had passed away, after Raleigh was led to the scaffold, before a permanent colony was planted in the more southern region, where his first attempts had so unhappily failed.

First grant

-

Only the year before the King bestowed upon the Duke of York that munificent gift of a province which not only was not of Carolina. his to give, but did not even belong to England, either by 1663. right of possession or by right of discovery, the same generous monarch granted to some other gentlemen about the court a patent of a wide tract of country south of Virginia. The grant extended from about the thirtieth to the thirty-sixth parallel of latitude, or from the St. John's River, in Florida, to nearly the present southern boundary of Virginia, and from the Atlantic to that vague South Sea, still thought to be within reach of a moderate journey. One of its early governors wrote of this region that "it was indeed the very Center of the habitable Part of the Northern Hemisphere lying parallel with the Land of Canaan. . . . not being pestered with the violent Heats of the more Southern colonies, or the extream and violent Colds of the more Northern Settlements." 1 And another of its earliest historians says that from its latitude and situation Carolina must needs be "a delicious country, being placed in that girdle 1 Description of that Fertile and Pleasant Province of Carolina, etc., etc. By John Archdale. [London, 1707.] In Carroll's S. C. Hist. Coll., vol. ii.

1665.]

THE PATENTS AND PATENTEES.

269

of the world which affords wine, oil, fruit, grain, and silk, with other rich commodities, besides a sweet air, moderate climate, and fertile soil. . . . blessings that spin out the thread of life to its utmost extent, and crown our days with the sweets of health and plenty."1 There is something of that love of hyperbole which belongs to the writers of that period in these descriptions, something of an evident desire to attract emigration by means not unknown in later times. Much may be pardoned to these influences, even as we pardon the want of strict scientific accuracy in the author of the history we quote from, who, in the list of "Insects" of Carolina, gives the first place to alligators and rattlesnakes.

The first charter was dated (old style) the 24th of March, 1663;

Portrait of Shaftesbury.

two years later The Second

1665.

this was amended Charter. by a second,

June 30, 1665,- which extended the boundaries a degree southward, and a half degree further north.

The patentees on whom the king thus bestowed a territory including The patenall of the present tees.

States of North and South Carolina and Georgia, with its indefinite Western boundary of the South Sea, were Clarendon, then Lord Chancellor; Monk, the Duke of Albemarle, the leader in the Restoration; the Earl of Craven; Lord Berkeley; Lord Ashley (later the Earl of Shaftesbury) Sir George Carteret ; Sir John Colleton; and Sir William Berkeley, of Virginia, Lord Berkeley's younger brother. Shaftesbury was the leader in this enterprise, and he was chiefly responsible for all that the proprietors did, or left undone. Home affairs occupied his associates; but they never entirely diverted him from the affairs of the colony. Almost every document connected with it shows traces of his influence, and he hoped to find in it an opportunity for carrying out those political ideas which were otherwise impracticable in his time.

1 The History of Carolina, containing the Exact Description and Natural History of that Country, etc., etc. By John Lawson, Gent., Surveyor General of North Carolina. [London, 1714.]

Earlier grants and

projected

The territory thus defined as Carolina had not been altogether neglected while colonies were planted in other places. As early as 1630, the attorney-general of England under Charles I., settlements. Sir Robert Heath, had secured a grant of almost the same region, under the name of the Province of Carolana, on condition that he should "in a reasonable time" colonize it," and Christianize the native Indians." But neither he, nor Lord Maltravers (afterwards the Earl of Arundel), to whom Heath transferred his title, succeeded in making any permanent settlements. This claim, and another by the heirs of Sir Richard Granfield, were revived when the grant of 1663 was made to Clarendon and his associates, but the patents were recalled, on the ground that their terms had never been fulfilled.2

Companies of adventurers had, at different times, scattered themselves along the coast and on the banks of rivers not far distant from the parent colony of Virginia. Some of these were in pursuit of Indian trade; others were restless spirits to whom even the lax discipline of Jamestown and its neighborhood was irksome; and some, perhaps, were of those whose religious beliefs exposed them to annoyance, if not persecution, in a region where the Established Church was formally maintained. As early as 1609 there were outlying plantations about the Nansemond River, and doubtless many unrecorded expeditions, if not settlements, were made in the territory to the south of this district, in the twenty years following, before the grant was made to Heath. In the winter of 1621-2 John Pory, sometime Secretary of Virginia, a great traveller, and the friend of Hakluyt,3 explored as far as the Chowan, where he found "a very fruitful and pleasant country, yielding two harvests in a year, and much silk grass.'

"4

In 1643, the Virginia Assembly, without regard to Heath's patent, made trading grants to a company which purposed to traffic along the Roanoke; though perhaps their design included only the upper part of the stream, which was outside the patent, for they described it as the river lying southwest of the Appomattox.5 Later attempts and grants of the same kind are also obscurely mentioned; but there is no record of their results, and it seems probable that nothing more

1 See vol. i., p. 487, note.

2 Letter of the Lords Proprietors to Sir William Berkeley, in Chalmers' Annals.

8 Pory visited Plymouth in 1622, and Bradford says of him, " Himselfe after his returne (to England) did this poore plantation much credite amongst those of no mean ranck." He was a scholar, and a man of a good deal of influence among the early adventurers, but became at last a penniless and rather disreputable vagabond. See a sketch of him in Neill's History of The Virginia Company.

Smith's History of Virginia.

Hening's Virginia Statutes, i., 552.

1653.]

EARLY GRANTS AND SETTLEMENTS.

271

than a fair knowledge of the upper part of North Carolina was gained through all of them until 1653. In July of that Settlements year, Roger Green, a clergyman, and a party from the Nan- of Green and semond region, penetrated to Albemarle Sound, and a grant

Durant.

of land was made by Virginia to Green himself of a thousand acres. Similar grants were promised to all who would plant upon that coast and the neighboring rivers.1

Others scattered themselves, about the same time, along the northern side of the Sound. Among the earliest - probably indeed the very

first was one George Durant, a Quaker; and "Durant's Neck," about midway between the Chowan and the sea, commemorates his name as one of the founders of the State. That this was sometime before

1662 is shown by the records of the Court of Chancery of North Carolina.

date of the

A suit was tried in 1697 between the heirs of George Durant and the heir of one Edward Catchmaid, for possession of the Probable lands first occupied by Durant. Catchmaid, who was en- Chowan settrusted by Durant to procure for him a grant of these lands tlement. from Governor Berkeley of Virginia, treacherously took out the patent in his own name. The deed of restitution which he was compelled to make, and which was produced in evidence on the trial, bore the date of March, 1662 (new style, 1663). Catchmaid must therefore have been in the country for some time previous to that date; and the record further shows that when he came it was by Durant's 1 Hening's Virginia Statutes, i., 380.

invitation, who was then in the occupation of lands, having "come in with the first seaters," and "did for the space of two years bestow much labor and cost in finding out the said country."1 By "first seaters" were evidently meant the first in the province of Carolina, — not merely the first in that particular neighborhood; and it is to them, probably, that Lawson refers when he says: "A second settlement [second, that is, after Raleigh's time] of this country was made about fifty years ago, in that part we now call Albemarl County, and chiefly in Chuwon precinct, by several substantial planters from Virginia and other plantations." Lawson's visit was in 1700.

Explorations and settlement

landers.

There were probably few bays or rivers along the coast, from the Bay of Fundy to Florida, unexplored by the New Englanders, where there was any promise of profitable trade with by New Eng- the Indians. The colonist followed the trader wherever unclaimed lands were open to occupation. These energetic pioneers explored the sounds and rivers south of Virginia in pursuit of Indian traffic, contrasted the salubrity of the climate and the fertility of the soil with that region of rocks where they had made their homes, and where winter reigns for more than half the year. In 1660 or 1661, a company of these men purchased of the natives and settled upon a tract of land at the mouth of Cape Fear River. Their first purpose was apparently the raising of stock, as the country seemed peculiarly fitted to grazing, and they brought a number of neat cattle and swine to be allowed to feed at large under the care of herdsmen. But they aimed at something more than this nomadic occupation, and a company was formed, in which a number of adventurers in London were enlisted, to found a permanent colony. Discouraged, however, either by the want of immediate success, or for want of time to carry out their plans, or for some less creditable reason, the settlement was soon abandoned.

Abandon.

New Eng

land settlement.

On this point there is sufficient evidence. In 1663, some persons from Barbadoes were on the coast in search of a suitable ment of the place for the planting of a colony. They visited the spot where the New Englanders had been, and their report is that they found "a writing left in a post at the point of Cape Fear river by those New England men that left cattle with the Indians there, the contents whereof tended not only to the disparagement of the land about the said river, but also to the great discouragement of all such as should hereafter come into those parts to settle."2 So, also, the London associates of this New England Company declared, at a meeting held in August, 1663, "that at the pres

1 Hawks's History of North Carolina, vol. ii., p. 132.

2 Lawson's History of Carolina.