THE CHARTER OF MASSACHUSETTS ABROGATED. 127 XII. dare not comply with the wills of men against the CHAP. will of God, we suffer in a good cause, and shall be accounted martyrs in the next generation and at the 1683. great day."1 The decision of the colony, by its representatives, i on record. "The deputies consent not, but adhere to Nov. their former bills." 30. Addresses were forwarded to the king, urging forbearance; but entreaty and remonstrance were vain. 1684. A scire facias was issued in England; and before the colony could act upon it, just one year and six days after the judgment against the city of London, the charter was conditionally adjudged to be forfeited; and 18. the judgment was confirmed on the first day of the Michaelmas term. A copy of the judgment was 1685. received in Boston in July of the following year. Thus fell the charter, which the fleet of Winthrop had brought to the shores of New England, which had been cherished with anxious care through every vicissitude, and on which the fabric of New England liberties had rested. There was now no barrier between the people of Massachusetts and the absolute will of the court of England. Was religion in danger? Was landed property secure? Would commercial enterprise be paralyzed by restrictions? Was New England destined to learn from its own experience the nature of despotism? Gloomy forebodings overspread the colony. 1 Mass. Hist. Coll. xxi. 74–81. Every word, unless it be some small connecting words, is taken exactly from the old Hutchinson papers. June July 2. CHAPTER XIII. SHAFTESBURY AND LOCKE LEGISLATE FOR CAROLINA. CHAP. MEANTIME Civilization had advanced at the south; and twin stars were emerging beyond the limits of Virginia. The country over which Soto had rambled in quest of gold, where Calvinists, befriended by Coligny, had sought a refuge, and where Raleigh had hoped to lay the foundations of colonial principalities, was beginning to submit to the culture of civilization. Massachusetts and Carolina were both colonized under proprietary charters, and of both the charters were subverted; but while the proprietaries of the former were emigrants themselves, united by the love of religious liberty, the proprietaries of the latter were a company of English courtiers, combined for the purpose of a vast speculation in lands. The government established in Massachusetts was essentially popular, and was the growth of the soil; the constitution of Carolina was invented in England. Massachusetts was originally colonized by a feeble band of suffering yet resolute exiles, and its institutions were the natural result of the good sense and instinct for liberty of an agricultural people; Carolina was settled under the auspices of the wealthiest and most influential nobility, and its fundamental laws were framed with forethought by the most sagacious politician and the PROPRIETARIES OF CAROLINA. 129 XIII. most profound philosopher of England. The king, CHAP. through an obsequious judiciary, annulled the government of Massachusetts; the colonists repudiated the constitutions of Carolina. The principles of the former possessed an inherent vitality, which nothing has yet been able to destroy; the frame of the latter, as it disappeared, left no trace of its transitory existence, except in the institutions which sprung from its decay. Mar. The reign of Charles II. was not less remarkable for the rapacity of the courtiers, than for the debauchery of the monarch. The southern part of our republic, ever regarded as capable of producing all the staples that thrive on the borders of the tropics, was coveted by statesmen who controlled the whole patronage of the British realms. The province of Carolina, extending from the thirty-sixth degree of 1663. north latitude to the River San Matheo, was accordingly 24. erected into one territory; and the historian Clarendon, the covetous though experienced minister, hated by the people, faithful only to the king;' Monk, so conspicuous in the restoration, and now ennobled as duke of Albemarle ; Lord Craven, a brave Cavalier, an old soldier of the German discipline, supposed to be husband to the queen of Bohemia; Lord Ashley Cooper, afterwards earl of Shaftesbury; Sir John Colleton, a royalist of no historical notoriety; Lord John Berkeley, with his younger brother,3 Sir William Berkeley, the governor of Virginia; and the passionate, and ignorant, and not too honest Sir George Carteret,* -were constituted its proprietors and immediate sove 1 Pepys, i. 192, 366. Evelyn. 2 Life of Lord Keeper Guilford, 393. Pepys, i. 115. VOL. 11. 17 3 Morryson, in Burk, iii. 266. 4 Pepys, i. 356, 140, 235, 236, 228, 176, and Grahame's U. S. ii. 317. 130 XIII. PROPRIETARIES OF CAROLINA. CHAP. reigns. Their authority was nearly absolute; nothing was reserved but a barren allegiance. Avarice is the vice of declining years; most of the proprietaries were past middle life. They begged the country under pretence of "a pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel;" and their sole object was the increase of their own wealth and dignity.' The grant had hardly been made before it became apparent that there were competitors, claiming possession of the same territory. It was included by the Spaniards within the limits of Florida; and the castle of St. Augustine was deemed proof of the actual possession of an indefinite adjacent country. Spain had never formally acknowledged the English title to any 1667. possessions in America; and when a treaty was May 23. finally concluded at Madrid, it did but faintly concede the right of England to her transatlantic colonies, and to a continuance of commerce in "the accustomed seas." And not Spain only claimed Carolina. In 1630, a patent for all the territory had been issued to Sir Robert Heath; and there is room to believe that, in 1639, permanent plantations were planned and perhaps attempted by his assign. William Hawley appeared in Virginia as governor of Carolina," the land between the thirty-first and thirty-sixth parallels of latitude; and leave was granted by the Virginia legislature, that it might be colonized by one hundred persons from Virginia, "freemen, being single, and disengaged of debt."3 The attempts were certainly 1663. unsuccessful, for the patent was now declared void, 1 The two Charters to the Proprietors of Carolina, small 4to. 2 Hening, i. 552. Records in the office of the general court at Richmond, labelled No. 1, 1639— 1642, p. 70. 3 Richmond Records, No. 1. 1639 -1642, p. 93. NEW ENGLAND MEN IN NORTH CAROLINA. 131 because the purposes for which it was granted had CHAP. never been fulfilled.1 XIII. or More stubborn rivals were found to have already2 1660. planted themselves on the River Cape Fear. Hardly 1661. had New England received within its bosom a few scanty colonies, before her citizens and her sons began roaming the continent and traversing the seas in quest of untried fortune. A little bark, navigated by New England men, had hovered off the coast of Carolina; they had carefully watched the dangers of its navigation; had found their way into the Cape Fear River; had purchased of the Indian chiefs a title to the soil, and had boldly planted a little colony of herdsmen far to the south of any English settlement on the continent. Already they had partners in London, and hardly was the grant of Carolina made known, before their agents 1663. Aug. pleaded their discovery, occupancy, and purchase, as affording a valid title to the soil, while they claimed the privileges of self-government as a natural right.3 A compromise was offered; and the proprietaries, in their "proposals to all that would plant in Carolina,” promised emigrants from New England religious freedom, a governor and council to be elected from among a number whom the emigrants themselves should nominate, a representative assembly, independent legislation, subject only to the negative of the proprietaries, land at a rent of a halfpenny an acre, and such freedom from customs as the charter would warrant.4 Yet the lands round Cape Fear were not inviting 1 Williamson's N. C. i. 84, 85. Berkeley, ibid. 255. Martin, i. 94, 125. Chalmers, 515. 2 Lawson's Description, p. 73. "In the year 1661, or thereabouts." Martin, i. 126, 1659. Williamson, i. 95, 1660. Again, Martin, i. 137, 6. |