because we dare not comply with the wills of men against the will of God, we suffer in a good cause, and shall be accounted martyrs in the next generation and at the great day."

At the request of the select men in Boston, Increase Mather, contrary to his wont, appeared at a town-meeting, and encouraged and excited the people to stand by their charter privileges. The decision of the representatives of the colony, made on the last day of November, 1683, is on record: "The deputies consent not, but adhere to their former bills."

Addresses were forwarded to the king, urging forbearance; but entreaty and remonstrance were vain. The suit which had been begun in the court of the king's bench was dropped; a scire facias was issued from the court of chancery in England; and before the colony could act upon it, on the eighteenth of June, 1684, just one year and six days after the judgment against the city of London, the charter was conditionally adjudged to be forfeited. The judgment was confirmed on the first day of the Michaelmas term.

Thus fell the charter, which had been brought by the fleet of Winthrop to the shores of New England, and had been cherished with courage through every vicissitude. Massachusetts having lost its safeguards against absolute power and fallen into the hands of the king, his privy council took into consideration what was to be done with it. The question was thoroughly considered whether a government like that of England should be introduced into the colonies, or if their inhabitants should be ruled by a royal governor and council with authority limited only by royal instructions. Lord Halifax insisted with energy that the laws of England ought beyond a doubt to be established in a country composed of Englishmen; and omitted none of the reasons by which it may be proved that an absolute government is neither so happy nor so safe as one which sets bounds to the authority of the prince. For himself, he declared that he would never live under a king who should have power to take money from his pocket whenever it pleased him. The other ministers, avoiding a discussion of the best form of government, maintained that the crown could and ought to govern countries so remote from

England, as it should deem best. The council resolved that there was no need of a colonial assembly to grant taxes and regulate other important matters; but that the governor and council should act, according to their own judgment, with no accountability except to his British majesty. Louis XIV., after reading a report of this debate, warned the king of England against listening to an adviser like Halifax on the manner of governing New England; and it was decided that, in those distant regions, the whole power, legislative as well as executive, should abide in the crown.

A copy of the judgment against the charter of Massachusetts was received in Boston on the second of July of the following year; but, before that day, the duke of York had ascended the throne.

Gloomy forebodings overspread New England. The confederacy of the Calvinist colonies had already died of apathy. The restoration of monarchy, in 1660, had been the signal for its decline. By its articles no two colonies could be joined in one except with the consent of the whole; and the charter by which Charles II. annexed New Haven to Connecticut proved that there was a higher power, which overruled their decisions and paralyzed their acts. From that epoch the meetings of the commissioners were held but once in three years. The dangers of the Indian war roused their dying energies. After the peace at Boston, in 1681, they did but settle a few small war-claims; their only meeting after the forfeiture of the charter of Massachusetts was in September, 1684, at Hartford, from which place they appointed a day of fasting to bewail the rebukes and threatening from Heaven, and their last word was "for the defence of the Protestant religion."

CHAPTER VII.

SHAFTESBURY AND LOCKE LEGISLATE FOR CAROLINA.

MEANTIME, civilization had advanced at the South; and twin stars were emerging beyond the limits of Virginia, in the country over which Soto had rambled in quest of gold, where Calvinists, befriended by Coligny, had sought a refuge, and where Raleigh had attempted to found colonial principalities.

In March, 1663, the province of Carolina, extending from the thirty-sixth degree of north latitude to the river San Matheo, was erected into one territory; and the earl of Clarendon; Monk, now duke of Albemarle; Lord Craven, a brave cavalier; Lord Ashley Cooper, afterward earl of Shaftesbury; Sir John Colleton; Lord Berkeley; Sir William Berkeley, the governor of Virginia; and the passionate, ignorant, and not too honest Sir George Carteret—were constituted its proprietors and immediate sovereigns. No authority was reserved to the crown but a barren allegiance.

The territory now granted 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 not yet formally acknowledged the English title to any possessions in America; and the treaty concluded at Madrid, in May, 1667, did but faintly concede the right of England to transatlantic colonies, and to a continuance of commerce in "the accustomed seas." Three years later she recognised as English the colonies which were then in the possession of England, but their boundaries in the south and west were not determined.

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." The attempts were certainly unsuccessful, for, in 1663, the patent was declared void, because the purposes for which it was granted had never been fulfilled.

In 1660 or 1661, New England men had found their way into the Cape Fear river, had purchased of the Indian chiefs a title to the soil, and had planted a little colony of herdsmen far to the south of any English settlement on the continent. They had partners in London, and, within five months of the grant of Carolina, their agents 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. 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. Yet the lands were not inviting to men who could choose their abodes from the whole wilderness; and, though Massachusetts, the young mother of colonies, in May, 1667, ministered to their wants by a general contribution through her settlements, the infant town planted on Oldtown creek, near the south side of Cape Fear river, was soon after abandoned.

The conditions offered to the colony of Cape Fear "were not intended for the meridian" of Virginia. "There," said the proprietaries, in their instructions to Sir William Berkeley, "we hope to find more facile people" than the New England men. They intrusted the affair entirely to Sir William's management. He was to get settlers as cheaply as possible; yet at any rate to get settlers.

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As in Massachusetts, the plantations of Virginia extended along the sea. The banks of Nansemond river had been settled as early as 1609. In 1622, Pory, then secretary of the Old Dominion, travelled to the land on the river Chowan, and, on his return, celebrated the kindness of its native people, its fertility, and happy climate, that yielded two harvests in each year. Twenty-one years after the excursion of Pory, a company, that had heard of the region south-west of the Appomattox, obtained leave of the Virginia legislature to engage in its discovery, under the promise of a fourteen years' monopoly of the profits. Parties for the south, not less than for the west, continued to be encouraged by similar grants. The sons of Governor Yeardley wrote to England with pride, that the northern country of Carolina had been explored by “ Virginians born."

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A company from Nansemond county, led by Roger Green, were the first to show the way from Virginia to the rivers that flow into Albemarle sound. Green was rewarded, in 1653, by the grant of a thousand acres, while ten thousand acres were offered to any hundred persons who would plant on the banks of the Roanoke, or the south side of the Chowan and its tributary streams. Thomas Dew, once the speaker of the assembly, formed a plan for exploring the navigable rivers between Cape Hatteras and Cape Fear. The first settlements on Albemarle sound were a result of spontaneous overflowings from Virginia. Perhaps a few families were planted within the limits of Carolina before the restoration. At that period, men who were impatient of enforced religious conformity, and distrusted the new government in Virginia, plunged more deeply into the forests. It is known that, in 1662, the chief of a tribe of Indians granted to George Durant the neck of land which still bears his name; and, in the following year, George Cathmaid could claim a large grant of land upon the sound, for having established sixty-seven persons in Carolina. In September, the colony had attracted the attention of the proprietaries; and Berkeley was commissioned to institute a government over the region, which, in honor of Monk, received the name of Albemarle, that time has transferred to the bay. The plantations were chiefly on the north-east bank of the Chowan;