Again was there a deep deliberation throughout Massachusetts; and from that day two parties existed in the state, “the patriots who defended the rights of the colonies, and the prerogative men who were in favour of complete submission to the royal authority.” For a whole fortnight, the question was debated; “the civil liberties of New England,” argued they nobly, “are part of the inheritance of our fathers; shall we give that inheritance away? It is objected that we shall be exposed to great sufferings. Better suffer than sin. It is better to trust the God of our fathers than to put confidence in princes. If we suffer 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.”
The decision was recorded, that “the deputies consent not, but adhere to their former bills.” Agents again were sent to the king to entreat his forbearance; but the charter was already annulled. On July 2nd, 1685, a copy of the judgment was received in Boston and sorrow and humiliation overspread the colony.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SETTLEMENT OF CAROLINA.
We must now leave for the present the States of New England, austere alike in character and clime, and turn to those summer realms of the South which excited the cupidity of the early French and Spanish adventurers. We must become more intimately acquainted with the region where De Soto wandered in search of the land of gold; where the good Coligny planted his settlements of persecuted Huguenots; where catholic bigotry dyed the soil with their blood; and where, also, the brave Raleigh planned magnificent schemes of colonisation, and reaped only the fruits of disappointment and sorrow.
The vast territory of North America was, for half a century after the English began to colonise it, divided into two districts, called North and South Virginia; “all lands lying towards the river St. Lawrence, from the northern boundaries of the province now called Virginia, belonged to the northern, and all those to the southward, as far as the Gulf of Florida, to the southern district.”
The French colonists first gave the name of Carolina to the country which is still so designated, in honour of their worthless monarch, Charles IX. In 1630, Charles I. of England granted a tract of land south of Chesapeake Bay to Sir Robert Heath, his attorney-general, under the name of Carolana; but owing to the political agitations in England, the projected colonisation of this country was never carried out. With the Restoration, the English reasserted their claim to that portion of America which had been known under the designation of South Virginia, and the fertility and desirableness of which was now an established fact. Somewhat before the time, therefore, when the restored monarch made a grant to his brother of the Dutch possessions of New Netherlands, he conferred the vast territory comprised between Albemarle Sound, southward to the river St. John, under the name of Carolina, upon eight proprietors, among whom were some of his principal courtiers; that is to say, Clarendon, the prime minister; General Monk, now Duke of Albemarle; Lord Craven, the supposed husband of the Queen of Bohemia; Lord Ashley Cooper, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir John Colleton, Lord John Berkeley, his brother, Sir William, governor of Virginia, and Sir George Carteret. The grant made to these proprietaries constituted them absolute sovereigns of the country. Their right, however, was immediately disputed both by the Spaniards—whose fort of St. Augustine was considered to establish actual possession—and by the assigns of Sir Robert Heath; but neither claimants could stand before the new and more powerful patentees. Besides these, other parties of a much more sturdy and unmanageable character had already established themselves on its coasts. New England, which possessed within itself not only an expansive principle, but one which took deep root on any soil which it touched, had planted not only a little settlement on Cape Fear, which had been fostered in its distresses by the mother-colony, but had sown the seeds of democratic liberty, from which, in part, must be traced the resolute spirit which distinguished the colony of North Carolina in the long struggle through which it had to pass.
Virginia, too, was “the mother of colonies;” and in 1622, “the adventurous Porey, then secretary of Virginia, travelled overland to the banks of the Chowan, or South River, reporting on his return most favourably of the kindness of the natives, the fertility of the country, and the happy climate, which yielded two harvests in the year.” During the succeeding forty years, his explorations were followed up, and when religious persecution took place in Virginia, dissenters emigrated largely. The country around Albemarle Sound was established by Nonconformists, who had purchased a right to their lands from the aborigines. These settlements were claimed by the new proprietaries of Carolina, and Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia and one of the joint proprietors, was ordered by his colleagues to assume jurisdiction over them in their name.
Berkeley, however, who knew too well the character of these pioneer-settlers, did not venture to enforce his orders too strictly. Instead of this, he appointed William Drummond, one of the settlers, “a man of prudence and popularity,” to be the governor; and instituting a simple form of government, a council of six members, and an easy tenure of land, left the colony to take care of itself, to enjoy liberty of conscience and the management of its own affairs. “Such,” says Bancroft, “was the origin of fixed settlements in North Carolina. The child of ecclesiastical oppression was swathed in independence.”
Besides these settlements of New England and Virginia, several planters of Barbadoes had purchased from the Indians a tract of land thirty-two miles square on Cape Fear River, where the New Englanders had first settled themselves, and now applied to the new proprietaries for a confirmation of their purchase and a charter of government. All their wishes were not granted, but Sir John Yeamans, a cavalier and the head of these Barbadoes planters, was appointed governor, with a jurisdiction extending from Cape Fear to the St. Matheo, the country being called Clarendon. This settlement absorbed that of the New Englanders, who, however, were so far respected that Yeamans was instructed to be “very tender” towards them, to “make things easy to the people of New England, that others might be attracted there.” The colony immediately applied itself to the preparation of boards, shingles and staves, to be shipped to the West Indies, and the same continues to this day to be the staple of that region of pine forests and sterile plains.
The proprietaries in the meantime having ascertained the character of their territory, and become better acquainted with its geography, obtained, in 1665, a second charter, in total disregard of all other claims, and this time their grant was extended half a degree further north, so as to include the settlements on the Chowan, and a degree and a half further south, including the Spanish colony of St. Augustine and part of Florida, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. This vast grant in fact comprised all the present territory of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, a considerable portion of Florida and Missouri, nearly all Texas and a large part of Mexico. Nor was this all; an additional grant shortly afterwards added the group of the Bahama Isles, then famous as the resort of buccaneers, to the vast realms which their charter already included.