[741] In the Sketch of the History of South Carolina published in 1856 is a copy of Sayle’s commission, obtained from London, and it bears date 26th July, 1669. At the same time West’s commission, dated 27th July, confers such power upon him as “Governor and Commander-in-Chief,” till the arrival of the fleet at Barbadoes, that we cannot suppose Sayle was on board at that time. The difficulty is removed in the Shaftesbury MSS., and by the filling up of the commission with the name of Sayle at Bermuda.
[742] See Winthrop’s Hist. of New England, ii. p. 335.
[743] I make the date of their arrival 17th March. See Sketch of the Hist. of So. Carolina, p. 94.
[744] Of the first site of Charlestown on the west side of the Ashley River there is said to be no trace left, or was not fifty years ago, except a depression, which may have been a ditch, then traceable across the plantation of Jonathan Lucas, as Carroll says (i. p. 49).
[745] The duke was dead when the colony was founded, and the new duke, Christopher, was represented by proxy at the meeting of the Proprietors, January 20, 1670. Lord Berkeley was then Palatine by seniority.
[746] From the Shaftesbury Papers. We should not fail to notice here that the aged governor had written, on 25th June, to Earl Shaftesbury for the procurement of Rev. S. Bond, of Bermuda (who had been ordained by Joseph Hall, Bishop of Exeter), to settle in the colony; and that their lordships authorized an offer to Mr. Bond of five hundred acres of land and £40 per annum. It is not known that he came.
[747] [See Vol. II. ch. 4.—Ed.] The writer of this narrative has examined Albemarle Point, the spot selected by the English for their settlement: a high bluff, facing the east and the entrance of the bay, and running out between a creek and an impassable marsh, and easily defended by cutting a deep trench across the tongue of land. Precisely the same defensible advantages, with the additional one of a far better harbor, lay opposite at a tongue of land called Oyster Point, between the Ashley and Cooper rivers.
[748] The earliest notice we have of the population is from the Shaftesbury Papers, under date 20 January, 1672 [N. S.]: “By our records it appears that 337 men and women, 62 children or persons under 16 years of age, is the full number of persons who have arrived in this country in and since the first fleet out of England to this day.” Deducting for deaths and absences at the above date, there remained of the men 263 able to bear arms. Though the colony increased in wealth and importance, there was for many years but a slow increase in the number of white inhabitants.
[749] How pompous is article 7: “Any Landgrave or Cassique, when it is his right to choose, shall take any of the Barronies appropriated to the Nobility, which is not already planted on by some other Nobleman.” These provincial nobles, made so, in the first instance, by appointment of the Proprietors, were to be legislators by right. Yet in this same year (1672), their lordships issued an offer to settlers from Ireland and promised that whoever carried or caused to go to Carolina 600 men should be a Landgrave with four baronies; and if 900 he should be Landgrave and also nominate a Cassique; and if 1,200, should also nominate two Cassiques. This was scattering at random the hereditary right of legislating over the freemen of the colony.
[750] See letter of the Proprietors, May 8, 1674, in Sketch, etc., p. 332.