Province of Carolina

Colony of England (1629–1707)
Colony of Great Britain (1707–12)

1629–1712

Flag

Coat of arms

Capital

Charles Town, South Carolina

Languages

English, Tutelo, Muscogee, Catawban languages, Tuscarora, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Yuchi, Shawnee

Government

Constitutional monarchy

Legislature

Lords Proprietors

Historical era

Colonial Era

•

Heath charter

1629

•

British government buy-out of Lords Proprietors

1712

Currency

Pound sterling

Preceded by

Succeeded by

Colony of Virginia

Province of North Carolina
Province of South Carolina

Today part of

United States

The Province of Carolina^[1] was an English and later a British colony of North America. Carolina was founded in what is modern-day North Carolina. Carolina expanded south and, at its greatest extent, nominally included the modern states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi, and parts of modern Florida and Louisiana.^[2]

Sir Robert Heath, attorney-general of King Charles I of England, was granted the Cape Fear region of America, incorporated as the Province of Carolina, in 1629.^[1] The charter was unrealized and ruled invalid, and a new charter was issued to a group of eight English noblemen, the Lords Proprietors, on March 24, 1663.^[3] Charles II granted the land to the eight Lords Proprietors in return for their financial and political assistance in restoring him to the throne in 1660.^[4] Charles II intended for the newly created province to serve as an English bulwark to contest lands claimed by Spanish Florida and prevent their northward expansion.^[5]^[6] Led informally by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, the Province of Carolina was controlled from 1663 to 1729 by these lords and their heirs.

In 1691, dissent over the governance of the province led to the appointment of a deputy governor to administer the northern half of Carolina.

The division between the northern and southern governments became complete in 1712, but both colonies remained in the hands of the same group of proprietors. A rebellion against the proprietors broke out in 1719 which led to the appointment of a royal governor for South Carolina in 1720. After nearly a decade in which the British government sought to locate and buy out the proprietors, both North and South Carolina became royal colonies in 1729.

History

1629 Charter

On October 30, 1629, King Charles I of England granted a patent to Sir Robert Heath for the lands south of 36 degrees and north of 31 degrees, "under the name, in honor of that king, of Carolina."^[7] Carolus is Latin for 'Charles'. Heath wanted the land for French Huguenots, but when Charles restricted use of the land to members of the Church of England, Heath assigned his grant to George, Lord Berkeley.^[8] King Charles I was executed in 1649 and Heath fled to France where he died. Following the 1660 restoration of the monarchy, Heath's heirs attempted to reassert their claim to the land, but Charles II ruled the claim invalid.

1663 Charter

"A New Description of Carolina", engraved by Francis Lamb (London, Tho. Basset and Richard Chiswell, 1676)

On March 24, 1663, Charles II issued a new charter to a group of eight English noblemen, granting them the land of Carolina, as a reward for their faithful support of his efforts to regain the throne of England. The eight were called Lords Proprietors or simply Proprietors.

The 1663 charter granted the Lords Proprietor title to all of the land from the southern border of the Virginia Colony at 36 degrees north to 31 degrees north (along the coast of present-day Georgia).^[3]

In 1665, the charter was revised slightly (see Royal Colonial Boundary of 1665), with the northerly boundary extended to 36 degrees 30 minutes north to include the lands of settlers along the Albemarle Sound who had left the Virginia Colony. Likewise, the southern boundary was moved south to 29 degrees north, just south of present-day Daytona Beach, Florida, which had the effect of including the existing Spanish settlement at St. Augustine. The charter also granted all the land, between these northerly and southerly bounds, from the Atlantic, westward to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.^[1]

The Lords Proprietors named in the charter were Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon; George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle; William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven; John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton; Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir George Carteret; Sir William Berkeley (brother of John); and Sir John Colleton. Of the eight, the one who demonstrated the most active interest in Carolina was Lord Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury, with the assistance of his secretary, the philosopher John Locke, drafted the Grand Model for the Province of Carolina (which included the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina), a plan for government of the colony heavily influenced by the ideas of the English political scientist, James Harrington. Some of the other Lords Proprietors also had interests in other colonies: for instance, John Berkeley and George Carteret held stakes in the Province of New Jersey, and William Berkeley had an interest in Virginia.

The Lords Proprietors, operating under their royal charter, were able to exercise their authority with nearly the independence of the king himself. The actual government consisted of a governor, a powerful council, on which half of the councillors were appointed by the Lords Proprietors themselves, and a relatively weak, popularly elected assembly.

Within three generations of Columbus, the Spanish from their Florida base had issued up the coast permeating North Carolina. A hostile Virginia tribe drove them back to Georgia. A Scottish contingent had meanwhile settled in South Carolina only to be extirpated by the Spanish, who inhabited Parris Island, SC as late as 1655. The Spanish were again beaten back to Georgia.^[9]

Although the Lost Colony on Roanoke Island was the first English attempt at settlement in the Carolina territory, the first permanent English settlement was not established until 1653, when emigrants from the Virginia Colony, with others from New England and Bermuda, settled at the mouths of the Chowan and Roanoke Rivers, on the shores of Albemarle Sound, in the northeastern corner of present-day North Carolina. The Albemarle Settlements, preceding the royal charter by ten years, came to be known in Virginia as "Rogues' Harbor".^[10] By 1664, the region was organized as Albemarle County.

In 1663, Captain William Hilton had noted the presence of a wooden cross erected by the Spaniards that still stood before the town meeting house of the Indians living at what later became Port Royal.^[11] In 1665, Sir John Yeamans established a second short-lived English settlement on the Cape Fear River, near present-day Wilmington, North Carolina, which he named Clarendon.

The Lords Proprietors founded a sturdier new settlement when they sent 150 colonists to the province in early 1670, landing them at a location south of the other settlements, near present-day Charleston, South Carolina. Many of the settlers, who stepped off the ship in April of that year, were planters from Barbados. The "Charles Town" settlement, as it was known then, developed more rapidly than the Albemarle and Cape Fear settlements due to the advantages of a natural harbor and expanding trade with the West Indies. Charles Town was made the principal seat of government for the entire province; Lord Shaftesbury specified its street plan. The nearby Ashley and Cooper rivers are named for him.

Due to their remoteness from each other, the northern and southern sections of the colony operated more or less independently until 1691, when Philip Ludwell was appointed governor of the entire province. From that time until 1708, the northern and southern settlements remained under one government. The north continued to have its own assembly and council; the governor resided in Charles Towne and appointed a deputy-governor for the north. During this period, the two halves of the province began increasingly to be known as North Carolina and South Carolina.

Carolina was the first of three colonies in North America settled by the English to have a comprehensive plan. Known as the Grand Model, or Grand Modell, it was composed of a constitution and detailed guidelines for settlement and development. The constitution, titled Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, was drafted by the philosopher John Locke under the direction of Anthony Ashley Cooper (later made Earl of Shaftesbury).^[12]

Dissent

From 1708 to 1710, due to disquiet over attempts to establish the Anglican church in the province, the people were unable to agree on a slate of elected officials; consequently, there was no recognized and legal government for more than two years, a period which culminated in Cary's Rebellion when the Lords Proprietors finally commissioned a new governor. This circumstance, coupled with the Tuscarora War and the Yamasee War, and the inability of the Lords Proprietors to act decisively, led to separate governments for North and South Carolina.

Some take this period as the establishment of separate colonies, but that did not officially occur until 1729, when seven of the Lords Proprietors sold their interests in Carolina to the Crown, and both North Carolina and South Carolina became royal colonies. The eighth share was Sir George Carteret's, which had passed to his great-grandson John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. He retained ownership of a sixty-mile-wide strip of land in North Carolina adjoining the Virginia boundary, which became known as the Granville District. This district was to become the scene of many disputes, from 1729 until the American Revolutionary War, at which time it was seized by the North Carolina revolutionary government.

Governments under proprietary rule and under crown rule were similarly organized. The primary difference was who was to appoint the governing officials: the Lords Proprietors or the Sovereign.

Georgia

In 1732, a corporate charter for the Province of Georgia was carved out of South Carolina by King George II.

References

1 2 3 "Charter of Carolina - March 24, 1663". Avalon Law. Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School. 2008. Archived from the original on February 7, 2009. Retrieved 10 February 2016. Know ye, that we of our further grace, certain knowledge, and meer motion, have thought fit to erect the same tract of ground, county, and island, into a province, and out of the fulness of our royal power and prerogative, we do, for us, our heirs and successors, erect, incorporate and ordain the same into a province, and call it the Province of Carolina,...
↑ Medley, Mary Louise (1976). History of Anson County, North Carolina, 1750-1976. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company. p. 1. ISBN 9780806347554. Retrieved 1 June 2014.
1 2 "Charter of Carolina - March 24, 1663". Retrieved 2012-03-24.
↑ Danforth Prince (10 March 2011). Frommer's The Carolinas and Georgia. John Wiley & Sons. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-118-03341-8.
↑ Peter Charles Hoffer (14 December 2006). The Brave New World: A History of Early America. JHU Press. p. 323. ISBN 978-0-8018-8483-2.
↑ Patricia Riles Wickman (2 March 1999). The Tree that Bends: Discourse, Power, and the Survival of Maskoki People. University of Alabama Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-8173-0966-4.
↑ N. C. Board of Agriculture (1902). A sketch of North Carolina. Charleston: Lucas-Richardson Co. p. 4. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
↑ nhcgov.com, History of the Lower Cape Fear
↑ Crane, Vernon (1928). The Southern Frontier 1670-1732. University of North Carolina.
↑ "Part IV, Chapter 42". Digital.library.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2012-07-31.
↑ Verner Crane (1928). The Southern Frontier 1670-1732. University of Alabama Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-8173-5082-6.
↑ Wilson, Thomas D. The Ashley Cooper Plan: The Founding of Carolina and the Origins of Southern Political Culture. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Chapter 1.

External links

Concessions and Agreements of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina, 1665
Sir Robert Heath's Patent
The Founding of North and South Carolina
U.S.A.-Barbadian Ties - The Barbados Tourism Encyclopaedia
The Buried History of America's Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It

The Thirteen Colonies of Colonial America
New England Colonies Middle Colonies Chesapeake Colonies Southern Colonies
Connecticut Delaware Georgia Maryland Massachusetts Bay New Hampshire New Jersey New York North Carolina Pennsylvania Rhode Island and Providence Plantations South Carolina Virginia
Earlier English colonial entities Carolina East Jersey New England New Haven Plymouth West Jersey

British Empire

Legend: Current territory; Former territory; * Now a Commonwealth realm; Now a member of the Commonwealth of Nations; Historical flags of the British Empire

Europe
1542–1800 Ireland (integrated into UK) 1708–1757, 1763–1782 and 1798–1802 Minorca Since 1713 Gibraltar 1800–1813 Malta (Protectorate) 1813–1964 Malta (Colony) 1807–1890 Heligoland 1809–1864 Ionian Islands 1878–1960 Cyprus 1921–1937 Irish Free State

North America

17th century and before		18th century	19th and 20th century
1579 New Albion 1583–1907 Newfoundland 1605–1979 *Saint Lucia 1607–1776 Virginia Since 1619 Bermuda 1620–1691 Plymouth 1623–1883 Saint Kitts 1624–1966 *Barbados 1625–1650 Saint Croix 1627–1979 *Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 1628–1883 Nevis 1629–1691 Massachusetts Bay 1632–1776 Maryland since 1632 Montserrat 1632–1860 Antigua 1636–1776 Connecticut 1636–1776 Rhode Island 1637–1662 New Haven	1643–1860 Bay Islands Since 1650 Anguilla 1655–1850 Mosquito Coast 1655–1962 *Jamaica 1663–1712 Carolina 1664–1776 New York 1665–1674 and 1702–1776 New Jersey Since 1666 Virgin Islands Since 1670 Cayman Islands 1670–1973 *Bahamas 1670–1870 Rupert's Land 1671–1816 Leeward Islands 1674–1702 East Jersey 1674–1702 West Jersey 1680–1776 New Hampshire 1681–1776 Pennsylvania 1686–1689 New England 1691–1776 Massachusetts Bay	1701–1776 Delaware 1712–1776 North Carolina 1712–1776 South Carolina 1713–1867 Nova Scotia 1733–1776 Georgia 1754–1820 Cape Breton Island 1762–1974 *Grenada 1763–1978 Dominica 1763–1873 Prince Edward Island 1763–1791 Quebec 1763–1783 East Florida 1763–1783 West Florida 1784–1867 New Brunswick 1791–1841 Lower Canada 1791–1841 Upper Canada Since 1799 Turks and Caicos Islands	1818–1846 Columbia District/Oregon Country¹ 1833–1960 Windward Islands 1833–1960 Leeward Islands 1841–1867 Canada 1849–1866 Vancouver Island 1853–1863 Queen Charlotte Islands 1858–1866 British Columbia 1859–1870 North-Western Territory 1860–1981 *British Antigua and Barbuda 1862–1863 Stickeen 1866–1871 British Columbia 1867–1931 *Dominion of Canada² 1871–1964 Honduras 1882–1983 *Saint Kitts and Nevis 1889–1962 Trinidad and Tobago 1907–1949 Newfoundland³ 1958–1962 West Indies Federation

1. Occupied jointly with the United States.
2. In 1931, Canada and other British dominions obtained self-government through the Statute of Westminster. See Name of Canada.
3. Gave up self-rule in 1934, but remained a de jure Dominion until it joined Canada in 1949.

South America
1631–1641 Providence Island 1651–1667 Willoughbyland 1670–1688 Saint Andrew and Providence Islands⁴ 1831–1966 Guiana Since 1833 Falkland Islands⁵ Since 1908 South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands⁵
4. Now a department of Colombia. 5. Occupied by Argentina during the Falklands War of April–June 1982.

Africa

17th and 18th centuries	19th century		20th century
Since 1658 Saint Helena¹⁴ 1792–1961 Sierra Leone 1795–1803 Cape Colony	Since 1815 Ascension Island¹⁴ Since 1816 Tristan da Cunha¹⁴ 1806–1910 Cape of Good Hope 1807–1808 Madeira 1810–1968 Mauritius 1816–1965 The Gambia 1856–1910 Natal 1862–1906 Lagos 1868–1966 Basutoland 1874–1957 Gold Coast 1882–1922 Egypt	1884–1900 Niger Coast 1884–1966 Bechuanaland 1884–1960 Somaliland 1887–1897 Zululand 1890–1962 Uganda 1890–1963 Zanzibar 1891–1964 Nyasaland 1891–1907 Central Africa 1893–1968 Swaziland 1895–1920 East Africa 1899–1956 Sudan	1900–1914 Northern Nigeria 1900–1914 Southern Nigeria 1900–1910 Orange River 1900–1910 Transvaal 1903–1976 Seychelles 1910–1931 South Africa 1914–1960 Nigeria 1915–1931 South-West Africa 1919–1961 Cameroons⁶ 1920–1963 Kenya 1922–1961 Tanganyika⁶ 1923–1965 and 1979–1980 Southern Rhodesia⁷ 1924–1964 Northern Rhodesia

6. League of Nations mandate.
7. Self-governing Southern Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence in 1965 (as Rhodesia) and continued as an unrecognised state until the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement. After recognised independence in 1980, Zimbabwe was a member of the Commonwealth until it withdrew in 2003.

Asia

17th and 18th century	19th century		20th century
1685–1824 Bencoolen 1702–1705 Pulo Condore 1757–1947 Bengal 1762–1764 Manila and Cavite 1781–1784 and 1795–1819 Padang 1786–1946 Penang 1795–1948 Ceylon 1796–1965 Maldives	1812–1824 Banka and Billiton 1819–1826 Malaya 1826–1946 Straits Settlements 1839–1967 Aden 1839–1842 Afghanistan 1841–1997 Hong Kong 1841–1946 Sarawak 1848–1946 Labuan 1858–1947 India 1874–1963 Borneo	1879–1919 Afghanistan (protectorate) 1882–1963 North Borneo 1885–1946 Unfederated Malay States 1888–1984 Brunei 1891–1971 Muscat and Oman 1892–1971 Trucial States 1895–1946 Federated Malay States 1898–1930 Weihai 1878–1960 Cyprus	1907–1949 Bhutan (protectorate) 1918–1961 Kuwait 1920–1932 Mesopotamia⁸ 1921–1946 Transjordan⁸ 1923–1948 Palestine⁸ 1945–1946 South Vietnam 1946–1963 North Borneo 1946–1963 Sarawak 1946–1963 Singapore 1946–1948 Malayan Union 1948–1957 Federation of Malaya Since 1960 Akrotiri and Dhekelia (before as part of Cyprus) Since 1965 British Indian Ocean Territory (before as part of Mauritius and the Seychelles)

⁸ League of Nations mandate. Iraq's mandate was not enacted and replaced by the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty

Oceania

18th and 19th centuries		20th century
1788–1901 New South Wales 1803–1901 Van Diemen's Land/Tasmania 1807–1863 Auckland Islands⁹ 1824–1980 New Hebrides 1824–1901 Queensland 1829–1901 Swan River/Western Australia 1836–1901 South Australia since 1838 Pitcairn Islands	1841–1907 New Zealand 1851–1901 Victoria 1874–1970 Fiji¹⁰ 1877–1976 Western Pacific Territories 1884–1949 Papua 1888–1901 Rarotonga/Cook Islands⁹ 1889–1948 Union Islands⁹ 1892–1979 Gilbert and Ellice Islands¹¹ 1893–1978 Solomon Islands¹²	1900–1970 Tonga 1900–1974 Niue⁹ 1901–1942 *Australia 1907–1953 *New Zealand 1919–1942 and 1945–1968 Nauru 1919–1949 New Guinea 1949–1975 Papua and New Guinea¹³

9. Now part of the *Realm of New Zealand.
10. Suspended member.
11. Now Kiribati and *Tuvalu.
12. Now the *Solomon Islands.
13. Now *Papua New Guinea.

Antarctica and South Atlantic
Since 1658 Saint Helena¹⁴ Since 1815 Ascension Island¹⁴ Since 1816 Tristan da Cunha¹⁴ Since 1908 British Antarctic Territory¹⁵ 1841–1933 Australian Antarctic Territory (transferred to the Commonwealth of Australia) 1841–1947 Ross Dependency (transferred to the Realm of New Zealand)
14. Since 2009 part of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha; Ascension Island (1922–) and Tristan da Cunha (1938–) were previously dependencies of Saint Helena. 15. Both claimed in 1908; territories formed in 1962 (British Antarctic Territory) and 1985 (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands).

Coordinates: 34°59′38″N 81°28′26″W / 34.994°N 81.474°W / 34.994; -81.474

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