Government

Sleeping Not with the King's Grant: A Rereading of Some Proprietary Documents, 1663-1667

BY DANIEL W. FAGG, JR.^*

[Vol. 46 (1969), 171-185]

Despite several generations of responsible research, the history of Proprietary Carolina remains inadequately explained. Careful investigation of specific events is necessary before a broad, balanced interpretation of Carolina’s early years will be possible. Mattie Erma E. Parker’s skillful reinterpretation of Culpeper’s Rebellion reveals the possibilities inherent in the search for previously unused materials.¹ Thoughtful reconsideration of long-known documents offers an equally promising approach. As these sources are reappraised in context, the interactions of the Lords Proprietors and settlers become more intelligible. A case in point is provided by consideration of certain documents generated by the first efforts to settle the province.

Once the Carolina charter had passed the seals in March, 1663, the Lords Proprietors proceeded vigorously with plans for settlement, “...that the Kinge may see that we sleepe not with his grant but are promoting his service and his subjects profitt....”² The conventional vision of these first Proprietors extended no further than gaining for England a land which would produce such commodities “as the Kinge hath not yet within his Terrytories in quantity, although his people consume much of them to the exhausting the wealth of the kingdome, the commodyties I meane are wine, oyle, reasons, currants, rice, silke &c....”³ Unlike the colonial founding fathers who were motivated by religious or social ideals, the Proprietors had no absolute blueprint for the development of Carolina. Their eagerness to find planters, as they wrote Sir William Berkeley, “inciteth us to comply alwayse and with all sorts of persons, as farr as possibly we cann....”⁴ Within certain limits dictated by the Proprietors’ experience and observation of colonies, they intended to follow a flexible policy in negotiating with potential settlers.

Prospects for speedy settlement of the province appeared bright. Various groups were eager to negotiate for land in Carolina, and, as letters and emissaries traveled back and forth across the Atlantic in 1663 and 1664, the Lords evolved a constitution for the province. In the Concessions of January, 1665, they “indeavoured to comprehend all Interests ...,”⁵ including, of course, their own. The surprisingly flexible arrangements of the Concessions required important alterations in the original charter. The new charter passed the seals in June, 1665.

Although the Proprietors had authorized a government in Albemarle County and four of them had established a plantation there, the Concessions and the changes in the charter were influenced most by the Lords Proprietors’ concern for planting settlers in the southern part of the province. The often-repeated assertion that the second charter was obtained in order to insure the inclusion of Albemarle County in Carolina is based upon slim evidence. That explanation clarifies neither the changes in the body of the document nor the extension of the southern boundary. If one bears in mind the extreme urgency of reaching agreement with prospective settlers for a southern county, both boundary changes appear less important than the alterations in the powers conveyed by the charter.

On the face of it, the extension of the southern boundary is the least comprehensible of the changes. The description in the 1663 charter was copied from the inaccurate formula given in the 1629 Heath patent for Carolana.⁶ In 1665 the line was moved two degrees southward, far down into an area occupied by the Spaniards.⁷ Officially, Spain insisted that all of America was hers by right of discovery, a claim which the English countered with the doctrine of “effective occupation.”⁸ Actually, the Spaniards made no effort to dislodge the English from areas where they had established settlements. On the mainland, the boundary unofficially honored by Spain was Cape San Romano, a site which can be identified with modern Cape Fear or with present Cape Romain.⁹ The Lords Proprietors knew that they could make good their claim to the southern part of Carolina only by occupying and defending successfully settlements placed south of Cape San Romano. In view of these circumstances, an extension of the boundary into the area south of St. Augustine itself appears ridiculous.

The most likely explanation is that the Proprietors hoped to improve their diplomatic bargaining position by putting forward English claims to St. Augustine. In 1664 an English ambassador was sent to Madrid with instructions to settle outstanding differences in America and to open the Spanish colonies to English trade.¹⁰ If a settlement had been reached and a line drawn on the mainland based on effective occupation, the Lords Proprietors would have been restricted north of Cape San Romano by their own government’s treaty obligations. The Lords Proprietors had nothing to lose by extending their claims, and they could hope that a compromise line drawn between their new boundary and the unofficial line at Cape San Romano would leave intact the area from Port Royal northward. The English ambassador returned in 1667 with only a trivial commercial treaty, but the possibility of a truncated Carolina must have appeared real in 1665. When Spanish recognition was finally accorded in 1670, it was based on effective occupation rather than on compromised claims.¹¹ The southern extension of the boundary never became important, but it is a monument to the Lords Proprietors’ justifiable preoccupation with the urgent need to establish their claims in the south.

The alteration of the northern boundary of Carolina is a more complex matter. In the Heath patent of 1629 the boundary was drawn at 36 degrees, a line identified correctly as running through “the Great Pass” or Albemarle Sound.¹² While accepting the Carolana formula for their southern boundary in 1663, the Lords Proprietors deliberately rejected it when drawing the northern boundary. The wording which they adopted was “from the North end of the Island called Luck Island, which lies in the Southern Virginia Seas and within six and Thirty Degrees of the Northern Latitude...”¹³ Obviously, the Lords Proprietors did not know the exact location of the north end of Luck Island, although they knew it lay within the thirty-sixth parallel, that is, between 36 degrees and 36 degrees 59 minutes. “Luck’s Island” appears on the Nicholas Comberford map of 1657 as a long sand bar, running across the mouth of Albemarle Sound and snaking up the coast where it terminates at an unnamed inlet separated from “Charatuck Inlett” by a small island.¹⁴ While the latitudinal markings of this otherwise surprisingly accurate map are confused, the north end of Luck Island is unquestionably within the thirty-sixth parallel, probably at 36 degrees 20 minutes. There is no direct evidence that the Proprietors had access to the Comberford map or to the explorer’s notes from which it was made, but they were, at the very least, supplied with information by someone who used its nomenclature. In any case, the legal boundary in 1663 was not at 36 degrees but on a line drawn west from the north end of Luck Island, wherever that might be.

The Virginians must have deeply resented the moving of their southern boundary, which had been at 36 degrees since 1629. No doubt they entered protests in London, but Sir William Berkeley, under his instructions from the Proprietors, styled himself in 1664, “Governor of Virginia and Carolina” and allowed the Virginia Council to appoint a surveyor-general for Carolina.¹⁵ There may have been some question as to precisely where the boundary was, but that it was north of 36 degrees was accepted in 1664-1665.

Although the name “Luck Island” occurs on no other extant maps of the Albemarle area, subsequent maps in 1671 and 1672 show an opening in the banks south of Currituck Inlet.¹⁶ A line drawn directly west on any of them would include a considerable portion of the area north of Albemarle Sound. The inaccuracy and small scale of these maps prevent the drawing of an exact line in terms of the present geography of the coast, but it seems clear that any such line would be from 15 to 30 minutes north of 36 degrees. The Lords Proprietors, having learned of the shifting nature of landmarks on the coast and perhaps that their grant did not include the headwaters of all the Albemarle tributaries east of the Chowan River, took the occasion of the issuing of the new charter to draft a more adequate boundary description. In the new version, the line was described as running from “the North end of Carahtuke River or Gullet; upon a straight westerly line to Wyonoake Creek, which lies within or about the degrees of thirty six and thirty Minutes, Northern latitude....”¹⁷ Once again, the description follows closely the details of the Comberford map. A line drawn directly west from “Charatuck Inlett” passes through the confluence of the Weyanoke River (now the Nottoway) and the Blackwater Branch of the Chowan River—the line on which the boundary was drawn eventually.

While the location of the north end of Luck Island can no longer be identified precisely, it seems clear that, had no second charter been granted, a considerable portion of the area north of Albemarle Sound would have been in Carolina. It is more accurate to say that the northern boundary was clarified in 1665 than that it was moved from 36 degrees to 36 degrees 30 minutes.

Although the position of the northern boundary was the only change made in 1665 which had significance in the future, the two changes in the body of the charter were at the very heart of the Proprietors’ policy from 1663 to 1667. These alterations were brought about by the method of settlement which the Lords Proprietors found easy to adopt. Instead of gathering ships, men, and supplies at great cost and launching a settlement themselves, they endeavored to make agreements with organized groups of “adventurers” who undertook to plant settlements at their own expense. The Lords Proprietors themselves were obligated only to fulfill certain stated conditions. It appeared that Carolina could be settled at small expense to the Proprietors if acceptable agreements could be negotiated.

The first group to approach the Lords Proprietors wanted virtual self-government based on the New England model.¹⁸ The Lords Proprietors replied with the “Declaration and Proposals,” stating clearly the most extreme concessions they were prepared to make.¹⁹ The crucial points were an insistence upon a proprietary veto of legislation, a quitrent of a half-penny per acre, and selection of the governor and his council from a list of nominees presented by the inhabitants. This local government would be subject to the “superintendency” of a sort of federal council to be chosen out of every government in the province. These basic policy decisions were communicated to unnamed English representatives of the New Englanders who replied that they did not believe the proposals would be acceptable because New Englanders were accustomed to “full liberty to choose their own governors among themselves, to make and confirm laws with themselves, with immunity also wholly from all taxes, charges, and impositions, whatsoever, more than what is laid upon themselves by themselves....²⁰

A copy of the Declaration and Proposals was also dispatched to Barbados whence other inquiries had come. In a covering letter to Peter Colleton and Thomas Modyford, the Lords Proprietors explained,

the proposealls sent are but heads; we conceaving that such as shall undertake, will expect a more formall and large assurance from us according to their owne Methood; which we shall willingly give when they desire the same, some people heare propose that we should make choyce of a Governor without there presenting; if your people desire the like it shall be done, more freedome then this we may not give; but if any have any otherway to propose that is not loss [less] to us then this, we may consent to it.²¹

Before this correspondence reached Barbados, dispatches arrived from Modyford and Colleton saying that the Corporation of Barbados Adventurers wanted a grant of 1,000 square miles and complete powers of self-government.²² The intermediaries reported further that over 200 Barbadians had already dispatched an expedition to explore the coast of Carolina. The Lords Proprietors were delighted and immediately replied authorizing Modyford and Colleton,

to treate with them and make some agreement if you cann[,] keeping still to the substance of our proposealls; but if other words or other wayes of frameing the Government will please them better without lessning those powers and the rent we have reserved... you may close with them....²³

Enclosed in this letter, the Lords Proprietors sent a reply to the Barbadians, explaining that from the substance of the Declaration “wee shall not receade....²⁴

The Barbados Adventurers were pleased with the glowing reports of their explorer, Captain William Hilton, and in May, 1664, a group led by John Vassall settled at Cape Fear.²⁵ This group of Barbadians was joined soon by a considerable number of New Englanders.²⁶ This settlement was presented to the Lords Proprietors as an accomplished fact. The Lords Proprietors had signed no agreement and had committed themselves no further than the Declaration and Proposals. The Vassall Adventurers, by their precipitate action, had given away their most effective argument in the negotiations. The explanation for this apparent folly on the part of the Adventurers was that they had negotiated an agreement with Modyford and Colleton which they thought was binding on the Lords Proprietors. This agreement, published in London in 1664 as part of the Adventurers’ promotional efforts, contained twenty-eight articles, “agreed and consented to by us Thomas Mudyford and Peter Colleton, Esquires, who are empowered by the Lords Proprietors to treat in their behalf....²⁷ The settlement was to be made south of “Cape St. Romana,” but the Adventurers had preferred a safer haven to the north. The principal items reproduced the provisions of the Declaration, but land was specifically relieved of quitrents, and the governor and council were to regulate the manner of taking up land. Modyford and Colleton had clearly exceeded their instructions in signing such a document; neither had the Adventurers made a settlement which would establish the Proprietors’ claims south of Cape San Romano. The Lords Proprietors had no intention of honoring the conditions negotiated by Modyford and Colleton.

In August, 1664—three months after the Barbadian settlers landed at Cape Fear—a group of the Lords met with Henry Vassall, a London cousin of John Vassall, and with Robert Sandford, a former colonist in Surinam and Barbados, “about a treaty with them Consernening Carolina.”²⁸ Some preliminary agreements were probably reached at that time, although no contracts were signed. Sandford sailed for Carolina in the fall, bearing commissions for himself as secretary of Clarendon County and for John Vassall as surveyor-general and deputy-governor.²⁹ Shortly afterward, Proprietary commissions were issued for Albemarle County as well.³⁰ The Lords Proprietors were working on a comprehensive scheme of government which they hoped would satisfy all groups and yet would contain the principles they thought necessary for successful colonizing. The Albemarle settlers were not being consulted since they were already established in Carolina, and the Clarendon colonists had weakened their position by planting without assurances which the Lords Proprietors were bound to honor. A third group then appeared on the scene.

John Yeamans, a Royalist, a Barbadian, and a friend of Sir John Colleton, sent his son to London to negotiate with the Lords Proprietors. As Henry Vassall later described the situation:

It is now a considerable time since I had the honeer to treate with a Committee of your Lordsps chosen from among yorselves conserning the setling of a Colony at Cape Feare, and although there was no absolute accord and fineall agremt yet severall consessions were then offered by the sd Committee, and by me dispatched to the Barbados to the Adventurers there who did intrust me, who imediately retorned aser that they would accept them and accordingly gave me power to conclude with your Honers. But in the Interim comes one Mr now Sir Jno Yeamens and by his sonne offers other and contrary Articles to wt the Adventurers did desire and made such spetious pretences that your Honers made an absolute agreement with him and refused to confirme those concessions formerly offered me....³¹

The Yeamans group proposed to settle at Port Royal where the Lords Proprietors had urged settlement from the beginning. Once the English flag was securely planted there, the unofficial boundary with Spain would be pushed as far south as the Lords Proprietors could hope to establish it. The undertaking could be dangerous if the Spaniards decided to contest the area, and the Proprietors were prepared to make extraordinary grants. Accordingly, they signed the “Agreement and Concessions” in January, 1665.³² The Agreement was a contract with the Yeamans group in which the Lords Proprietors promised to provide certain cannons and other weapons, make large headright grants to settlers, grant large tracts to investors, and to honor the terms of the attached Concessions. The Concessions were the comprehensive scheme of government and landholding which the Proprietors had been preparing for some time. It was applicable to Albemarle and Clarendon as well as to the projected settlement at Port Royal. While Henry Vassall blamed Yeamans for the sections of the Concessions opposed by the Clarendon colonists, Yeamans probably did not originate them. The provisions opposed most vigorously by the colonists of Clarendon and Albemarle were the “lot system” of taking up land and the requirement that a settler must maintain an armed man or two “weaker servants” for each 100 acres he held.³³ This land system was designed by the Lords Proprietors to keep the people together in compact settlements for protection and to prevent the first inhabitants from gaining possession of large unoccupied tracts of the best land. Sir John Colleton vigorously defended this policy, writing:

I would fayne know wt there land signifies wthout people, unlesse bee to lett to othrs: & is it reasonable yt a few should take up all ye Land, & become Lord & ye Cuntry unstrenkthened & unpeopled, they wilbe poore Lord & wth a greate deale of land [worth] nothing whereas if they will people as they goe, there Collony wilbe safe, it will bringe trade and shiping, & make Labor & land of vallew otherwayse come to nothing, beleive it, Sr....³⁴

It must have seemed hard to the settlers to be forced to take up lots containing both good and poor land and to accept less than was due to them for headrights if they could not settle it immediately. In addition, settlers had already occupied land in Albemarle and Clarendon and the Lords Proprietors’ system threatened their titles. These considerations would not necessarily apply at Port Royal where no land had been occupied and where it would obviously be necessary for the colonists to settle under the guns of a fortification.

Aside from insistence upon the wisdom of their land system, the Proprietors tried to accommodate the wishes of several groups for reasons which they made clear. When they sent John Yeamans a copy of the Concessions, they flatteringly informed him that he was commissioned governor and that they had secured a baronetcy for him. They continued, almost apologetically,

we have in our agreement with your Sonn indeavoured to comprehend all Interests especially that of New England from whence the greatest stocke of people will in probability come, our more southerne plantations being much drayned, wherefore we advize you to contrive, all the good wayes you cann imagen to get those people to joyn with you in which there wilbe a common Utility especially by keeping those in the Kinges dominions that either cannot or will not submit to the Government of the Church of England.³⁵

Although Yeamans was commissioned governor of both Clarendon and the new Craven County in the south, a memorandum in the Lords Proprietors’ entry book indicated that Craven was to have a separate governor as soon as it was settled.³⁶ Despite this additional evidence of a lack of sympathy between the Vassall and Yeamans groups, the Lords Proprietors chose to regard the Barbados Adventurers as a single group making two settlements in Carolina. They wrote them explaining that William Yeamans had persuaded them by his “injenuity” to consent to more than several of the Lords Proprietors wanted,

of which we doe noe wayse repent considering your forwardness to setle neare Cape Faire before you had an assurance of any conditions from us, and your resolution to make another setlement to the southward or westward of Cape Romania which we much desire....³⁷

It was obviously to the Proprietors’ advantage to insist that William Yeamans represented both the Clarendon and Craven County settlers, but they must have known that he did not. Had the Barbadians been united, it would have been folly to divide their strength. The evidence is overwhelming that the Vassall group in Clarendon County was predominantly Puritan. Both John and Henry Vassall were well-known Puritans,³⁸ and the interest of the New England colonies in the settlement is an often-told story. The desire of the Vassall settlers for a corporation form of self-government points clearly to their Puritan background. Yeamans was an Anglican royalist³⁹ who had no intention of settling in a colony dominated by “New England men.” The reasons for his strong feelings can be understood by looking at the Concessions.

While maintaining the points on which they had declared themselves in the Declaration and Proposals, the Lords Proprietors had tried to introduce in the Concessions a flexibility which would prove attractive to various groups. No method of selecting the governors was specified, although the Lords Proprietors made clear their intention to “commissionate” them.⁴⁰ Under the Concessions, the governors of Albemarle were always appointed by the Proprietors, and Yeamans was chosen in the same fashion. In Clarendon, however, the method specified in the Declaration and Proposals was apparently to be used as soon as Clarendon and Craven were separated. In a promotional pamphlet published in London in 1666 by the backers of the Clarendon settlement, the provisions of the Concessions were reproduced generally but with the specification that the governor was to be chosen from among the settlers and was to serve only three years.⁴¹ Nothing in the Concessions would prevent the inhabitants of Clarendon from nominating a group of candidates from among whom the Lords Proprietors would commission a governor—the method suggested in the Declaration and Proposals. The provisions of the Concessions suggest throughout that the Lords Proprietors were scrupulously honoring the commitments made to the Vassall colonists in the Declaration.

The religious provisions of the Concessions are extraordinarily surprising. Article 8 stated that religious toleration must be practiced in all of the counties, but Article 9 granted to the assemblies power “to constitute and appoint such and so many Ministers or Preachers as they shall think fit, and to establish their maintenance....”⁴² The clear intention of this article was to allow the assembly to choose the religious establishment in each county, so long as it tolerated other ecclesiastical organizations. The Clarendon County assembly was free to create a tax-supported Congregationalist church on the Massachusetts model, while the Yeamans settlers in Craven could officially establish the Church of England. The question appears not to have been important in Albemarle in 1665, but Article 9 might have invited a contest between religious factions for control of the assembly eventually.

Under this view of the Concessions, the changes made in the charter in June, 1665, assume a new importance. If Clarendon and Craven were to be governed somewhat differently and were to have separate religious establishments, then the absolute independence of each county was essential. The plan for a general council of the whole province was abandoned. Sections were added to the charter allowing the Lords “to erect, Constitute, and make several Counties, Baronies, and Colonies of and within the said Provinces, Territories, lands, and hereditaments....”⁴³ A firm legal basis was thereby given to the separate jurisdictions.

In addition, the sections relating to religious toleration were altered. In the first charter, the Lords Proprietors were authorized to grant at their discretion toleration to persons who could not conform to the Church of England, but in the second charter they were granted “full and free licence, liberty, and authority, by such ways and means as they shall think fit, to give and grant ... such Indulgencies and dispensations ... as they ... shall, in their discretion, think fit and reasonable....”⁴⁴ The authority granted in the 1663 charter to build and dedicate Anglican churches was left intact, since the section was necessary if the Church of England was to be established in some counties.⁴⁵ Otherwise, the inference that the Anglican church would be established and other faiths tolerated is eradicated. The Lords Proprietors could give any form of religious freedom they desired in Carolina or in any part of it.

It was the strength of religious convictions—and the particular political ideals flowing from them—which lay behind the alterations in the charter. Each county had to be a separate unit in order to guarantee settlers, both Anglicans and Congregationalists, that they would not pass under a religious establishment and local government repugnant to them. The Lords Proprietors arrived at an admirably tolerant and practical solution to the problem of accommodating religious differences and a degree of political diversity in their province.

On the subject of the land system, the Proprietors were unwilling to compromise. Significantly, the clause in the first charter protecting the land titles of persons already settled in the province was omitted from the second charter.⁴⁶ The Lords Proprietors intended to insist that the planters in Albemarle and Clarendon place the required number of settlers on their lands within three years or surrender the unsettled portions.⁴⁷ The policy of the Lords Proprietors was sensible and farsighted. Obviously, the wise method of procedure was to hold the colonists together in compact settlements with provision for gradual and orderly expansion. Not only could such settlements be more easily defended, but the reservation of good land with river frontage would be an inducement to new settlers. Equally obviously, the first settlers would find it very hard to resist taking the best lands, however widely scattered, for their future use and for speculative purposes. The Lords Proprietors were asking of the settlers a disinterested farsightedness which human nature could not support in the absence of any clear danger. There was, inevitably, a conflict between the Proprietors’ long-range planning and the immediate interest of the settlers. The wisdom of the Proprietors’ system was demonstrated when the Indians attacked the widely scattered Clarendon colonists, destroying their crops and killing their stock.⁴⁸ If the plantations had been grouped around a strongly fortified center, the Indian raids would have been much less destructive. From this perspective, the judgment of the Lords Proprietors appears to have been sounder than that of the settlers.

The colonies at Cape Fear and Port Royal failed because of a series of misfortunes. The Proprietors lost the results of their two years of careful planning. It was, at best, an inauspicious time to launch colonies in the South Atlantic. England had gone to war with the Dutch in February, l665.⁴⁹ An enemy fleet attacked Barbados in April and was rather easily beaten off. The war in the West Indies went in favor of the English, and Sir John Yeamans set out for Carolina in October, 1665, when no danger was apparent. He intended to use Cape Fear as a base from which to launch his settlement farther south. The Port Royal expedition failed when two of Sir John’s three vessels were destroyed after their arrival in the Cape Fear, one of them bearing the Proprietors’ twelve cannons for the fortification of the new settlement. It would have been foolish indeed to venture into Spanish territory without adequate ordnance. Sir John returned to Barbados to find the war situation entirely changed. Whatever his plans, they were altered by the French declaration of war in January, 1666. The English islands fell one by one. Lord Clarendon, perhaps the least active of the Proprietors, wrote rather mournfully to the governor of Barbados, “I am told that our Plantation of Carolina will much surpass yours if all were once quiet.”⁵⁰ But all was not quiet. By February, 1667, only Nevis and Barbados remained in English hands. Ships and seamen were desperately needed in the Caribbean. The tide was turned after the middle of 1667 by the arrival of a fleet from England, but fierce fighting continued until news arrived in October of the ratification of the Treaties of Breda.

Peace came too late to save the colony at Cape Fear which had been abandoned by October, 1667. Neither of the Vassalls, in their letters to the Lords Proprietors about the situation of Clarendon, mentioned the war. Henry Vassall wrote in August, 1666, asking for revision of the Concessions since the Yeamans colony had failed.⁵¹ He promised that a ship would be sent with supplies at once if the answer were favorable; otherwise, he said, “all those that have entrusted me though they may have begun a plantation and some are actually uppon the place, have advised me that they will draw of[f] and quite give over the designe.” John Vassall, in his letter announcing the demise of Clarendon County, gave as chief reason for the failure “the hard termes of your Consetions which made our friends that sett us out from Barbadoes to forsake us, so as they would neither suply us with necessaries nor find shipping to fetch us away....”⁵²

There is no reason to doubt that the Proprietors responded to Henry Vassall’s letter. Even in the middle of a disastrous war, the leading members of the group saw each other frequently as they pursued their duties at Court. If they followed their usual pattern, they expressed their goodwill toward Clarendon County and assured Vassall of their willingness to discuss revision of the Concessions when the wartime crisis was over. They probably viewed Vassall’s threat as an effort to take advantage of the situation and had no intention of yielding to it, especially since they could not have known whether the Yeamans group would resume their attempt to settle at Port Royal when the war was over.

No one can deny John Vassall’s valiant efforts to hold his colony together, but his assigning the entire blame for failure on the Concessions does not ring true. If his backers, because of their dissatisfaction with the land system, were willing to allow hundreds of Englishmen surrounded by hostile Indians to perish on the banks of the Cape Fear, they were indeed hard men. It is far more likely that the exigencies of war prevented supplies from reaching Clarendon. Not only was it virtually impossible to get merchant vessels safely across the Atlantic or through the Caribbean, but even coastal shipping was thoroughly disrupted.⁵³ The colonists found themselves in an impossible position. With their crops and homes despoiled, they had probably drawn together for defense and dared not venture out to the isolated fields to plant new crops. Significant supplies of food, clothing, ammunition, and new settlers could not be expected to arrive soon. It is small wonder that the colonists left the Cape Fear. Perhaps the terms of the land concessions made the anonymous backers less interested in risking their vessels in wartime and lessened the enthusiasm of the colonists for defending Clarendon, but factors far more pressing than unenforced land regulations appear to have caused the final abandonment of the county.

When efforts to establish “effective occupation” of the southern part of Carolina were hastily resumed in 1668-1669, the Lords Proprietors tried to profit from the lessons they had learned. This time, they undertook the planting and supplying of the colony at their own expense instead of relying upon adventurers who might desert the settlement in its time of need. In addition, the experience of Clarendon confirmed their belief that compact settlement and orderly expansion were essential for successful colonizing. Their new arrangements emphasized settlement in towns. They had also begun to see that Albemarle’s natural ties with Virginia were going to frustrate efforts to bring that county into the system developed for the rest of the province. Thereafter, they held Albemarle to be of limited value and treated it accordingly.

From 1663 to 1665, the Lords Proprietors had not slept. They had made solid progress toward their primary tasks of peopling Carolina and of establishing a southern boundary. The Second Dutch War had destroyed the fruits of their efforts, but, when the war ended, they were prepared to begin anew the effort to claim for England a southern land in which would grow the products of Spain and North Africa.

Footnotes

^*Dr. Fagg is associate professor of history, Arkansas College, Batesville.