nted their memorial, so full of
pious pretensions, to King Charles in the garden of Hampton Court, the
'merrie monarch,' after looking each in the face a moment, burst into
loud laughter, in which his audience joined heartily. Then taking up a
little shaggy spaniel, with large, meek eyes, and holding it at arm's
length before them, he said, 'Good friends, here is a model of piety and
sincerity, which it might be wholesome for you to copy.' Then tossing it
to Clarendon, he said, 'There, Hyde, is a worthy prelate; make him
archbishop of the domain which I shall give you.' With grim satire
Charles introduced into the preamble of the charter a statement that the
petitioners, 'excited with a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation
of the gospel, have begged a certain country in the parts of America not
yet cultivated and planted, and only inhabited by some barbarous people
who have no knowledge of God.'"

The Puritans, already settled in North Carolina, had no desire to take
part in the propagation of the gospel in the fashion which prevailed
among the courtiers of Charles II., and most of those who were from New
England abandoned their North Carolina plantations. Governor Berkeley, of
Virginia, extended his authority over the remainder, and made William
Drummond, a Scotch Presbyterian, who had been settled in Virginia,
administrator of the Chowan colony. Emigrants from Barbadoes bought land
from the Indians near the site of Wilmington, and founded a prosperous
settlement with Sir John Yeamans as governor. Other emigrants from
England, led by Sir William Sayle and Joseph West, entered Port Royal
Sound, and landed at Beaufort Island in 1671. They soon deserted Beaufort
and planted themselves on the Ashley River, a few miles above the site of
Charleston. In December, 1671, fifty families and a large number of
slaves arrived from the Barbadoes. Carolina, about this time, had a
narrow escape from being made the subject of a grotesque feudal
constitution conceived by John Locke, the philosopher, and approved by
the Earl of Shaftesbury. This constitution proposed to inflict on the
infant colony a system of titled aristocracy as elaborate as that of
Germany. The good sense of the colonists repelled the absurd scheme, and
saved Carolina from being a laughing stock for the nations. In 1680, the
settlers on Ashley River moved to Oyster Point, at the junction of the
Ashley and Cooper Rivers, and laid the foundation of Charleston.