colonization of Carolina came from Barbados,
which by the time of the Restoration was both overcrowded and torn with
dissension. Sir John Colleton, one of the leading planters in that little
island, proposed to several of his powerful Cavalier friends in England
that they join him in applying for a proprietary charter to the vacant
region between Virginia and Florida, with a view of attracting Barbadians
and any others who might come. In 1663 accordingly the "Merry Monarch"
issued the desired charter to the eight applicants as Lords Proprietors.
They were the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Clarendon, Earl Craven, Lord
Ashley (afterward the Earl of Shaftesbury), Lord Berkeley, Sir George
Carteret, Sir William Berkeley, and Sir John Colleton. Most of these had no
acquaintance with America, and none of them had knowledge of Carolina or
purpose of going thither. They expected that the mere throwing open of the
region under their distinguished patronage would bring settlers in a rush;
and to this end they published proposals in England and Barbados offering
lands on liberal terms and providing for a large degree of popular
self-government. A group of Barbadians promptly made a tentative settlement
at the mouth of the Cape Fear River; but finding the soil exceedingly
barren, they almost as promptly scattered to the four winds. Meanwhile in
the more southerly region nothing was done beyond exploring the shore.

Finding their passive policy of no avail, the Lords Proprietors bestirred
themselves in 1669 to the extent of contributing several hundred pounds
each toward planting a colony on their southward coast. At the same time
they adopted the "fundamental constitutions" which John Locke had framed
for the province. These contemplated land grants in huge parcels to a
provincial nobility, and a cumbrous oligarchical government with a minimum
participation of popular representatives. The grandiloquent feudalism of
the scheme appealed so strongly to the aristocratic Lords Proprietors
that in spite of their usual acumen in politics they were blinded to its
conflicts with their charter and to its utter top-heaviness. They rewarded
Locke with the first patent of Carolina nobility, which carried with it
a grant of forty-eight thousand acres. For forty years they clung to the
fundamental constitutions, notwithstanding repeated rejections of them by
the colonists.

The fund of 1669 was used in planting what proved a permanent settlement