The Carolina Charter

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
The raison d’être for the South Carolina proprietary grant was obscured from the beginning by individuals writing to persuade rather than to reveal underlying motives.  Lou Roper says the milieu of Charles II was “notoriously pervaded by cynicism, failure, exploitation, plotting, treachery, and disingenuousness.” [1]  Almost nothing from the period should be taken at face value.

Charles came to the throne in 1660 with the same problems as his father, a Parliament unwilling to supply him with funds to support his policies.  Since he could not raise taxes in England, he imposed fees on the colonies, especially Barbados.  It not only was the wealthiest center, but it had not supported him after his father was executed. [2]

He returned Humphrey Walrond as acting governor in August 1660, [3] and passed a new Navigation Act on September 13.  This one continued Oliver Cromwell’s requirement that all shipping be done on English ships, [4] but added sugar and cotton to the list of goods that only could go to English ports.  The receiving merchants also had to be English. [5]

Charles needed ways to acknowledge men, like Walrond, who had supported him after his father was executed.  One way was to grant land or trade monopolies to those, who were dependent upon him for their positions, with the implied understanding that they would use their personal resources to further his goals.

On 18 December 1660, he issued a charter for the Royal Adventurers into Africa to reward his cousin Rupert. [6]  The company was granted lands in parts of Africa and exclusive rights to the gold trade. [7]  Most of the investors were “Cavalier politicians” including military leaders, like George Monck [8] and John Berkeley, [9] and administrators, like Anthony Ashley Cooper. [10] William Craven was chairman of the committee; [11] he had been supporting Rupert’s mother after her husband died in 1632. [12]

In 1663, Charles began consolidating his control over all lands claimed by the Crown.  The first grant, on March 24, was for that between Spanish Florida and Virginia.  The initial charter [13] listed the Lord Proprietors in order of rank: one earl, one duke, three lords, and three knights.  In addition to their positions, Charles described Edward Hyde and Monck as “right trusty, and right well beloved cousins and counsellors.”  The next three, Craven, Berkeley, and Cooper as “right trusty and well beloved.”  The same label was used for the seventh man, Berkeley’s brother William Berkeley.  The sixth, George Carteret gave him refuge on the isle of Jersey during the war, [14] but only was described by his role in the court.  The last, John Colleton, was simply a baronet.

The same year, 1663, Charles bought out the rights to Barbados from the heirs of James Hay, and used the export fees, which had been intended to finance the island’s government, to pay them an annuity. [15]  In August, Charles sent back Francis Willoughby as governor. [16]  He was the one who had purchased rights to the grant from Hay’s son. [17]  This had the effect of raising taxes on Barbados, since the island had to raise more money to pay the governor and run the government. [18]

Just before Willoughby returned, Charles passed another Navigation Act on July 27.  This one required that all goods shipped to Barbados, and other colonies, come from an English port. [19]  In December, he rechartered the Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa. He granted it exclusive rights to supply slaves to colonies, and opened subscriptions to London merchants [20] like John Colleton and James Modyford [21].  Charles’ brother James became president

At the same time London merchants were being offered a percentage of the profits of the slave trade, they started to see the “teeming masses” that supplied Barbdos with indentured servants as “cheap labor in England.” [22]  Charles began to fear the country was being depopulated, [23] when he needed men to fill the quota of seamen on his ships imposed by the Navigation Act of 1660. [24]  Trade in servants was discouraged. [25]  Charles made one exception in 1663: he allowed the export of the poor from his native Scotland.  They became the “most profitable cargo.” [26]

Charles’ policies took a cut of the profits of Barbados planters when they bought supplies and labor, when they shipped their sugar, and, again, when it arrived in England.  On 19 June 1663, three months after the charter was issued, John Colleton sent a letter to Monck stating “divers people” on the island “desired to settle and plant his majesty’s province of Carolina under the patent granted.” [27]

In August, Colleton’s son, Peter, and Thomas Modyford submitted a more concrete proposal. [28]  This led to negotiations that lasted until 1665, with the Barbados group demanding the same status they had in Barbados before Cromwell.  This was more than the proprietors wanted or could provide under the reign of Charles. [29]  Finally, before the last agreement was made, an impatient John Yeamans led a group to Cape Fear to make their colony [30] a fiat accompli.

This expedition not only led to the first settlement by Barbadians within the Carolina grant, but conflicting views of the subsequent history of what became South Carolina.  In 1937, Charles Andrews asserted the grant was not a “premeditated act of royal generosity to favourites whom a spendthrift king wished to reward.”  Instead, it was “something originated and put through by others and assented to by the king who seemed unable to refuse a request from those whose will and purpose were stronger than his own.” [31]

He thought the three men who had land in the colonies, Cooper, John Colleton, and William Berkeley, proposed the colony [32] to a group of venial politicians they met through their memberships in the Council of Plantations, which was appointed on 1 December 1660.  Among the men, in rank order, were Hyde, Willoughby, John Berkeley, and Carteret. [33]

Andrews, who wrote a comparative history of English colonies, asserted Hyde was “always willing to extend his holdings and increase his property,” [34] and Monck had a “reputation for parsimony and covetousness” that led to an “interest in anything that would increase his wealth.” [35]  He thought John Berkeley to be a “good deal of a schemer for place” and “vain.” [36]

When one sees the same names involved with every project—the Council on Plantations, the Africa company, the South Carolina charter, and later the New Jersey grant—one may think they were the most important men in England. [37]  However, if one looks in Wikipedia for the names of members of the court or the more significant courtiers, their names do not appear.  It is possible this small group distinguished itself by having a more entrepreneurial spirit than their rivals for Charles’ attention.

None of the Lords Proprietors were born to rank, like Charles.  All had risen through initiative and talent.  Three were oldest sons, but only one enjoyed the privileges of fortune and rank. Craven’s father was a self-made man who had risen to mayor of London without title. [38]  Cooper’s father died in Dorset when he was a minor and the estate dwindled through trustee mismanagement. [39]  Carteret was the son of an unpropertied man on Jersey, where the de Carteret family had held fiefs in 1135. [40]

Colleton was the second son of an Exeter cloth trader. [41]  Of the others, Monck was the second son of an Devon gentlemen in straitened circumstances, [42] Hyde was the third son of a Cheshire county family, [43] and the Berkeley brothers were the fourth and fifth sons of a courtier to the king from Somerset who died in debt. [44]

More recently, Roper has argued Charles, or at least his closest advisor, Hyde, was more astute than Andrews would allow.  Hyde negotiated the 21 May 1662 marriage contract between Charles and Catherine of Branganza.  Her primary attraction was her wealth.  One clause stipulated that Charles support Portugal’s war with Spain. [45]

Roper found a letter from Robert Harley that indicated Monck and Carteret already were planning to assert English rights to land bordering Spanish Florida in October 1662.  Monck had contacted Harley about accepting the governorship of a proposed colony that would draw settlers from Virginia and New England.  Harley turned him down because he doubted the backers would devote the necessary energy to the project. [46]  Roper suggests it was this vacuum that led Colleton to propose an alternative group of colonists once the charter was attained in 1663. [47]

End Notes
1.  L. H. Roper.  Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots, 1662–1729.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.  3.

2.  For more on Barbados in the English Civil War, see the posts for 3 April 2022, 10 April 2022, and 17 April 2022.

3.  “List of Governors of Barbados.”  Wikipedia website.  Walrond is discussed in the posts for 10 April 2022 and 17 April 2022.

4.  Cromwell’s Navigation Act is discussed in the post for 17 April 2022.
5.  “Navigation Acts.”  Wikipedia website.

6.  Hugh Thomas.  The Slave Trade.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.  198.  Rupert and his mother are discussed in the post for 17 April 2022.

7.  George Frederick Zook.  “The Royal Adventurers in England.”  The Journal of Negro History 4(2):143–162:April 1919.

8.  The original charter describes Monck as “George Duke of Albemarle, master of our horse and captain general of all our forces.”  “Charter of Carolina - March 24, 1663.”  Avalon Project, Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library website.

9.  John Berkeley’s military role in Exeter and the surrounding county of Devon during the Civil War in England is described in the post for 3 April 2022.

10.  The 24 March 1663 charter describes Anthony Ashley Cooper as “chancellor of our exchequer.”

11.  Thomas.  198.
12.  “William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven (1608–1697).”  Wikipedia website.
13.  “Charter of Carolina.”
14.  “George Carteret.”  Wikipedia website.

15.  N. Darnell Davis.  Cavaliers and Roundheads in Barbados.  Georgetown, British Guiana: Argosy Press, 1887.  177.

16.  Wikipedia, Governors of Barbados.
17.  Willoughby is discussed in the posts for 10 April 2022 and 17 April 2022.

18.  Richard Waterhouse and, before him, Alfred Chandler are the most useful sources for information on the condition of Barbados in the 1660s.

Richard Waterhouse.  “England, the Caribbean, and the Settlement of Carolina.” Journal of American Studies 9(3):259–281:December 1975.

Alfred D. Chandler.  “The Expansion of Barbados.”  The Barbados Museum and Historical Society Journal 8:106+:1946.  Reprinted by P. F. Campbell.  61–89 in Chapters in Barbados History.  Saint Ann’s Garrison, Barbados: Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1986.

19.  Wikipedia, Navigation Acts.
20.  Zook.

21.  “Warrant to prepare a bill for the King’s signature, containing a grant to the Royal African,” 10 January 1663.  In Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series.  Volume 5, America and West Indies, 1661-1668, edited by W. Noël Sainsbury.  London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1880.  Posted on “America and West Indies: January 1663.”  British History Online website.  James Modyford was the brother of Thomas.

22.  Abbot Emerson Smith.  Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America 1607–1776.  University of North Carolina Press, 1947.  6.

23.  Smith.  7.
24.  Wikipedia, Navigation Acts.

25.  Chandler says “after 1660 the immigration of white indentured servants to Barbados had almost ceased.” [48]

26.  Smith.  144.

27.  Sir John Colleton.  Letter to Duke of Albermarle, 19 June 1663.  Quoted by Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  70–71.  His source was the then just published papers of Cooper. [49]

28.  T. Modyford and P Colleton.  Letter to Proprietors, 12 August 1663.  10–11 in The Shaftesbury Papers and Other Records Relating to Carolina and the First Settlement on Ashley River prior to the Year 1676, edited by Langdon Cheves.  Charleston, South Carolina: The South Carolina Historical Society, 1897.  Cited by Peter H. Wood.  Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion.  New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1974.  14.

29.  Chandler.  Campbell, 77.  “That said Free-Holders shall have the freedome of Trade, Immunity of Costumes, and other Priviledges.”

Charles M. Andrews.  The Colonial Period of American History: The Settlements III.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937.  195.  “They demanded permission to buy of the natives a tract thirty miles square controlled by what they proposed to call the ‘Corporation of the Barbados Adventurers,’ under which the colonists were to enjoy and exercise all the privileges and immunities granted the proprietors by the king, with a large measure of self-government similar to that of the city of Exeter.”

30.  Wood.  13–17.
31.  Andrews.  183.

32.  Andrews.  183.  He may be basing his conclusions on the Hudson’s Bay Company.  In this case, Pierre Radisson and Médard Chouart proposed a fur-trading monopoly to Carteret in 1665.  After they met Rupert, Charles became interested and put them in touch with Peter Colleton, who introduced them to other backers.  Cooper, Craven, and Monck were among the early investors. [50]  The company was granted a charter in 1670 for Rupert’s Land, and Rupert was the first governor. [51]

33.  “Councils of plantations 1660-72.”  20–22 in Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 3, Officials of the Boards of Trade 1660-1870, edited by J. C. Sainty.  London: University of London, 1974.  Reprinted by British History Online website.  Some, like Cooper and Colleton, owned plantations on Barbados including James Drax [52] and Thomas Middleton. [53]

34.  Andrews.  186.
35.  Andrews.  186.
36.  Andrews.  187.

37.  In 1664, Charles gave his brother James rights to New Netherlands.  Later that year, James gave part of what is now New Jersey to Carteret.  He sold another section that year to John Berkeley. [57]

38.  Wikipedia, Craven.
39.  “Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury.”  Wikipedia website.
40.  “George Carteret”  and “History of Jersey.”  Wikipedia website.
41.  John Colleton is discussed in the posts for 3 July 2022 and 10 July 2022.
42.  “George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle.”  Wikipedia website.
43.  “Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon.”  Wikipedia website.

44.  Doug Lockwood and Magna Carta Project.  “Maurice Berkeley MP (abt. 1579 - 1617).”  Wiki Tree website, 30 September 2014; last updated 1 August 2021.  He was their father.

45.  “Catherine of Braganza” and “Marriage Treaty.”  Wikipedia website.  Before Andrews, David Duncan Wallace saw the charter for Carolina as a continuation of a policy begun by Charles I to assert English “rights as far south as the settled portion of Florida.” [58]

46.  Sir Robert Harley.  Letter to Sir Edward Harley, 31 October 1662.  Cited by Roper.  16, and 165, note 36.

47.  Roper.  16.
48.  Chandler.  Campbell, 71.
49.  Cheves.
50.  “The Original Investors of Hbc.”  Hudson’s Bay Company website.
51.  “Hudson’s Bay Company.”  Wikipedia website.

52. Drax is discussed in the posts for 17 January 2022, 23 January 2022, 6 February 2022, and 17 April 2022.

53.  Thomas Middleton is discussed in the posts for 27 March 2022 and 17 April 2022; he was a ship’s captain.  His background is obscure.  Alice Granberry Walter believes he was the nephew of Thomas Willoughby, who migrated to Virginia about 1635. [54]  That Willoughby was the son of Thomas Willoughby of Kent and Elizabeth Middleton. [55]  Her background is unknown.  Thomas is not same family as the Middletons, Arthur and Edward, discussed in the posts for 5 June 2022 and 19 June 2022.  They are descended from Henry Middleton of Twickenham, Middlesex. [56]

54.  Alice Granberry Walter.  Captain Thomas Willoughby (1601-1657) of England, Barbados and Lower Norfolk County, Virginia [and] some of his descendants, 1601-1800.  Virginia Beach, Virginia: A. G. Walter, 1988.

55.  Daniel Robert May.  “Captain Thomas Willoughby, III. of Barbados.”  Geni website.  29 April 2022.

56.  Linden Holder.  “Henry Middleton (1612 - abt. 1664).”  Wiki Tree website, 17 October 2012; last updated 19 March 2021.

57.  “Province of New Jersey.”  Wikipedia website.

58.  David Duncan Wallace.  The History of South Carolina.  New York: American Historical Society, 1934.  1:56–57.