Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In March 1663, after 97 years of failed attempts by first the Spanish and then the English to establish settlements in North Carolina, King Charles II granted eight aristocrats a vast territory extending from the coast of today’s North and South Carolina to the Pacific Ocean. These eight Lords Proprietor – George, Duke of Albemarle; Edward, Earl of Clarendon; William, Lord Craven; John, Lord Berkeley; Anthony, Lord Ashley; Sir George Carteret; Sir William Berkeley, who was again the governor of Virginia; and Sir John Colleton – would almost unwittingly authorize in their new colony a remarkably free and democratic society of small farmers, rivaled only by Roger Williams’ Rhode Island in its respect for individual liberty.
X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2
Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast
Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website)
Lindley S. Butler, A History of North Carolina in the Proprietary Era 1629-1729
Noeleen McIlvenna, A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713
George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Vol. 1
