IN the year of our Lord 1679 the Lords Proprietors of
the Province of Carolina on the Continent of North
America ordered the Governor of their said province to
remove his " Towne of Trade" (a small settlement on the
west bank of the Ashley River) to the peninsula opposite,
tying between what we call the Ashley and the Cooper
rivers, but which were known to the Indians as the Kiawah
and the Wando.
The Lords Proprietors were certain nobles and gentlemen
to whom his Most Sacred Majesty King Charles II.
had, in gratitude for services rendered to his father and
himself, given all that territory
" situate between the southernmost
parts of Virginia, and the river San Mathias,"
the northern boundary of the Spanish dominions.
These gentlemen were : Lord Clarendon, the great historian
; the Duke of Albemarle, who, as General Monk,
had brought back the King from exile to "
enjoy his own
again"; the sagacious statesman, Sir Anthony Ashley
Cooper, Lord Ashley (afterward Earl of Shaftesbury) ;
Lord Craven, the preux chevalier of the age, who, like a
knight of old, had vowed life and fortune to the service
of the beautiful Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia—
and of Hearts ; Lord Berkeley ; Sir George Carteret ; Sir
John Colleton; and Sir William Berkeley, —all gallant
and loyal cavaliers.
All these had done and suffered much in the service of
the to secure and settle a province was an easy way to pay
a debt of gratitude. Moreover, the King expressly stated
in the charter, or patent, which he granted them, that he
did so, finding that they
" were incited by a laudable and
pious design of propagating the Christian religion and the
enlargement of the English empire and dominion," —
matters which the Merry Monarch was suspected of not
having deeply at heart.two Charleses, and to allow them, at their own expense.
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