The History of the Americans #160 The Official Founding of North Carolina
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.
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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