INSTITUTIONS, GOVERNMENT AND LAWS OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 423 



was incorporated by the State Legislature under its present name of 

 Charleston. 



The colony of Carolina, very early in its history, began to attract to 

 itself emigTants from all parts of Europe. Though the Church of England 

 was the established church, freedom of religious worship was guaranteed 

 to all, and settlers of all social classes and all religious denominations 

 began to swell the population. Emigrants were offered land at an easy 

 quit-rent, and clothes and provisions were distributed by the Proprietors 

 to those who could not provide for themselves. The Proprietors, being 

 of the cavalier class, aided or induced many of their friends or dependents 

 to emigrate to Carolina ; while the English Puritans, whom the restora- 

 tion of the monarchy in England had deprived of many of their religious 

 rights, were attracted to the colony by the greater religious freedom there 

 enjoyed. Two vessels also arrived from New York with emigrants, and 

 in 1671, the Grand Council of the colony laid out for them a town on a 

 creek to the south of Stono, to be called James Town, lots in which were 

 granted to every person in each family. These colonists were Dutch, and 

 they were followed by others of their countrymen from Holland. The 

 settlement at James Town was abandoned after a few years, and the 

 settlers spread themselves over the country. In 1679, Charles II. pro- 

 vided, at his own expense, two small vessels to transport to Carolina a 

 few foreign Protestants, who might there domesticate the productions of 

 the South of Europe. In 1683, a colony of Irish were attracted to the 

 Province by the fame of its fertility, which was spread abroad, and they 

 were received with so hearty a welcome that they were soon merged 

 in the other colonists ; and about the same time, the remnants of a 

 Scotch settlement at Port Royal, who were driven thence by the Spaniards, 

 found a refuge in (,'harles Town and its vicinity. In 1685-6, a very im- 

 portant accession to the colony was made by the arrival of a large number 

 of French Protestant refugees, whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes 

 drove out of France. In 1696, a colony of Congregationalists, from Dor- 

 chester, in Massachusetts, settled near the head of the Ashley river, about 

 twenty-five miles from Charles Town. 



Such were the components of the colony over which the Lords Pro- 

 prietors exercised their original jurisdiction, and for the government of 

 which they proceeded to frame a system of laws under the powers com- 

 mitted to them in the charter of Charles 11. Their first organized at- 

 tempt at such a system embodied itself in the famous Fundamental Con- 

 stitutions, generally attributed to the English philosopher, John Locke, 

 but probably inspired to a considerable extent by Lord Shaftesbury. It 

 is unnecessary here to state in detail the provisions of Locke's Constitu- 

 tion. Its principal feature was the establishment of an oligarchy of rank 



