Founders of North and South Carolina: Monck, Cooper, and the Lords Proprietors

Carolina's Founding: Two Colonies, Different Origins

The Carolinas began as a single proprietary grant but developed separately from the start.

North Carolina

• Charter: 1663 (Carolina Charter) — Charles II to 8 Lords Proprietors
• Key Proprietor: George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle — Cromwell's general, Restoration architect
• First Permanent Settlement: ~1653 (Albemarle Sound area) — Virginians moving south
• Formal "Founding" Date: 1663 charter; 1712 separate governance; 1729 royal colony
• Motivation: Land speculation, naval stores (tar, pitch, timber), buffer against Spanish Florida

South Carolina

• Same 1663 Charter — but no effective settlement until 1670
• Key Figure: Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury — leading Proprietor, Locke's patron
• First Settlement: 1670 — Charles Town (Albemarle Point) by English planters from Barbados
• Motivation: Plantation economy (rice, indigo, later cotton); religious tolerance for dissenters (Huguenots, Baptists, Quakers)
• John Locke's Role: Wrote Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669) — feudal model, never fully implemented

The Lords Proprietors (All 8)

1. George Monck, Duke of Albemarle
2. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon
3. William Craven, Earl of Craven
4. John Berkeley, Lord Berkeley
5. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley (later Earl of Shaftesbury)
6. Sir George Carteret
7. Sir William Berkeley (VA governor)
8. Sir John Colleton

Divergence from the Start

• NC: Small farmers, tobacco, naval stores, resistant to authority, "poor man's country"
• SC: Plantation elite, rice/indigo, slave society from 1670s, hierarchical, wealthy
• Separate governors: 1691 (de facto); 1712 (official); 1729 (both royal)

Why Two Carolinas?

Distance (300+ miles), different economies, different settlers, governance impracticality. The 1663 charter created one colony; geography and demography made two.