LORD CARTERET ADDS A NEW TROUBLE.
A. D. 1680 TO 1704.
When John Culpepper had ended his administration the
authorities in England sent over John Harvey as Governor. Little
is known of him or of his successors, John Jenkins and Henry
Wilkinson. There were still misrule and confusion in Albemarle.
A few men of wealth, who acted as deputies in the Council for the
absent Lords Proprietors, were their advocates and defenders in
everything they proposed; but the people still traded with New
England vessels and vented their scorn upon the Fundamental
Constitutions.
1681.
2. At last, in 1681, the authorities in England concluded that if
one of their own number went over he might exert more influence
upon the people than a hired agent. Therefore, they induced Seth
Sothel, who had bought the interest first granted to the Earl of
Clarendon, to venture on the doubtful expedient.
1683-88.
3. To the great good fortune of the province, this abandoned man
was captured at sea by Algerine pirates. Thus he became the slave
of these corsairs for two years. When he arrived it was soon
seen what a beastly and detestable monster had been sent as a
reformer of the morals of the people of Albemarle. He was the
most shameless reprobate ever seen as a Governor in America. He
took bribes, stole property and appropriated the Indian trade to
his own uses, growing worse and worse until the people, in 1688,
could no longer endure his iniquities, and drove him from the
place he disgraced. He went to South Carolina, and after his
sentence to twelve months exile had expired, returned to North
Carolina and died in 1692.
1689-93.
4. Philip Ludwell and Alexander Lillington were the next rulers
in North Carolina, and the administration of the latter witnessed
the triumph of the colonists in the consent of the Lords
Proprietors to the abolition of the Fundamental Constitutions.
This event occurred in 1693, and brought no little joy to the men
who had so long and successfully opposed it as the Constitution
of North Carolina.
1695-96.
5. Thomas Harvey ruled next in Albemarle, while John Archdale, a
wise and benevolent Quaker, was put in charge of all the
settlements in what was North Carolina, and also those on Cooper
and Ashley Rivers, in South Carolina. In the year 1696 a severe
pestilential fever visited all the tribes of Indians along
Pamlico Sound and destroyed nearly all of them. The Colonists,
soon after this, feeling somewhat safer from Indian attacks,
began to form settlements southward.
1704.
6. Henderson Walker succeeded to the rule by virtue of his place
as President of the Council. After him Colonel Robert Daniel,
who had made reputation in an expedition against the Spaniards in
Florida, became, in 1704, the Governor of the province.
7. Governor Daniel was probably the mistaken and ignorant agent
of Lord Carteret, who happened then to be the Palatine, or chief
of the Lords Proprietors, in a foolish effort at reform.
Carteret, like James II., was by no means a pattern in morality,
but became impressed with his duty to cause the Assembly to pass
a law making the Episcopal Church the State Church in the
province, as it was in England.
8. The Baptists and Quakers were numerous, and both of these
sects were sternly opposed to any such regulation. The law was
passed in spite of their votes to the contrary, and provided for
building churches, buying glebe lands, and public taxation to pay
the rectors' salaries, but did not visit any disqualification or
punishment upon nonconformists. The first Episcopal preacher
arrived at Albemarle in 1703, and the first church was built in
1705, in Chowan county.
9. These persons, who were not members of the Episcopal Church,
said they were already paying for the support of their pastors,
and at once declared that they would not submit to the injustice
of paying money to men who were the leaders in the persecutions
of Baptists and Quakers in England and America.
10. The Presbyterians of South Carolina sent John Ashe, of that
section, to London to resist the confirmation of the law, and
Edmund Porter was sent, for the same purpose, by the people of
Albemarle. Ashe died in London before he knew of his success.
Both Queen Anne and the House of Lords denounced the innovation
as unjust and impolitic, and the law was therefore annulled by
Her Majesty in her privy council.
11. It was thus, year by year, that the Carolinians kept up their
struggle for freedom and equality before the law. The ocean
stretched between them and the men who sought their oppression,
and large expenditures, both in money and heartwearing efforts,
were undergone, as the dangerous and alarming years went by; but
these men of the woods never wavered in their determination to be
free.
QUESTIONS.
1. Who was sent from England to succeed John Culpepper as
Governor of Carolina? Who followed Governor Harvey in office?
What was the condition of affairs in the colony under these
Governors?
2. Who became Governor in 1681? Who was Seth Sothel, and why was
he selected?
3. What befell Sothel on his way to Carolina? What kind of man
was Governor Sothel? What did the people do?
4. Who next took charge of Carolina? What important thing was
accomplished under this administration?
5. Who was Governor in 1696? Who had charge of all the
settlements?
6. What two Governors are next mentioned?
7. Whose agent was Governor Daniel? What law was passed by the
Assembly?
8. What two religious sects were strongest opposers of the act?
What was provided for in the statute?
9. What complaint was made by the Baptists and Quakers?
10. Who was sent to London in the interest of the Presbyterians?
What man from Albemarle? What was the success of the mission to
London?
11. What was the almost constant struggle of the people of Carolina?