1674.]

NEW NETHERLAND CEDED TO ENGLAND.

353

that peace was made between England and Holland, and that on duly authorized demand he must give up the province over which he had ruled for less than one short year.

Events in

The events which brought about the Peace of Westminster are familiar passages of English history. In the hot conflict between King Charles and his party on the one hand, and the England. Commons and people of England on the other, over questions that were believed to

involve the safety of Protestantism in the kingdom, Charles had been for the moment worsted. At first forced into recalling his "Declaration of Indulgence," whereby all "penal laws on matters ecclesiastical against whatever sort of Nonconformists or re

Old House, Southold, Long Island.

cusants were suspended, he had been at once closely pressed by the passage in Parliament of the "Test Act," which compelled all holding civil and military office under government to take an oath which was impossible to Roman Catholies. This compelled the resignation of the Duke of York as Lord High Admiral of the fleet, of Sir Thomas Clifford as a cabinet minister, and of many others. Some of the cabinet would have carried resistance to this act to any length; but the King, once driven to yield, refused his support. He only turned savagely upon his chancellor and most able minister, Lord Shaftesbury, who had aided the Parliament, demanded from him the seals, and so drove his strongest adviser into a determined opposition. The effect of this was quickly seen in the increased bitterness and strength of the Protestant measures now pressed by Parliament. The war against the Protestant Prince of Orange and his nation, which even in a military point of view had been unsuccessful, grew more unpopular every day. Defeated at home by the masterly use made by Shaftesbury of the opposing elements, discouraged by events abroad, and unable to

sufficiently repair his exhausted resources even by his old shameless means of a resort to France, Charles was driven into a third surrender. He adopted a policy of concession and conciliation at home; and he consented to make peace with Holland.

New York finally under English rule.

These were the events which had unexpectedly reacted on the fate of the Dutch province in America. New York was to remain in English hands from this time forth; and though virtually winners of a peace on their own continent, the Dutch were to give up for it their only stronghold on this. A new patent to the Duke of York was issued in June, 1674. He appointed as his governor Major Edmund Andros, an officer of distinction, whom the King had already in March appointed to receive the surrender of New Orange under the treaty; and on the first of November the British frigates Diamond and Castle made their appearance at the anchorage off Staten Island.

On the ninth of the month, Colve, who had asked a week's delay to make all final arrangements, absolved the city officials, in solemn conclave at the Stadt Huys, from their oaths of allegiance to Holland; and on Saturday, the tenth," the New Netherland and dependances were formally given over to "Governor Major Edmund Andros on behalf of His Britannic Majesty." The English names were restored, the English laws reëstablished, as they had been under Nicolls and Lovelace. A great number of the provincial and local officers were reinstated; the Mayor's Court was again convened at New York; the routine of public business and private life went on as before. The few months of Dutch occupation had hardly left a trace on the government which Nicolls had been the first, since the settlement of Manhattan Island, to bring into a really smooth, continuous course of prosperity.

CHAPTER XV.

NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA.

CHARLESTON FOUNDED. - WAR WITH THE INDIANS. - GOVERNOR MORETON. - JoSEPH BLAKE. - LORD CARDROSS'S SETTLEMENT AT PORT ROYAL. PIRACY AND SPANISH HOSTILITY. - CARDROSS'S COLONY DESTROYED - SOTHEL DEPOSED AND BANISHED FROM ALBEMARLE. HE LEADS A REVOLUTION IN THE SOUTH. - HIS CAREER. THE COLONIES UNDER ONE GOVERNOR. INTRODUCTION OF RICE. JOHN ARCHDALE GOVERNOR. - PROSPERITY OF THE COLONIES UNDER HIS RULE.

ies.

WHILE northern Carolina had been passing through a time of such disturbance and adversity, the people at the south had The Southenjoyed a period of quiet and comparative prosperity under ern Colonthe skilful rule of Joseph West. Not that the settlements at Cape Fear and Ashley River were free from the troubles which disturbed every American colony-differences of religion, and feuds between the Puritans of New England and the Royalists who had come out under the Proprietors' patronage; - but these were held in check by the Governor, and were little interruption to the general course of affairs. There was a steady flow of emigrants from England; and Huguenots from France sought a refuge from persecution at home in a region whose pleasant climate had for them a peculiar attraction. In April, 1679, the King gave a token of favor to the Proprietaries and the new colony in sending out at his own expense two vessels with a band of Frenchmen skilled in vine growing and silk-producing, who brought with them vine-slips and silkworms' eggs for the establishment of those industries.

During the years that had passed since their first settlement, the Ashley River people had not failed to see their mistake in settling so far up the stream. Some, indeed, seem not to have made this error at all; for the old records speak of people both from the Ashley settlement and from Cape Fear, "resorting to Oyster Point" from the earliest times of the colony; and, doubtless, dwellings had been built there at the same time that the town had been founded on the more inland bluff. This "Oyster Point" was at the junction of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers; and the tendency to resort thither had grown so strong by the beginning of 1680 that the authorities yielded to it,

as they should have done long before. The old town was abandoned Charleston altogether in the spring of that year, and the foundations of founded. a new Charles Town the present city of Charleston - were laid on what had from the beginning been pointed out by nature as the proper site for the colonial port.

The new town was judiciously planned. A visitor, in the first year of its existence, described it as "regularly laid out into large and capacious streets, which to Buildings is a great Ornament and Beauty. In it they have reserved convenient places for Building of a Church, Town House, and other Publick Structures, an Artillery Ground for the Exercise of their Militia, and Wharves for the Convenience of their Trade and Shipping. At our being there was judged

from England, Ireland, Berbadoes, Jamaica, and the Caribees, which daily Transport themselves thither, have more than doubled that Number" [that is, between the visit, 1680, and the publication, 1682]. The extreme unhealthfulness of the place soon passed away, a "fortunate revolution" which "men of discernment . . . . attributed to the dispersion or purification of the noxious vapour by the smoke issuing from the numerous culinary fires." 2

Contemporary testimony does not give the most favorable account of the discipline and manners which prevailed in the promising new 1 A Compleat Discovery of the State of Carolina, by T. A., Gent., London, 1682. 2 Chalmers.

1680.]

WAR WITH THE INDIANS.

357

Character of

ton people.

town; and the looseness and turbulence which ruled there, though not of a kind to make political disturbance, brought upon the colony an evil which for a time threatened seriously the Charlesto check its progress. "The most desperate Fortunes first ventured over to break the Ice," explains one chronicler, in accounting for the character of his fellow-settlers, "which being generally the Ill-livers of the pretended Church-men, altho' the Proprietors commissionated one Colonel West their Governour, a moderate, just, pious, and valiant person; yet having a Council of the loose principled Men, they grew very unruly, that they had like to have Ruin'd the Colony by

Abusing the Indians, whom in prudence they ought to have obliged in the highest degree." It was the usual story of abuse in trade, the taking of the Indian women, and the oppressive punishment of trifling offences often brought about by rum or ignorance; and the Westoes, the tribe of the neighborhood, were a warlike people, and not slow to retaliate. After a series of

An Indian sent into Slavery.

petty raids, actual war broke out with them in 1680, the first year of the new seaport.

Fortunately for the colony, it was comparatively strong, well-armed, and, above all, well led by West; and the war was a vig- war with orous and short one, the savages gladly making peace within the Indians. a year after its beginning. But the conflict had worse results than the actual fighting. To obtain the money for carrying it on, West and his Council had adopted the plan of offering a price for every In1 A New Description of That Fertile and Pleasant Province of Carolina, etc. By John Archdale, late Governor. London, 1707. In Carroll's Historical Coll., vol. ii.