four thousand inhabitants. They carried on a feeble trade in tobacco, maize and fat cattle, with the merchants of New England, whose little vessels brought in exchange those articles of foreign production which the settlers could not otherwise procure. English cupidity envied them their privileges, and the navigation laws of 1672 were put in force. An agent of the government appeared, who demanded a penny for every pound of tobacco sent to New England. The colonists resisted the levy. The tax-gatherer was rude, and had frequent personal collisions with the people. On one occasion he attempted to drive away a steer in satisfaction of a demand for the tax on

the tobacco of a planter, which had just been shipped for Boston, when the sturdy wife of the yeoman beat him off with a mop-stick, and saved the animal from the tax-gatherer.

Finally, the exasperated people, led by John Culpepper, a refugee from the Southern or Carteret county colony, seized the governor and the public

CHAP. XIII,

A BAD GOVERNOR PUNISHED.

463

funds; imprisoned him and six of his councillors; called a new representative Assembly, and appointed a chief magistrate and judges. That was in December, 1677. For two years the colonists conducted the affairs of their government without any foreign control. Meanwhile Culpepper, whom the royalists denounced as an "ill man," one who merited "hanging for endeavoring to set the people to plunder the rich," conscious of his integrity, went boldly to England to plead the cause of the colonists. There he was arrested, just as he was re-embarking for America, on a charge of treason, for which he was tried and acquitted. Returning to North Carolina, he was appointed surveyor-general of the province; and in 1680 he was employed in laying out the city of Charleston in South Carolina.

The Northern colony now enjoyed repose for awhile, until the arrival of Seth Sothel as governor. He had purchased the share of Clarendon in the soil of the provinces, and was sent to administer government there. On his. voyage he was captured by Algerine pirates, but escaped, and reached North Carolina in 1683. Avaricious, extortionate, cruel, without the abilities of a statesman and mean-spirited-" the dark shades of his character not relieved by a single virtue"-he sought the government with the hope of winning a fortune thereby. His advent disturbed the public tranquillity. He plundered the people, cheated the proprietors, and on all occasions seems to have prostituted his delegated power to purposes of private gain. After enduring his misrule for about six weeks, the people rose in rebellion, seized the governor, and were about to send him to England to answer their accusations before the proprietors, when he asked to be tried by the colonial Assembly. That body were evidently more merciful than his associates in England would have been, for they found him guilty and sentenced him to only one year's banishment and perpetual disqualification for the office of governor. Sothel then withdrew to the Southern colony, where we shall meet him presently.

Sothel's successor, Philip Ludwell, was an energetic and honest man. By the exercise of wisdom and justice, he soon restored order and good feeling in the colony. He was succeeded by other honorable men, among them the good John Archdale, a member of the Society of Friends, who came in 1695 as governor of the two colonies. His administration was a blessing. The people of North Carolina, over whom he ruled, were almost as free in their opinions and actions, as the air they breathed. There were few restraints of any kind, legal or moral, yet the people were generally enemies to violence, and gentle-tempered. They were widely scattered, with not a city or town, and scarcely a hamlet in their sylvan domain. There were no roads but bridle-paths from house to house, and these were

indicated by notches cut in trees. There was no settled minister of the gospel among them until 1703. The first church erected in North Carolina appeared in 1705. No building for a court-house was constructed until 1722; and it was not until 1754-about a hundred years after the first permanent settlement was made in the region of the Chowan-that a printing-press was set up in the province.

The Southern or Carteret County colony was, meanwhile, steadily advancing in population and wealth. The settlers there, perceiving the fatal objections to the "Fundamental Constitutions" as a plan of government for their colony, did not attempt conforming thereto, but established a more simple government adapted to their condition. It was crude. Under it the first legislative assembly of South Carolina convened in the spring of 1672, at the place on the Ashley River where the colony was first seated. In that body, jarring political, social and theological interests and opinions produced passionate debates and violent discord. There was a Proprietary party and a People's party; a High Church party and a Dissenter's party, each bigoted and resolute. At times debates were so angrily carried on, that members almost came to blows; and it was a relief to the people when the Assembly adjourned, for it seemed to be a nest out of which might come the rapacious vulture of civil war, that would be perilous in the extreme, at that time, when surrounding savages were evidently hostile. The danger from these foes finally healed the dissensions among the settlers. Moved by the instinct of self-preservation, they joined in a successful warfare upon the Indians, who had begun to plunder the plantations of grain and cattle, and to menace the lives of the colonists. The savages were subdued in 1680, and those who were made captive were sent to the West Indies and sold for slaves. Then Old Town, as their first place of settlement was called, was abandoned, and on Oyster Point, as we have observed, was founded the city of Charleston, the future capital of the colony. It was settled chiefly by the English, for the Dutch and others spread over the country along the Edisto and Santee rivers. Immigrants from different parts of Europe rapidly swelled the population of Charleston and its vicinity, and aspirations for political independence were manifested there at that early day.

A second popular Assembly met at Charleston in 1682. It was more harmonious than the first. Wise laws were framed, and a more tolerant religious spirit prevailed. Immigrants flowed in with a full and continuous stream. Families came from Ireland, Scotland and Holland; and when the edict of Nantes, which secured toleration to Protestants in France, was revoked, a large number of Huguenots fled from their country, and many