See also: Carolina Charters (1663, 1665), Primary Source: The Charter of Carolina, 1663 on ANCHOR
The Carolina Charter is an important piece of North Carolina’s history. In 1663 (and later in 1665), King Charles II of England granted the territory of Carolina to a number of supporters, the Lords Proprietors. The original bounds of the Charter were vague and outlandish, but some of its original claims still mark the borders of North Carolina today. This page is designed to help researchers using the original primary source better understand its language and specifications, as Charles II and the Lords Proprietors designed. This reading guide is intended to accompany our ANCHOR resource, "Primary Source: The Charter of Carolina, 1663."
Vocabulary of the Carolina Charter
The original language of the Carolina Charter is very different from the English language today. As such, it is useful to understand the following words and phrases from the document.
&c: an old form of "etc.," which is short for "et cetera," Latin for "and the rest." The ampersand is actually a contraction for the Latin word et (and). In the first case of the document, the "et cetera" replaced the older, longer form, "and of the Church of England and also of Ireland in Earth, under Jesus Christ, Supreme Head." The change was made during the reign of Mary I. Mary was Catholic, and though she remained head of the Protestant Church of England her father Henry VIII had established, she dropped the mention of it from her title. None of her successors brought back the longer form, and the "etc." itself was dropped in 1801.
special grace, certain knowledge and meer motion
: This phrase appears several times in the charter to emphasize the king's authority. First, you'll notice that the king refers to himself in the plural–we, us, and our. Special grace means that the king is granting these privileges as gifts to his chosen followers --like the "grace of God," the king's grace is freely given and is not owed to anyone. Certain knowledge simply means that the king is sure of what he is doing. Mere (meer) motion is a legal term meaning "of (one's) own motives." Something done of "mere motion" is done without anyone else's authority or command.
"Fishes royal": sturgeons, porpoises, whales and dolphins when caught off the coast of Britain or its possessions, become the property of the English monarchy. This law is still in effect today. In the Charter, the claim to royal fishes caught in the rivers and bays of Carolina is transferred to the Lords Proprietors.
Avowdson: the right to nominate someone to church office. As Charles II was head of the Church of England, the Lords Proprietors were effectively its head in the king's name in North Carolina.
Socage: a means of granting land that freed the grantee from knights' service. The Lords Proprietors were required only to pay the King a kind of rent each year, not to perform any other special duties as would have been required under a feudal system.
Mark: a mark was "money of account," used for large transactions. A mark was worth two-thirds of an English Pound, but there was no coin minted in that value.
Liege: a feudal term used to describe the relationship of a man to his lord or superior. Someone who owes knightly allegiance to someone else or, confusingly, the person to whom allegiance is owed. In practical terms, the lieges of England in 1660 were its free citizens.
Denizen: a feudal term used to describe the relationship of a man to his lord or superior. A foreigner who by taking an oath of allegiance to the king was permitted to own property in England.
Freeholder: someone who holds his land outright, through purchase, or is by other means guaranteed to hold it for life. Only freeholders could vote in elections in England or in the colonies. A few U.S. states removed property requirements from voting after the Revolution, but North Carolina kept that requirement until 1856.
Seal: a (royal) wax seal by which a document could be made official without the personal signature of the king or queen.
Quia Emptores Terrarum: Translated from Latin literally as "Because they are buyers of land.” In the Charter, the language refers to a 1290 law that established means by which land could be passed from one person to another in England.
Per Ipsum Regem: Translated from Latin literally as "by the king himself." This phrase is used by monarchs to convey something by royal authority. Charles II signed the 1663 Carolina Charter with this seal.
Understanding Royal Titles and Offices
The Carolina Charter also refers to different government positions and titles in England throughout. Understanding what these positions did, how they are related, and how they impacted the Charter helps improve understanding of the document. The Charter also refers to some dates and levels of succession in the English monarchy.
Naming and Dating Conventions:
English kings were descended from French royalty, specifically from William I of Normandy who conquered England in 1066. In 1337, Edward III declared himself the rightful heir of the throne of France, thus beginning the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) between England and France. Edward III conquered parts of France but never secured his claim to the throne, and his successors lost all the territory Edward had conquered. In spite of this, British monarchs like Charles II referred to themselves as kings and queens of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, until 1801, when France was dropped.
Charles II became king in 1660, when he was invited to return from exile in France. However, on the Charter, he dates his reign from 1649, when his father, Charles I, was executed in the Puritan Revolution. Both dates are relevant depending on historical context.
Government Officials:
Lord High Chancellor: the speaker (presiding officer) of the House of Lords, Britain's upper legislative house made up of hereditary nobility; that is, of people who inherited their titles, such as an earl or baron. Until the 1800s, the House of Lords was more powerful than the House of Commons, and so the Lord Chancellor, appointed by the King, was one of the most powerful men in England at the time of the Charter.
Master of the horse: the person responsible for the king’s stables and all matters involving the king’s horses. At the time of the Charter, horses were the primary method of land transportation and essential in war in western Europe, and thus this was a noteworthy position to Charles II.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer: the person responsible for the monarch’s finances and treasury.
Lord Chamberlain of the Household: this person was the English monarch’s private secretary. They were responsible for organizing court functions.
Privy Council: a body of counsellors to Charles II. It was composed of people from the House of Lords and the House of Commons, as well as dignitaries from the church, military, and other socially-recognized factions.
The Prince Bishops of Durham: A body of clergy members that ruled the north of England in the King's name during the Middle Ages because it was too far from London for the king to rule directly. The Prince Bishops had authority over armies, taxes, courts, and even the coining of money. At the time of the Charter, they no longer had such power, but they are referenced as an example of the kind of power granted the Lords Proprietors from Charles II.
Lands Granted to the Lords Proprietors
The Charter communicated specific lands to the Lords Proprietors. The following sections helps define what those lands were.
In the 2nd Section, the borders of Carolina are defined as all the land from 31° to 36° north latitude, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In 1663, no one knew for certain just how far away the Pacific was, and no one in England had any immediate plans to find out, so this was a purely theoretical grant of land. In practice, the Lords Proprietors were granted land as far west as they could find men to colonize it. Carolina's boundaries are also determined by geographic features believed to be at the specified latitudes. The northern boundary is defined as the latitude of Lucke Island, in the "south Virginia seas" -- the Albemarle Sound. Virginians had already settled Albemarle, and that settlement was left under the control of Virginia's governor. The southern boundary is also defined as the latitude of the mouth of the St. Matthias River, now called the St. Johns River, on the coast of Florida. The 31° latitude line is actually a bit north of the current Georgia-Florida border, while the St. Johns River emerges near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. At the time, Spain controlled Florida, and Carolina was intended as a buffer against Spanish expansion in America. Georgia would be carved out of Carolina in 1733. Two years after Charles II granted the original 1663 charter, the Carolina Charter of 1665 enlarged the grant, defining Carolina's northern boundary at "the north end of Currituck River or Inlet, upon a strait westerly line to Wyanoak Creek," or 36° 30' (36 degrees 30 minutes, or 36 and one-half degrees) north latitude. The southern boundary was then defined as 29° north latitude, which would place it in northern Florida. That northern line added the Albemarle settlement to Carolina and became the present-day border between North Carolina and Virginia, although it took several border disputes and attempts at surveying before everyone finally agreed on where that border was. Note also that the western border of Carolina is defined as the "south seas" and not the Pacific Ocean. Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Americas when he crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513. Panama, at its narrowest point, actually runs east to west and borders the Atlantic on the north and the Pacific on the south. When Balboa found the Pacific, therefore, he was headed south, and named his discovery the "South Sea."
Rights Conveyed to the Lords Proprietors
The Proprietors were conveyed many rights in addition to the lands. The following section helps clarify what different rights and privileges Charles II gave them.
Although the Lords Proprietors were granted vast powers, they were bound by the Charter to respect the ultimate authority of the king, Charles II. Powers granted in this Charter were not intended to override any grants of land or special privileges already held by English subjects living in Carolina already. The assumption seems to be that no one holding such titles or privileges were already "planted" there.
The 4th section established that the Proprietors and their direct reports would “enjoy the said country…as of our manner of East Greenwich in our county of Kent.” This is a reference to the seventeenth-century charters of Virginia, New England, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey. Legally, for the king to grant land, the land must belong to some manor under his direct control that had not already been granted to someone else. In these charters, the land was defined for legal purposes as being part of the Manor of East Greenwich. East Greenwich was a favorite royal dwelling during the 1500s, when land overseas was first granted, and it became customary to grant new overseas possessions from that manor. Relatedly, the Lords Proprietors could also create manors themselves in Carolina. Manors were parcels of land controlled by a lord and including one or more villages and smaller pieces of land held by its residents. Manors were also expected to govern and defend themselves. The lord was bound to arrange for the defense of the manor, and its inhabitants performed work for the lord. The frankpledge bound a group of households together and made them responsible for one another's conduct, and the court leet served to judge and punish small crimes committed on the manor. The manor was part of the feudal system of the Middle Ages and developed before Europe had strong central governments, although manors existed in England into the twentieth century. Colonists balked at the restrictions of the manorial system, and manors were never established in Carolina.
Manors or not, the Proprietors still had total authority to design laws in Carolina. The Lords Proprietors could enact laws for Carolina "under their (own) seals," which meant that the king did not have to approve the law before it went into effect (see Section 5).
However, laws created in Carolina were to be passed with the advice and assent of the "freemen of the province" or their representatives, meaning that the Lords Proprietors must share power with a legislative assembly. Section 6 defines that a freeholder is a freeman of the province. Section 5 enumerated that laws could be passed not only pertaining to the "publick state" (to everyone’s interests), but also to the interests of a single person. Such laws might grant an individual special privileges, but the Lords Proprietors, like Parliament, could also enact bills of attainder that essentially declared a person guilty of some crime and punishing them without a trial. Bills of attainder were used in both England and the colonies in the 1600s and 1700s, usually to punish rebels or political enemies.
Lords Proprietors had the right to pass laws alone when the "assemblies of freeholders" were not available, and declared that those laws are as "inviolable" as any others, with the same exceptions that the laws should be consistent with English law and custom. Note, though, that the Lords Proprietors could not by themselves pass bills of attainder–they could not declare a person guilty of some crime or take his property without the consent of a legislature.
All persons in Carolina were to be subject to the laws enacted by the Lords Proprietors including people sailing to and from the Carolina colony. Any punishment for a crime may be dictated and carried out by law, including capital punishment. There were many crimes for which a person could be executed in colonial America, including sodomy, adultery, and heresy. Enforcement of the death penalty declined in the colonies after 1700, though, and soon after the Revolution states began limiting it to cases of murder and treason. Section 17 established that anyone migrating to Carolina from another colony or nation will be subject to its laws immediately. Although the charter doesn't explicitly mention people coming from other European nations, the phrase "subject to our crown of England" is clearly meant to include them. Inhabitants of Carolina were not to be tried in criminal or civil courts anywhere but in Carolina or in England and Wales, no matter where they previously lived.
Section 5 also empowered the Lords Proprietors to establish courts and enforce their laws. A number of specific duties and offices are named, but the Proprietors were free to do what they deemed necessary. Subjects of the king in Carolina must obey the laws of the province.
The Charter also established "....that the said laws be consonant to reason, and as near as may be conveniently, agreeable to the laws and customs of this our kingdom of England." This established that laws must be rational, a matter of opinion, and "agreeable to the laws and customs of England," but only "as near as may be conveniently." In theory, any law may have been acceptable, so long as the free people of Carolina agreed to it through their representatives, although the king was able to intervene and declare a law not to be "consonant to reason.
Sections 8, 9, 10, and 11 relate to trade and commerce rights in the Carolina colony. Settlers in Carolina were allowed to trade as freely as if they had stayed in England. No special trading privileges were granted. In fact, by 1660, there were already legal restrictions on colonial trade. Under the Navigation Act of 1660, all European goods bound for America had to be shipped through England or Wales first, so that taxes could be collected. Luxury goods like those described in Section 9 were normally taxed, but as an incentive to early settlers, the taxes were suspended in Carolina for seven years. There were also to be no customs duties (import taxes) collected on tools necessary for building homes and other structures to incentivize growth.
Lords Proprietors were not only able to establish ports, but trade was only to take place through the ports they established. This restriction ensured that customs could be collected for the crown. In addition to customs collected for the crown, the Lords Proprietors could set their own import and export duties with the consent of a legislative assembly. Despite this power, the Lords Proprietors did not begin collecting customs duties immediately. Keeping taxes low encouraged settlers, and it was some time before the colonial government was well enough organized to collect taxes reliably.
Section 13 established that the Lords Proprietors were also allowed to create new inherited ranks of nobility and grant them to settlers in Carolina. They could not confer titles such as duke and baron that were already in use in England, but they could create their own titles, which would be passed down from father to son just as existing titles were. In 1669, the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina established landgraves and caziques as new ranks of nobility, but they were never conferred on any settlers.
Like titles of nobility, the Lords Proprietors were also allowed to dispense land as they saw fit. Section 12 lists all the ways they could distribute land — all of which derive from the feudal system. They could sell parcels of land in fee simple. A fee was not the money paid for the land but the land itself — specifically, a piece of inheritable land held in exchange for service to a lord. The holder of the land would pay a quitrent, an annual amount of money that freed him from other duties a knight would traditionally owe to a lord. The landholder could sell the land as he wished, and when he died, he could pass the land on to his "heirs or assigns." (To enfeoff was to create this kind of property, and a freeholder was someone who held property in this way.) Note that the Lords Proprietors could sell or grant land "to such…persons as they shall think fit,” meaning that they could grant land to anyone who was fit to own it — to anyone who could fulfill the various obligations of freeholding, including voting and military service. They could also grant land under other arrangements. They could grant land in fee tail (here, "fee tayle"), which meant that the land could not be sold and could be inherited only by direct descendants of the landholder. Tenure for life meant that the landholder could remain on the land until his death, at which time his family would have to leave. (Some tenures were for multiple lives, meaning that one or more generations of the landholder's descendants could remain on the land.) The Lords Proprietors never granted land under any of the more restrictive feudal arrangements, though. All land in North Carolina was granted in fee simple, which meant that land ownership in practice was essentially the same as it is today.
Charles II, in Section 18, empowered the Lords Proprietors to grant "indulgences" to Christians who did not belong to the Church of England, meaning the Proprietors could allow as much religious freedom as they wished. The aforementioned Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina permitted any person of any religion to reside in Carolina in peace, but required that only those who believed in God and were members of some kind of church could own land or have the protection of the law, and provided for taxes to support the Church of England.
Sections 14 and 16 establish town governance and military defense of the Carolina colony. They had the power to build fortifications for defense, and to incorporate towns. To incorporate a town is to grant its residents special privileges of self-government. Today, a town may be incorporated under the authority of the state; under the Charter of Carolina, that authority came from the Lords Proprietors. They also had the authority to declare "Martial law," where social order is maintained through military occupation. Men who refused to fight, for example -- "loiterers and stragglers" -- may be arrested and punished outside the normal legal system. Martial law in the Charter may be applied to any citizen who refused to fight in a time of war, or who is "mutinous" or "seditious.” Other provisions of governance and military defense related to the Native people of Carolina, detailed in the following section.
The Charter and the Native People of Carolina
Notably, the Charter granted the land of Carolina to the Lords Proprietors, despite the fact that American Indian people already lived there and had for millennia. In their belief system, Charles II and the Lords Proprietors justified this colonization of Carolina in a variety of ways throughout the document.
...parts of America not yet cultivated or planted, and only inhabited by some barbarous people….
:
According to the Charter, because the Native people of Carolina had not "cultivated or planted" their land, the English argued that they were not really using it. Many of North Carolina's Native people practiced cultivated agriculture. However, it was a less intensive, invasive, and exhaustive type of agriculture than Europeans practiced. Thus, the English were inclined to dismiss it. Since the Carolina’s Native people were not, by English standards, making proper use of the land they occupied, the English felt justified in taking their land for European-style agricultural use and colonization. To learn more about the Native people of Carolina, visit NCpedia’s page on American Indian People in North Carolina before and at the time of European contact.
....and only inhabited by some barbarous people, who have no knowledge of Almighty God….
:
The fact that Native people of the Americas did not conform to Christianity factored considerably into many Europeans’ disdain for them, especially positions of power like the Proprietors or King that benefitted from followers of Christianity. It justified, in European eyes, their colonization and (often forcible) conversion to Christianity. In this way, the Charter was a vector for Christian conversion.
...strongly defended from the incursions of salvages and other enemies, pirates and robbers…
:
"Salvages" is a seventeenth-century spelling of the word savages. Here, the Charter is referring to the Native people of Carolina. The Charter warned that scattered English settlers would be vulnerable to attack by American Indian tribes, pirates, bandits, and perhaps even the Spanish, who controlled Florida. Savage was a term of derision, used by European settlers to describe people that were not from Europe and/or followers of Christianity.
....habilements of war, both offensive and defensive, as shall be thought fit and convenient for the safety and welfare of the said province and places….
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The Charter granted the Lords Proprietors the authority not only to defend the colony, but also to attack enemies and declare war. This allowed colonial administrators to launch pre-approved, pre-emptive strikes on American Indian tribes or pirates that they deemed a threat to the colony. The constant state of military tension created wariness between American Indian tribes and the Carolina Colony, as indicated by the need for the colony to be “strongly defended from the incursions of salvages.”