Lord Proprietary

The title of Lord Proprietor was a position akin to head landlord or overseer of a territory. It was not a title of peerage or nobility, although it was occasionally hereditary. Lords Proprietor oversaw a territory on behalf of a higher sovereign.

There were eight Lords Proprietor of the Province of Carolina. By 1729, when seven of their descendants, all but the heir of Carteret, had sold their shares to the Crown, the province had been split into two provinces: North Carolina and South Carolina.

In 1629, King Charles I of England granted Sir Robert Heath (the attorney general) the southern half of the English land in the New World between 36 degrees and 31 degrees north latitude from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The land was named “Province of Carolina” or land of Charles. This area included what is now known as North Carolina and South Carolina. Sir Robert’s attempts at settlement failed and in 1645, during the English Civil War, he was stripped of all of his possessions as a Royalist supporter of the King. The first permanent settlers in Carolina came from Virginia.

In 1663, eight members of the English nobility received a charter from King Charles II to establish the colony of Carolina. These men were known as the Lords Proprietors of Carolina and were the ruling landlords of the colony. The original eight Lords Proprietors of Carolina were:

The Lords Proprietor were anxious to secure Carolina against Spanish attacks from San Augustine in Florida, and to do so, they needed to attract more colonists. The Lords Proprietor offered English settlers inducements consisting of religious toleration, political representation in an assembly that had power over public taxes, exemption from quitrents and large grants of land. The Lords allowed settlers of any religion, except atheists. The Lords also had a generous headright system whereby they granted one hundred and fifty acres of land to each member of a family. They postponed collection of quitrents, amounting to half a pence per acre per year, until 1689. An indentured male servant who served his term received his freedom dues from his master and a grant of one hundred acres from the Lords Proprietor. In order to attract planters with capital to invest, the Lords Proprietor also gave the owner and master the one hundred and fifty acre headright for every slave imported to the Colony. These incentives drew 6,600 colonists to the colony by 1700 compared with only 1,500 in the Spanish colony of Florida. Carolina attracted English settlers, French Protestants (Huguenots) and other colonists from Barbados and the West Indies.

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