That colony came to nothing, and the land which the white
men had reclaimed from the wilderness returned once more to the
wilderness.
Nearly a hundred years went past before white men again appeared in
that part of the country. In 1629 King Charles I granted all this
region to Sir Robert Heath, but he made no attempt to colonise it.
Then a few settlers from Virginia and New England and the Barbados,
finding the land vacant and neglected, settled there.
Meanwhile Charles II had come to the throne, and, wanting to
reward eight of his friends who had been staunch to him during the
Commonwealth, in 1663 he gave them all the land between latitude
30° and 36° and from sea to sea. If you look on the map you will
see that this takes in nearly the whole of the Southern States.
Sir Robert Heath was by this time dead, and his heirs had done
nothing with his great territory in America, but as soon as it was
given to others they began to make a fuss. Charles II, however,
said as Sir Robert had failed to plant a colony his claim no longer
held good. So the eight new proprietors took possession of it.
This tract of land had already been named Carolina by the Frenchman
Ribaut in honour of Charles IX of France, and now the Englishmen
who took possession of it kept the old name in honour of Charles
II.
The Lords Proprietary then set about drawing up laws for their new
country.
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