The Proprietary Colonies

The English colonies that did not spring from the activities of trading companies were usually the work of individuals, commonly called proprietors. Some of the proprietors were nobles who merely aimed to sell or let out their lands on advantageous terms, others desired to found havens of refuge for the oppressed.

Maryland:

The earliest of the successful proprietary provinces was Maryland. George Calvert and his son Cecilius, commonly known as the first and second Lords Baltimore received from King Charles I the promise of a grant of land farther to the south.  Calvert died, but in 1632 the grant was made to his son, Cecilius, who was a Catholic.  The terms of the charter gave him the territory from the south bank of the Potomac northward to the fortieth parallel and inland to the source of the river.

The Art and the Dove, two small ships which Baltimore sent to Maryland in the fall of 1633, carried about twenty gentlemen and two hundred laborers to the new colony.  Most of the gentlemen were Catholics, but most of the laborers were Protestants. 

Lands which had already been cleared were peacefully acquired from the Indians, and the economic life of Virginia was closely copied.  Baltimore’s land system contained one unique feature.  He proposed to grant a manorial estate of a thousand acres to any adventurer who would transport five men to Maryland.  Large estates were never numerous.  All land was granted by the proprietor, who charged a small quit rent.  This feature of the land system, was by no means popular, and it accounts in part for the relatively small population which Maryland acquired in the seventeenth century. 

Leonard Calvert, brother of Lord Balitmore II, was lieutenant governor.  Leonard tried to hold popular participation in the government to a minimum. Maryland as elsewhere a representative assembly soon developed. 

Persecution of Catholics broke out in Maryland during the later years of the seventeenth century, and the Church of England became the established church.

The Carolina Grant:

The land between Virginia and Florida, called Carolina was granted to eight prominent nobles.  Their plan was to make a feudal state.

As early as 1654, well before the Carolina proprietors received their grant, settlers from Virginia had found their way to the vicinity of Albemarle Sound. Toward the end of the seventeenth century the Albermarle settlements came to be known as North Carolina. 

The Carolina proprietors were more interested in the southern part of their holding. The city of Charleston was founded. In about ten years Charleston had about twelve hundred inhabitants.  The new settlements, soon called South Carolina, took on a cosmopolitan image.  French Huguenots began to arrive about 1680, and emigrants from Ireland, New England, and the West Indies, especially Barbados were numerous.

The planters used indentured servants for labor when they could, but as in Virginia and Maryland, they bought Negro slaves when the supply of white servants was inadequate.  They raised foodstuffs as well as tobacco, and beginning about 1693 they introduced the culture of rice. 

In government both South Carolina and North Carolina tended to develop along the lines already marked out in Maryland.

New Netherland:

The Dutch West India Company had settled this area, 1612. The company offered small tracts of land to freemen who would agree to settle on it as farmers, and large estates to “landlords”’ who as a condition of their grant must bring over fifty tenants.  The semi feudal powers accorded to the patroons were not popular in a region where land was abundant. 

Many settlers from the English colonies also entered the Dutch territory. With these and the absorption in 1655 of a small colony the Swedes had founded in 1638 on the Delaware, the population of New Netherland had risen before the English conquest to about ten thousand.

 The last half of the seventeenth century was marked by three wars between England and the Netherlands, and in 1664 the English King Charles II, sent an expedition across the Atlantic to take possession of New Netherland.  He granted proprietary rights to his brother the Duke of York.

The Duke of York’s power was almost absolute.  It was not until 1683 that an elective assembly was authorized, and then it was quickly suppressed.

The Duke of York disposed of a part of his holdings to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. These gentlemen were given proprietary rights to the territory lying between the lower Hudson and the Delaware, a region which they called New Jersey. By offering land to newcomers on easy terms, they succeeded in attracting many emigrants from New England and from all parts of the British Isles.

In 1674 Berkeley sold his holdings to two Quakers, John Fenwick and Edward Byllinge.  A division of the colony into two parts was then effected.  Carteret retained as his portion the settlements in the northeast adjacent to New York, or East New Jersey, while the Quakers took the region to the south and along the Delaware, or West New Jersey.  Byllinge and Fenwick soon sold out to a group of Quaker, among whom the most influential was William Penn.

The new proprietors promptly promulgated a liberal constitution and they promoted settlement with marked success. 

East New Jersey also fell into Quaker hands at the death of Carteret in 1679. Scottish Presbyterians were also admitted to this area and they persuaded a number of their countrymen to emigrate to New Jersey.  Quakers came from England and Scotland, Puritans from New England, and somewhat later Scotch Irish Presbyterians from the north of Ireland.

The population of East New Jersey was probably twice that of West New Jersey, and its economic character closely resembled New England, where so many of its settlers had come.  West New Jersey tended to copy the manner of life adopted by the settlers along the Chesapeake. Small holdings were the rule, but large plantations, worked in part by Negro slaves were not unknown.

William Penn:

The name of William Penn (1644-1718) is usually associated with the founding of Pennsylvania.

The early history of Pennsylvania centers about the efforts of Penn to establish a liberal government, to guarantee religious freedom to all settlers, and to induce emigrants to leave the Old World for his colony in the New. Penn was a devout Quaker, but he had no notion of limiting in any way the privileges of Pennsylvania colonists who were not Quakers. 

Not only Quakers, but members of various other oppressed sects looked upon the Quaker colony as an ideal retreat. Germany, particularly, where many radical denominations lived under the constant shadow of persecution, Penn’s agents pointed out the advantages of emigration to the Quaker colony. 

The terms upon which land could be obtained were made easy, both for speculators and land companies who desired large tracts, and for immigrant farmers who desired small tracts.  Bad economic conditions in Germany also helped him and led to the emigration to Pennsylvania of German Lutherans and Catholics as well as members of the minor sects.  A few Dutch and a few French Huguenots came also and many English, Welsh, and Irish settlers, most of whom were Quakers. 

The growth of Pennsylvania was remarkable. Philadelphia soon became the largest and busiest city in the English overseas possessions. The heavy mortality of that had characterized the earlier settlements was not repeated in Pennsylvania, nor were the mistakes of the first American pioneers made in dealing with the Indians.

Delaware:

Delaware was at first a part of New York, then later a part of Pennsylvania. 

Georgia:

Georgia was the last of the English colonies to be established on the mainland of North America.  Its founder, James Oglethorpe, had a humanitarian desire to found a haven for refuge for the large number of Englishmen who would ordinarily be sent to prison because of inability to pay their debts. 

Oglethorpe secured from George II title to the land lying between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers and westward from their headwaters to the Pacific in 1732.  In January, 1733 Oglethorpe brought over about a hundred settlers and founded Savannah.  Other immigrants soon came, Salzburgers, Highland Sco9ts, Scotch Irish, and Welsh, as well as English.  At first the terms on which land could be obtained were unusual.  Not more than five hundred acres could be taken by any one person, and all such grants were entailed to male heirs.  The proprietors also prohibited slavery. 

The Bermudas:

English interest in the Bermudas began in 1609 when a Virginia supply ship was wrecked on one of the islands, and its commander, Sir George Somers, observed their possibilities as a field of colonization.  Somers, on returning to England began to send out settlers, and in 1614 received a charter with full governmental rights.  At this date the population of the colony was already about six hundred, and since tobacco growing soon proved to be even more profitable than in Virginia, other settlers came in rapidly. 

British West Indies:

The British also had possessions in the West Indies, centering about St Christopher, which was colonized in 1623, and Barbados which was occupied in 1625.  These two islands together with others of the Lesser Antilles, were ranted to the Earl of Carlisle as proprietor in 1627.  Tobacco raising was at first the chief concern of the settlers, but presently the production of sugar cane proved more profitable and became the leading industry.

Jamaica:

Jamaica was conquered by the British in 1655 during a war with Spain. The sugar plantations were worked mainly by slave labor, and the importation of Negroes went on so rapidly that soon the blacks outnumbered the whites many times over. 

These island colonies contributed far more to the economic prosperity of the British Empire than did the continental colonies.