William Penn in Pennsylvania: Port Royal and Huguenots

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 interest 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from Ireland, Scotland and Holland; and when the edict of Nantes, which secured toleration to Protestants in France, was revoked, a large number of Huguenots fled from their country, and many sought an asylum in the Carolinas. The traditionary hatred of the English for the French was shown at this time. For full ten years these French refugees were denied the privileges of citizenship in the land of their adoption.

Meanwhile a little colony of ten Scotch families who had fled from persecution in their native land, and led by the Presbyterian Lord Cardross, landed at Port Royal on the coast of South Carolina, and proceeded to plant a settlement there in 1682. The existence of that little colony was brief. The Spaniards claimed Port Royal as a dependency of St. Augustine; and in 1686, during the absence of Cardross in Britain, they attacked and dispersed his colony and laid waste their property. Some of them returned to Scotland, and others joined the colony between the Edisto and Santee rivers.

The Huguenots, who infused warm blood into the veins of the Southern colony, and carried the sunshine of their buoyant natures into other American provinces, deserve more than a passing notice here. We have already considered then forlorn condition in the time of Coligni, a hundred years earlier. The decree of Henry the Fourth, issued from Nantes in 1598, giving them free toleration within his dominions, secured them from severe persecution. They had prospered, and had become, as a body, the best citizens of France.

When the profligate Louis the Fourteenth approached old age, he became the slave of a fascinating woman, widow of the comic poet Scarron, who is better known in history as Madame de Maintenon. She was then fifty years of age, but was still beautiful, graceful and witty, and wise and discreet in all her ways. The king, then forty-eight, fascinated by the charms of her mind and person, married her secretly. From that time she fashioned his future life. She had been a Calvinist, but was now a devoted daughter of the Church of Rome. When remorse for past sins clouded the mind of the king, she shed the light of religious consolation into its darkened recesses. He would pass whole days with her alone in a library of the palace, listening to her charming conversation or her reading from books of devotion. As amends for past misconduct, she persuaded him to take measures for the conversion of the Huguenots and to win them back to the Church of Rome.