Volume 2, Chapter 20, The North Carolina Proprietary
After the Tuscarora War, North Carolina politics settled down into the familiar colonial pattern
of a proprietary party, centered in the appointive governor and the council, stressing the prerogative
of the executive, and confronting a popular and liberal force concentrated in the assembly.
Wracked so recently by rebellion and war, North Carolina did not join South Carolina
in the latter's successful revolt against the proprietary in 1719. The Popular Party
resisted such instances of executive tyranny as imposing conscription to fight against
the Indians without assembly approval. The most severe quarrel of the people with the
The proprietary occurred over that veteran irritant, the quitterent.
The proprietary naturally wanted to be paid the quitterent in sterling.
In this era, however, North Carolina's underdeveloped economy used 19 marketable commodities as
media of exchange or money, including beef, pork, butter, cheese, pitch, feathers, wheat,
Leather and hides, skins and corn, as well as the more usual tobacco.
In 1715 the assembly passed a law for payment of the quit rent in any of these commodities
at a fixed scale of relative prices, with the quality of the commodities established
by two theoretically disinterested freeholders.
The natural result was payment of the hated quit rents in whatever happened to be the
The least valuable commodity at the fixed scale and of the poorest possible quality.
The proprietors, having had the usual difficulty in collecting quit rents, had decided at the
turn of the century to appoint a network of agents to collect the payments.
The agents were empowered to seize and sell the lands of those who failed to pay.
In 1715, however, the assembly deprived the agents of the power to place a value on the
seized goods, the value being put into the books of the original owner and the purchaser.
This act helped block effective collection of the rents. All in all, since salaries of
the chief officials were paid from the quit rents, the proprietors obtained little or
The end of the Tuscarora War left the coastal area south of Albemarle free of Indians, and whites began to expand into this region.
The proprietors restricted this growth, however, by closing their land office in the area and insisting on the sale of land at prices so high as effectively to discourage settlement.
Settlement. To make matters worse, payment for the land had to be made to the proprietors
in London. To escape this restriction, the governor and the council began to grant huge
tracts of land to their favorites at rates as low as three pence per 100 acres in exchange
for monetary payment. As so often happens in history, government officials having monopoly
The biggest culprit among the governors was Sir Richard Everard, who signed away 400,000 acres of such so-called blank patent in 1728 alone. During the 1720s, the proprietors more and more lost control over the affairs of the colony and over its land policy, in order to encourage immigration.
Immigration into the colony, the assembly, the governor and council approving broke through
the proprietary restrictions on land. Ignoring the proprietary order, the new law permitted
settlers to enter the southern region on paying a tentative quit rent of three shillings per
one hundred acres and guaranteed confirmation of their land titles. The popular new governor,
George Barrington, friend of the Liberal Party, had agreed to this measure, but was
removed by the proprietors shortly thereafter. He was removed at the instigation of Christopher
Gale, Chief Justice and Collector of the Royal Customs, who loosely charged Barrington with
plotting revolution against the proprietary. Barrington had, in fact, threatened to commit
Mayhem on Gale, had broken obsessions of Gale's court and had also prevented the Royal Customs
officers from enforcing their exactions. But the proprietors had good cause to regret Burrington's
successor, Richard Everett. Everett set off a tyranny so petty and so venal that even
the Gale faction and the Council were forced to split with him. Abusing Council and Assembly
alike, Everett exacted exorbitant and illegal fees and used the law courts as instruments
to settle family quarrels and punish his enemies.
The government of North Carolina was reduced to a violent three-way split.
Thus, in 1725, the governor and the council tried to dissolve the assembly, which, however,
and I'd such power and complain to the proprietors of the persecutions of the Gale clique.
The faction seeking dissolution of the assembly was headed by Gale, now Chief Justice and
Judge of the Admiralty Court, and his son-in-law, William Little, the Attorney General.
At this point, Burrington, now a leader in the assembly, denounced Everett and assaulted
A Constable, riots by the various factions ensued at the capital, Edenton.
Finally in 1729, the proprietors disgruntled with the turbulent colony and finding quitgrants
almost 10,000 pounds in hopeless arrears, were happy to sell all their rights over both
North Carolina and South Carolina to the Crown for merely 23,000 pounds.
North Carolina was now a royal colony. The only holdout was John Carteret, who refused
to sell his one-eighth right. Fifteen years later, the Crown granted Lord Carteret, now
the Earl of Granville, in exchange for his one-eighth proprietorship, the exclusive ownership
of a huge land grant in northern North Carolina, covering over one-half of the whole area of
of the Province and containing two-thirds of its population, Carteret was not only arbitrarily
granted ownership over all the unsettled land in the area, he was also given the right to
extract quit rents from the property owners already settled there.
Carteret's agents proceeded to charge excessive fees, which they insisted be paid in specie,
to collect illegal quit rents and to issue fraudulent deeds. This added to the already
considerable turmoil over land and quit rents in the province. Finally, in 1758, an armed
crowd of Lord Carter's subject tenants forced Francis Corbin, one of his leading agents,
to give Bond that he would surrender all the excessive fees that he had collected. But
But Corbyn, on his release, not only failed to comply with the agreement, but arrested
four of his adversaries. The infuriated settlers rode to the Enfield jail and freed the prisoners.
Insurrection then spread throughout the Granville district. Francis Corbyn was forced to flee
the region. The assembly urged prosecution of the rioters, but Governor Arthur Dobbs
denounced the fraudulent exactions of the Earl of Granville's agents and expressed his
sympathy with the people. The rioters therefore remained at liberty and Granville district
was virtually rid of its proprietary incubus. Furthermore, after Granville's death in 1763,
his son neglected the proprietary and, in a few years, closed the land office with the
The result? That newcomers were able to settle and to refuse to pay either taxes or quit
rents on their land. It took a year and a half, from mid 1729 to early 1731, for the
Crown to send out its first royal governor, and in that period, all government virtually
dissolved in North Carolina. No one paid any attention to Everett's proprietary appointment.
The General Court, as well as many precinct courts, simply ceased to meet.
The Council was suspended, and the Assembly had virtually no meetings.
Laws were not enforced.
Taxes, quit rents, and other public revenues went uncollected.
In the midst of this virtual state of anarchism, Edmund Porter, judge of the Royal Admiralty
Court, tried to aggrandize himself over the populace, causing great discontent in the
Colony, while Everett made arbitrary arrests and tried to extract exorbitant fees.