In his latest coloumn on local history celebrating Charleston’s 350th birthday, the Post & Courier’s Brian Hicks explains how and why Charles Town locals dumped the Lords Proprietors and became a royal colony.
“The rebellion had been simmering a long time.
In the past decade, the Carolina colonists had grown increasingly disenchanted with life under control of the Lords Proprietors. And they had legitimate grievances.
The Proprietors had declined to send reinforcements during the pirate siege and, before that, the war with the Yamassee. In both instances, it was mostly a matter of money. As Walter Edgar notes in “South Carolina: A History,” sending British troops to defend the colony would have required the Proprietors to “mortgage their charter to the king.”
