The vast territory of North America was, for half a century after the English began to colonise it, divided into two districts, called North and South Virginia; “all lands lying towards the river St. Lawrence, from the northern boundaries of the province now called Virginia, belonged to the northern, and all those to the southward, as far as the Gulf of Florida, to the southern district.” The French colonists first gave the name of CAROLINA to the country which is still so designated, in honour of their worthless monarch, Charles IX. In 1630, Charles I. of England granted a tract of land south of Chesapeake Bay to Sir Robert Heath, his attorney-general, under the name of Carolana; but owing to the political agitations in England, the projected colonisation of this country was never carried out. With the Restoration, the English reasserted their claim to that portion of America which had been known under the designation of South Virginia, and the fertility and desirableness of which was now an established fact. Somewhat before the time, therefore, when the restored monarch made a grant to his brother of the Dutch possessions of New Netherlands, he conferred the vast territory comprised between Albemarle Sound, southward to the river St. John, under the name of Carolina, upon eight proprietors, among whom were some of his principal courtiers; that is to say, Clarendon, the prime minister; General Monk, now Duke of Albemarle; Lord Craven, the supposed husband of the Queen of Bohemia; Lord Ashley Cooper, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir John Colleton, Lord John Berkeley, his brother, Sir William, governor of Virginia, and Sir George Carteret. The grant made to these proprietaries constituted them absolute sovereigns of the country. Their right, however, was immediately disputed both by the Spaniards—whose fort of St. Augustine was considered to establish actual possession—and by the assigns of Sir Robert Heath; but neither claimants could stand before the new and more powerful patentees. Besides these, other parties of a much more sturdy and unmanageable character had already established themselves on its coasts. New England, which possessed within itself not only an expansive principle, but one which took deep root on any soil which it touched, had planted not only a little settlement on Cape Fear, which had been fostered in its distresses by the mother-colony, but had sown the seeds of democratic liberty, from which, in part, must be traced the resolute spirit which distinguished the colony of North Carolina in the long struggle through which it had to pass.