“None could be freemen who did not acknowledge God and the obligation of public worship. The Church of England—against the wishes of Locke, who wished to put all sects on the same footing—was to be supported by the state. Any seven freemen might, however, form a church or religious society, provided its members admitted the rightfulness of oaths—which clause at once excluded the Quakers. By another provision, every freeman of Carolina, of whatsoever opinion or religion, possessed absolute power and authority over his negro slaves.” This “Grand Model Constitution,” which was extravagantly praised in England, was signed in March, 1670, and Monk, Duke of Albemarle, as the oldest of the proprietaries, was appointed Palatine. Whilst this pompous scheme of legislature was occupying the wisest heads in England, three vessels conveyed out emigrants, at the expense of £12,000 to the proprietaries, under the command of William Sayle, who established themselves on the old site of Port Royal. The grand aristocratical constitution was sent over in due form to Carolina, but neither was it found more suitable at Albemarle, in the north, than by Sayle’s colony in the south. The character of the people of Albemarle rendered its introduction impossible; “those sturdy dwellers in scattered log cabins of the wilderness could not be noblemen, and would not be serfs.” This unfortunate constitution, which made John Locke a landgrave, and the noble proprietaries in succession palatines, led to a long and fruitless struggle of its founders to force upon the settlers a form of government incompatible with their circumstances, and from which they had nothing to gain, but everything to lose. The contest continued for three-and-twenty years, when the Grand Model, baseless as a fabric of mist, was formally abrogated. About the time when the new constitution was first exciting the derision and abhorrence of the sturdy Nonconformists of Albemarle, distinguished ministers among the Quakers travelled from Virginia into North Carolina, and were received “tenderly” by a people naturally religious, but among whom, at that time, was no minister of Christ. Unlike the Puritans of Massachusetts, they warmly welcomed these later apostles of religious and civil liberty; and whilst they sturdily rejected a form of government which was at variance with all their principles of social and political life, received gladly “the authority of truth,” and so the “Society of Friends” were the first to organise a religious government in this portion of America. In the autumn of 1672, George Fox himself visited Carolina, travelling across “the great bogs” of the Dismal Swamp, “commonly, as he relates, wet to the knees, and lying abroad at nights in the woods by a fire, until reaching a house where the woman had the sense of God upon her, he was indulged in the luxury of a mat to lie upon by the fireside.”