This family of Manigault was but one of many who escaped to Carolina, and all had the same sad story, or even worse, to tell. Hither came these fugitives from the most beautiful and fertile regions of France,—“men,” says Bancroft eloquently, “who had all the virtues of the English Puritans without their bigotry, to the land to which the tolerant benevolence of Shaftesbury had invited the believers of every creed. From a land, which had suffered its king to drive half a million of its best citizens into exile, they came to the land which was the hospitable refuge of the oppressed; where superstition and fanaticism, infidelity and faith, cold speculation and animated zeal, were alike admitted without question.” In this chosen home of their exile, lands were assigned to them, on the banks of the Cooper River, and there they soon established their homes. Their church was in Charleston, and “thither,” says the same historian, who so keenly feels every beautiful trait of humanity, “on the Lord’s-day, gathered from their plantations on the banks of the river, and taking advantage of the ebb and flow of tide, they might regularly be seen, parents with their children, whom no bigot could wrest from them, making their way along the river, through scenes so tranquil that the silence was broken only by the rippling of the oars, and the hum of the flourishing villages that gemmed the confluence of the rivers. Other Huguenot emigrants established themselves on the south bank of the Santee.” Thus was the original scheme of the Huguenot colonisation on this very soil, as entertained by Coligny, at length accomplished, although a century later. Liberal as was the Grand Model constitution as regarded religious toleration, the spirit of the settlers was not equal to it in this respect. The Huguenot colonists were not cordially received by them; persecution was impossible, but hospitality was withheld; and though they formed the most industrious, useful and sterling portion of the population, it was many years before they were allowed the rights of fellow-citizenship. As a striking instance out of many showing the noble character of these emigrants, we may mention that, “when the great struggle for American independence took place, the son of this Judith Manigault intrusted the large fortune he had then acquired to the service of the country which had received his exiled family.” The province of South Carolina was divided, in 1683, into three counties: Colleton, including the district around Port Royal; Berkeley, embracing Charleston and its vicinity; and Craven; the district formerly Clarendon, towards Cape Fear, the earliest settlement of the whole. But Berkeley only as yet was sufficiently populous to afford a county-court.