In 1687, under Governor Colleton, the endeavor to force the adoption of the Constitutions occasioned such contention between their lordships’ officers and the representatives of the people that no laws were passed for two years; and as all laws were limited to twenty-three months, there was in 1690 _not one statute law in force_ in the colony. A new position was taken and with boldness. “The people having not, according to the royal charters, assented or approved of any fundamental constitutions in parliament, have unanimously declared that the government now is to be directed and managed wholly and solely according to said charters.” Their revolutionary spirit went still further. The representatives in Parliament denied “that any bill must necessarily pass the grand council before it be read in parliament.” They maintained this position, and in consequence were dissolved. The Proprietors instructed their favorite, Landgrave Colleton, brother of one of themselves, to call no more parliaments “unless some very extraordinary occasion should require it.” Colleton proclaimed martial law. The Proprietors thought he did right. In his arrogance, he imprisoned a clergyman and fined him £100 for preaching what he considered a seditious sermon. The Proprietors thought it best to remit the fine. The people, however, raised a cry against his “illegal, tyrannical, and oppressive way of government.” Fortunately for him, Seth Sothel, a Proprietor by purchase of Clarendon’s share, arrived,—having been turned out of North Carolina by its assembly,—and assumed control of affairs in the more southern colony, and acted pretty much as he pleased, till he was turned out of his new position by his colleagues in London. The Proprietors, by their aristocratic folly, had kept the people continually studying and maintaining their rights. A new policy began, about this time, in England,—to revoke proprietary charters. The spirit, too, of the colonists, demanded from the Proprietors some conciliatory concession. Yet it cannot but appear a triumph for the people, and not a good-will concession, when “the true and absolute” lords wrote to the Grand Council (1691), almost in the words which they had written to Andrew Percival and to the provincial authorities,—as if they wished to make an emphatic apology,—that there had been “no alteration made in any of the Constitutions, but for the greater security of the people of Carolina from oppression, either by ourselves or our officers, as any one that will please to peruse the several alterations may plainly perceive; the last in date still bounding our own power most, and putting more into the hands of the people.” But they were forced soon—and it must have been with some little feeling of vexation—to acknowledge the failure of their Grand Model, and to write to their next governor, Ludwell (who could not conciliate the “factious” assembly), that they now thought it best for themselves and the