The first real charter to the Lords Proprietor of Carolina was dated the 24th March 1663, but owing to the previous grant of Charles I. numerous legal steps had to be taken before matters were satisfactorily arranged. The land between Virginia and Florida was now granted to eight patentees, amongst whom were the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Clarendon, Sir William Berkeley, but above all the Earl of Shaftesbury. These Proprietors had political and territorial authority, but there was also to be an assembly of freeholders with legislative powers. Twenty thousand acres of land were reserved for the original Proprietors, but at the same time a notice was issued inviting planters to settle in the colony, promising one hundred acres to each settler within five years, together with the privilege of residing in a land blest with the doctrine of freedom of conscience. This notice was published not only in England, but also in Barbadoes, the Bermudas, Virginia and New England, so that the colonisation of the Carolinas was not only, nor even mainly, undertaken by adventurers from the home country. On Albemarle River a settlement was made from Virginia, which formed the nucleus of North Carolina. Near Cape Fear the New Englanders also had a little colony which was absorbed by a more prosperous settlement from Virginia. Settlers soon came from Barbadoes, for there the news had been welcomed, and hundreds of experienced planters showed themselves willing to accept the offer of the Proprietors, and expressed a desire to come with their negroes and servants. They had, no doubt, been tempted by the extra inducements published in August 1663, when the Carolinas were advertised as wonderfully healthy and a land capable of bearing commodities not yet produced in other plantations as wine, oil, currants, raisins, silks, etc. Most of the Barbadoes planters were afterwards absorbed in the colony sent out from England forming the nucleus of South Carolina.