Land granting

Most of the eight original proprietors had remained staunch supporters of the Stuart monarchy after the execution of King Charles I in 1649, and others changed sides to become key figures in the restoration of his son in 1660.

At least twenty-six landgraves and thirteen cassiques were created by the Lords Proprietors, with rights to land totaling 1,364,000 acres.

Africans were imported in significant numbers from about the 1690s, and by 1715 the black population made up about sixty percent of the colony’s total population. This marked another distinctive feature of South Carolina, for it was the only colony in English North America where this proportion existed.