Members of the local chapter of the Colonial Dames invited John Temple Ligon to speak on the origins of South Carolina and Columbia. (L- r): Margaret Davis, Helen Milliken, Emilie Guignard, and Louisa Campbell Editor's note: John Temple Ligon delivered two lectures at Forest Lake Club in the past month to the Jamestowne Society and to the Colonial Dames, both covering the beginnings of South Carolina and its capital city. The following article covers a composite of the two talks concerning Char les Towne Landing. Special thanks go to Dr. Walter Edgar and his published history.

England's King Charles I was beheaded by the Puritans and their leader Cromwell in 1649, effectively cutting off heavy drinking, recreational dancing, play acting — all the adventuresome activity, to include major ventures in foreign exploration, earlier championed by Queen Elizabeth and King James.

The 1607 Jamestown colony failed as a profitable venture until 1620, a year after skilled farmers were imported from Africa as slaves and single women were delivered from England as brides. Also, the first meeting of the House of Burgesses, the legislature, was held in 1619, beginning representative government in America.

Birchin Lane (in green) connects Lombard and Cornhill where began South Carolina in the 1660s in the Carolina Coffee House Up until profitability finally hit in 1620, Jamestown was subsidized by London lotteries. Gambling kept the colony going for more than a dozen years.

Almost half the Jamestown settlers died in the first year, mostly because so many were little more than gentlemen, Daddy's boys who couldn't inherit in the era of primogeniture, when the first son got everything. With no inheritance and no marketable skills, the young second and third sons were encouraged by the reports from New Spain to strike it rich in Virginia silver. They failed.

Spanish Mexico started when Cortez landed in 1519. By mid- century, New Spain was producing more than threefourths of the world's silver, mostly from Guanajuato in Mexico and Potosi in what is now Bolivia.

From South Carolina, A History by Walter Edgar In 1620, Puritan families landed at Plymouth Rock and founded Boston in 1630. Harvard University began in 1636, almost a century after the beginning of the University of Mexico.

Back in London, King Charles II restored the throne in 1660. He moved the National Theater north of the Thames River, legitimizing women as actresses for the first time by relocating their main stage out of the red- light districts south of the river. Charles II was interested in theater and in particular the actress Nell Gwynne, his mistress.

With the return of theater came the return of intellectual endeavors sponsored by the king. Charles II founded the Royal Society, the home of the best brains in the empire. Soon members such as architect Christopher Wren and philosopher John Locke were voting on the membership of Isaac Newton, arguably the best scientific brain of all time.

In the course of the frenetic activity of the Restoration, Charles II in 1663 chartered Carolina, a land deal south of English Jamestown and north of Spanish Florida. The Carolina Grant was presumably a hot topic among members of the Royal Society, as the scale of the land area was so impressive.

The Carolina Grant showed high hopes, but following the mysterious disappearance of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island and the financial failures of Jamestown, preparation for a colony in Carolina included targeted recruitment of prospective settlers of proven toughness. Daddy's boys were discouraged, as were nonfarmers. The most sought- after people were the settlers already in the New World, people who could tough it out.

There was a London sales office, as it were, run by Anthony Ashley Cooper (Earl of Shaftsbury) and his secretary John Locke. Cooper and Locke had

co- authored the Fundamentals

for a C arolina

Constitution, and they were eager to explain to prospects the structured freedoms that came with the settlement of Carolina. The pitch was life could be better with more freedoms in Carolina than in London or on the Continent.

They held Tuesday morning meetings in the Carolina Coffee House on Birchin Lane. Birchin Lane today connects with the Royal Exchange, which is across the street from the Stock Exchange and the Bank of England — a more prestigious real estate is not to be found anywhere, then or now.

By the time of the first Charles Towne Landing at Albermarle Point in 1670, across the Ashley River from the peninsula, the freedoms advertised in the Fundamentals for a

Carolina Constitution had been printed in English and French and widely distributed from the Carolina Coffee House.

In 1680, a small group of French Huguenots came into Charleston. By then the Cooper/Locke

Fundamentals were well dessiminated, including in France.

In 1685, France's King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had been something of a protection against religious persecution and insurance against a repeat of the slaughter of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572.

About 1,500 Huguenots came to Charleston over the decade following Louis' revocation.

Even with its success

as a sales tool, the Fundamentals

for a Ca rolina

Constitution never became law. The settlers couldn't agree on what they wanted, and few trusted control by a central government.

South Carolina began as part of a land deal, one of the biggest of all time. And South Carolina succeeded because of the people recruited at the Carolina Coffee House on Birchin Lane in London.

South Carolina and North Carolina need to joint- venture to install on the curb along Birchin Lane a bronze plaque the shape of the two Carolinas, declaring "Here began Carolina."