Page:Revised Statutes of the State of North Carolina - Volume 1.djvu/9



revision and consolidation of the whole public statute law will constitute an important epoch in the legislative history of North Carolina. In presenting this work to the public the undersigned, commissioners for superintending its publication, have thought that some facts, connected with and illustrating that history, might be neither an inappropriate nor uninteresting introduction. Their limits confine them to a brief summary, and compel them to omit much, both of detail and remark, that would be necessary to do justice to the subject.

The first permanent settlement in North Carolina was made about the year 1660, by emigrants from Virginia, on the north side of Albermarle sound, and probably on Durant's neck in Perquimons county, lying between Perquimons and Little rivers. The oldest land title is a conveyance for that neck of land from the king of the Yeopim Indians to George Durant, dated in 1662. On the twenty fourth of March, 1663, King Charles the Second granted to Edward, Earl of Clarendon, and others, as true and absolute Lords Proprietors, all the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, included between the thirtyfirst and thirtysixth parallels of north latitude; and on the thirtieth of June, 1665, by a second charter he enlarged the powers of the grantees and extended their boundaries so as to include all the country between the parallels of thirtysix degrees thirty minutes and twentynine degrees north latitude. These grants will be found in the second volume of this work. Among other powers which they conferred on the Lords Proprietors was that of enacting laws and constitutions for the people of that province by and with the advice, assent and approbation of the freemen thereof, or of the greater part of them, or of their delegates or deputies, who were to be assembled from time to time for that purpose. In the year 1663, George Drummond was appointed by Governor Berkley of