Grand Model for the Province of Carolina

Both the Fundamental Constitutions and the development plan were drafted by the English liberal philosopher John Locke while working for the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, the eight noblemen who held the royal charter to settle the colony.

Locke was also a personal assistant to Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Proprietor who became the Earl of Shaftesbury soon after the principal elements of the Grand Model were drafted.

[2] Anthony Ashley Cooper oversaw Locke's drafting of the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina during the first decade of the Restoration, a time when the failure of the Commonwealth of England was fresh in mind.

During the Commonwealth period he had served in the government of Oliver Cromwell and participated in reviewing English laws and drafting the nation's first formal constitution.

Nevertheless, Ashley Cooper strongly believed in the English tradition of common law and balanced government, a system sometimes called the "Ancient Constitution", wherein nobility played a leading role.

The government of Charles II solicited plans to rebuild the city, and inspired designs were submitted by architect Christopher Wren, scientist Robert Hooke, cartographer Richard Newcourt, and landscape planner and polymath John Evelyn.

The precise extent to which Locke shaped the substance of the Fundamental Constitutions is unknown, but he was undoubtedly guided at least on a general level by Ashley Cooper.

Along with Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury, Locke was a founding shareholder in the Royal African Company, chartered in 1672 by King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland.

The Grand Model allocated more land (60 percent) and representation to "the people" than to the nobility, suggesting that yeoman farmers were envisioned ultimately to become the backbone of the colony.

The Grand Model was informally modified by the Barbadians, who took the titles of nobility, but replaced Ashley Cooper's enlightened aristocracy with a self-serving oligarchy.

[17] The Georgia Trustees acknowledged the influence of the Grand Model: "We are indebted to the Lord Shaftsbury, and that truly wise man Mr. Locke," they wrote, "for the excellent laws which they drew up for the first settlement of Carolina.