of England. By the 18th century Hewats were farming around Roxburgh when Alexander's grandfather James was expelled from his kirk for taking over other people's land. However, Alexander's father Richard (1707–1776) became an elder of the church and is described on his tombstone, still standing in Roxburgh churchyard, as "an honest and industrious man and a sincere and devout Christian". Alexander Hewat's arrival in Charleston and his History of the Colony Hewat was a young man of about twenty-four when he arrived in Charleston in 1763 as minister of the Scots (First Presbyterian) Church there. He had received his early education at Kelso Grammar School in Scotland and had attended the University of Edinburgh. Shortly after his arrival in Charleston he was elected to the St. Andrew's Club, an organisation of native-born Scotsmen which included some of the colony's leading men, and so had the chance to secure authentic evidence and first-hand experience for his historical narrative. His association with royal officials gave him access to official documents which he used in his history. Hewat's first volume attempts to outline the earliest settlement of North America, and the reasons for the influx of British, French and other European migrants in the early 17th century due to religious conflict at home. He wrote: "Amidst cold, hunger, toil, disease, and distress of every kind, they comforted themselves with the thoughts of being removed far out of the reach of tyrants, and triumphed in their deliverance from an idolatrous and wicked nation." Hewat describes in much detail the conditions and customs of American Indians, with whom he shows sympathy despite their threat to European immigrants. "When Julius Caesar carried the Roman arms into Britain, and Germanicus over-ran the forests of Germany, did they not find the silvestres of those countries little, if at all, more civilized than the brown natives of America?" And even some humour ... "In case of adultery among Indians, the injured husband considers himself as under an obligation to revenge the crime, and he attempts to cut off the ears of the adulterer... This is more severe than the law of Ethelbert, which admitted of a fine from the adulterer, and obliged him to purchase another wife for the injured husband." He describes the settlement of Carolina by aristocratic British Proprietors, the setting up of plantations, wars with the Indians, the Spanish and Pirates, and the hardships of the