dominant religion. Until 1697, every Governor of East Jersey was Scottish, who maintained great influence in politics and business even after 1702, when East Jersey and West Jersey were merged to become a Royal Colony. Stuarts Town, Carolina (1684) Although the Province of Carolina was an English colony in the early 1680s, Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree and Sir George Campbell of Cessnock negotiated the purchase of two counties for Scottish settlement. These were intended, with the support of the Earl of Shaftesbury, the leader of the Carolina Proprietors, to provide a haven for Covenanters, as they negotiated a guarantee of freedom of conscience and autonomous control of their colony, which extended from Charles Town towards Spanish territory. Investors were encouraged that the colony might have its own government and "wee might haive Presbytery estaiblished". Robert Baird, an Edinburgh merchant, was the Company's cash-keeper in 1682. Plans were interrupted by the aftermath of the Rye House Plot in England. In 1684, 148 settlers arrived from Gourock to build a settlement at Port Royal, the site of former French and Spanish settlements. This was renamed by as Stuarts Town. William Dunlop recommended the purchase of slaves from Barbados and sold runaway slaves to the Spanish. The Scots made an alliance with the Yamasee people. Once settled, there was frequent conflict, both with Spanish-allied Indigenous or American Indians and with the English at Charles Town. Historic Stuarts Town was destroyed in a battle with Spaniards from St. Augustine in August 1686. Darien Scheme (1695) The Darien scheme is probably the best known of all Scotland's colonial endeavours, and the most disastrous. In 1695, an act was passed in the Parliament of Scotland establishing The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies and was given royal assent by the Scottish representative of King William II of Scotland (and III of England). This act gave the company a 31-year monopoly on trade with Africa and Asia, authorising it to arm and equip ships and to establish colonies in uninhabited or unclaimed areas of America, Asia or Africa. These powers were similar to those of the English East India Company, which opposed the establishment of a Scottish rival. Capital for the company of £400,000 (estimated at one-quarter to one-third of the liquid wealth of Scotland) was raised solely in Scotland, due to intrigue by English merchants and the English government which prevented shares