text: "North Carolina was the site of the earliest attempts by English explorers to settle the North American continent? Sir Walter Raleigh's famous "Lost Colony" was founded on Roanoke Island, near \n\npresent-day Manteo, in North Carolina was the site of the earliest attempts by English explorers to settle the North American continent? Sir Walter Raleigh's famous "Lost Colony" was founded on Roanoke Island, near present-day Manteo, in 1587. When the colony's governor, John White, returned to the colony in 1590 after being gone for three years, he found the settlement deserted. The only clue to what had happened to the colonists was found carved on the trunk of a tree near the settlement, the word: "Croatan." No trace of the colonists was ever found by subsequent explorers and settlers.1\n\nThe Stuarts succeeded Queen Elizabeth as monarchs of Britain. Charles I was beheaded in 1649 and Oliver Cromwell ruled during the "interregnum." Charles II returned the Stuarts to the throne in 1660 and rewarded his loyal supporters. Eight of these loyalists (Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon; George Monck, Duke of Albemarle; William Craven, Earl of Craven; John Lord Berkeley; Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir George Carteret; Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia; and Sir John Colleton) were rewarded by King Charles II by being made Proprietors of his new colony, Carolina, which reached from the southern boundary of Virginia, incorporating the Southern Plantation, to the northern boundary of the Spanish colony of Florida. The western boundary of Carolina was to be the "South Seas."2