Would Henry, Duke of Gloucester, get American lands?

A question for the experts...and a way to screw around with the development of English America at a very influential point.

In a scenario where Henry, Duke of Gloucester, doesn't catch smallpox in 1660, would Charles II grant him lands in America? How much land would be suitable? This is a kind of a subset of what would Charles II have given Henry to live on?

Would Charles have divided the New Netherlands rather than give it all to the Duke of York?

Would Gloucester have just been one of the eight or so proprietors of Carolina? Is it possible that Charles would have given all of the Carolina Grant to One brother and all of the New Netherland grant to the other?

Would Charles have hived off a more settled part of Virginia and made that a Proprietary Grant (a la the Northern Neck grants)?

Could Charles have done a two-step...Trade the Northern Neck grant for a proprietorship in the Carolinas?

I'm guessing he wouldn't go overboard and give Jamaica to either of his Brothers. Were any of the Caribbean Islands ever given as a proprietary grant?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on the matter,

David
 
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Just to bump this back onto the first page.

I know it's an esoteric topic but surely somebody has an opinion
 
Such extensive grants are possible, but Charles doesn't need to do anything so extreme as rearrange boundaries or alter charters immediately (and he won't give Gloucester anything comparable to what York gets. Precedence matters). With all that in mind, the logical grant to Gloucester is what we think of as New Jersey; steps on no British toes, is clearly less than New York, but is still a fairly nice and profitable thing to own.
 
Such extensive grants are possible, but Charles doesn't need to do anything so extreme as rearrange boundaries or alter charters immediately (and he won't give Gloucester anything comparable to what York gets. Precedence matters). With all that in mind, the logical grant to Gloucester is what we think of as New Jersey; steps on no British toes, is clearly less than New York, but is still a fairly nice and profitable thing to own.

New Jersey is interesting, especially with the potential impacts on Pennsylvania and Maryland and Delaware. I'm assuming this would be Charles granting things, not James, so the bounds of the colony could be different...maybe southern New Jersey and southern Pennsylvania...or Eastern Pennsylvania.

David.
 
Interesting idea, though I don't believe that long-term the identity of the Proprietor would matter much as most were not viable economically and were destined to end up back as Crown Colonies.
 
Interesting idea, though I don't believe that long-term the identity of the Proprietor would matter much as most were not viable economically and were destined to end up back as Crown Colonies.

I think you're absolutely right about the long-term impact of the actual Proprietor in a colony. I think the actual charter is much more interesting. It 'lives' on long after the grantor and grantee are dust. To that extent, Henry, Duke of Gloucester, is really just the mechanism for the change.

My basic concept is to make a change that will have 'minimal' impacts for 50-100 years after the POD but potentially huge impacts as identity and place cement in the Americas c. 1750-1800.

I started down this path reading posts on topics like "Why does Delaware exist?" and "What if the Plymouth colony remained independent?". Add in a couple of Mark Stein's books, some Albion's Seed and the Nine Nations of North America and the colonial charters pop out as incredibly vital, as does Charles II's reign.

You could kill of James II but I don't have the time or the knowledge to do that topic justice with the direct impacts, let alone deal with the butterflies.

Leaving Henry, Duke of Gloucester, alive seemed to be a lower impact way of getting to where I wanted to be. He can have his impacts and fade from the historical record quietly and with minimal fuss. I just have to figure out how to neutralize him as a force to derail the Glorious Revolution, but that's a way off. Just killing him seems cheating somehow.

I think I'll go with a variant on Shawn Endresen's suggestion: Probably something like a grant encompassing the Delaware River Watershed and Southern New Jersey. That allows me to screw around with New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, directly. If I can figure a plausible way to separate the Northern Neck Proprietary from Virginia and keep the Plymouth Colony, that will be icing on the cake.

David
 
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