Historians have undertaken a number of specific investigations concerning the social, economic and geographic backgrounds, as well as their motives for emigrating, of those men and women who emigrated from England to Massachusetts, Virginia and Barbados during the course of the seventeenth century. While they have discussed the origins of the South Carolina charter, described the social and political status of the eight proprietors, dissected the Fundamental Constitutions, and examined the means by which the successful settlement of 1670 was organized, historians have neglected to explore the social backgrounds of those men who emigrated directly from England to South Carolina during the colony's initial decades of settlement. In contrast, not only the political but also the social and economic backgrounds of the Barbadian planters who colonized South Carolina have been the subject of a number of historical studies.