Very early there came two ship-loads of Dutch Calvinists from New York, dissatisfied with the domineering of their English victors.

But more important than the rest was that sudden outflow of French Huguenots, representing not only religious fidelity and devotion, but all those personal and social virtues that most strengthen the foundations of a state, which set westward upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

This, with the later influx of the Scotch-Irish, profoundly marked the character of South Carolina.
The great names in her history are generally either French or Scotch.
It ought to have been plain to the proprietors, in their monstrous conceit of political wisdom, that communities so constituted should have been the last on which to impose the uniformity of an established church.

John Locke did see this, but was overruled.

The Church of England was established in name, but for long years had only this shadow of existence.