ARCHDALE, John, English governor of North Carolina. He was a son of Thomas Archdale of Loaks, in Chipping Wycomb, Bucks County, England. and came to New England in 1664 as agent of his brother-in-law, Governor Gorges of Maine. He visited North Carolina in March 1686, and was commissioner for Gorges in Maine in 1687-'88. He became governor of North Carolina in 1695, and held the office for about two years. He was sagacious, prudent, and moderate, and under his administration the province made great progress in internal improvements. He introduced rice culture into Carolina by distributing among some friends a bag of seed rice brought by the captain of a vessel from Madagascar. Archdale was formerly a merebet of the Society of Friends, and, while enforcing a militia law, exempted all Friends from service. By his moderation he quieted the troubles between the colonists and their feudal sovereigns, and, by establishing a special board for deciding contests between white men and Indians, he won the friendship of the latter. His conscientious scruples concerning the required oaths prevented his taking a seat in parliament, to which he was elected in 1698. Archdale published "A New Description of the Fertile and Pleasant Province of Carolina, with a Brief Account of its Discovery, Settling, and Government ,p to this Time, with several Remarkable Passages during My Time" (London, 1707). See Hewatt's "Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia" (London, 1779); Holmes's "Annals of America" (Cambridge, 1829) ; and Bancroft's "History of the United States" (New York, 1884).