In 1730, English philanthropist and member of Parliament, General James Oglethorpe, began lobbying for a charter to establish a new English colony in America. He proposed that his colony of Georgia would serve as a refuge for unfortunate debtors, and as a barrier between Spanish Florida and the established English settlements. The following year, while Oglethorpe's petition was still being considered, Leopold von Firmian, the Catholic Prince and Archbishop of Salzburg, issued an Edict of Expulsion, ordering all Protestants to leave his domain. A group of Salzberger exiles, under the leadership of Samuel Urlsperger, found refuge in the German city of Augsburg. When Oglethorpe heard of Ulsperger's exiles, he suggested his colony as a haven for distressed Saltzburgers and other persecuted Protestants, and the charter was signed by George II the following year. Oglethorpe and the earliest colonists arrived in Georgia in February 1733, barely a year before the first fifty Salzbergers landed in March 1734. By the following May, the Salzbergers were established at Ebenezer, about twenty five miles north of Savannah. De Vorsey notes that as early as September 1734, Oglethorpe was sending maps of Georgia to the continent, where German Protestants were being encouraged to emigrate to Georgia.