l, _Founders of Maryland_, 80.]

[Footnote 15: Johnson, _Old Maryland Manors (Johns Hopkins University
Studies_, I., No. iii.).]

[Footnote 16: _Md. Archives_, I., 1-24.]

[Footnote 17: _Md. Archives_, I., 32, 74, 243, 272.]

[Illustration: MARYLAND IN 1652]

CHAPTER VIII

CONTENTIONS IN MARYLAND

(1633-1652)

The delay in the constitutional adjustment of Maryland, while mainly
attributable to the proprietors, was partially due to the prolonged
struggle with Virginia, which for years absorbed nearly all the
energies of the infant community. The decision of the Commissioners
for Foreign Plantations in July, 1633, disallowing the Virginia claim
to unoccupied lands, was construed by the Virginians to mean that the
king at any rate intended to respect actual possession. Now, prior to
the Maryland charter, colonization in Virginia was stretching
northward. In 1630, Chiskiack, on the York River, was settled; and in
August, 1631, Claiborne planted a hundred men on Kent Island, one
hundred and fifty miles from Jamestown.[1]

Though established under a license from the king for trade, Kent
Island had all the appearance of a permanent settlement. Its
inhabitants were never at any time as badly off as the settlers in the
early days at Jamestown and Plymouth, and the island itself was
stocked with cattle and had orchards and gardens, fields of tobacco,
windmills for grinding corn, and women resident upon it. Had it,
however, been only a trading-post, the extension over it of the laws
of Virginia made the settlement a legal occupation. And we are told of
Kent that warrants from Jamestown were directed there. "One man was
brought down and tried in Virginia for felony, and many were arrested
for debt and returned to appeare at James City."[2] In February, 1632,
Kent Island and Chiskiack were represented at Jamestown by a common
delegate, Captain Nicholas Martian.[3] The political existence of the
whole Virginia colony, and its right to take up and settle lands, the
king expressly recognized.

Accordingly, when Leonard Calvert, on his arrival at Point Comfort in
February, 1634, called upon Claiborne to recognize Baltimore's
paramount sovereignty over Kent Island, because of its lying within
the limits of his charter, the council of Virginia, at the request of
Claiborne, considered the claim, and declared that the colony had as
much right to Kent Island as to "any other part of the country given
by his majesty's pa