Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/132

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92
HISTORY OF THE COLONIES.
[BOOK I.

CHAPTER IX.

MARYLAND.

§ 103. The province of Maryland was included originally in the patent of the Southern or Virginia company; and upon the dissolution of that company it reverted to the crown. King Charles the First, on the 20th June, 1632, granted it by patent to Cecilius Calvert Lord Baltimore, the son of George Calvert Lord Baltimore, to whom the patent was intended to have been made, but he died before it was executed.[1] By the charter, the king erected it into a province, and gave it the name of Maryland, in honour of his Queen, Henrietta Maria, the daughter of Henry the Fourth of France, to be held of the crown of England, he yearly, for ever, rendering two Indian arrows. The territory was bounded by a right line drawn from Watkins's Point, on Chesapeake bay, to the ocean on the east, thence to that part of the estuary of Delaware on the north, which lieth under the 40th degree, where New-England is terminated; thence in a right line by the degree aforesaid to the meridian of the fountain of Potomac; thence following its course by the further bank to its confluence with the Chesapeake, and thence to Watkins's Point.[2]

§ 104. The territory thus severed from Virginia, was made immediately subject to the crown, and was granted in full and absolute propriety to Lord Baltimore and his heirs, saving the allegiance and sovereign dominion
  1. 1 Holmes's Ann. 213; 1 Chalm. Annals, 201, 202; Bacon's Laws of Maryland, (1765); 2 Doug. Sumrn. 353, &c.
  2. 1 Haz. Coll. 327 to 337; 1 Chalm. Annals, 202; Charters of N. A. Provinces, 4to, London, 1766.