Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/64

 32 Maryland and Virginia. [i 633-5 on the same lines as those of Virginia. There were small independent proprietors, tilling their own land, and large estate-holders working with gangs of indented servants; and, as in Virginia, the economical advantages of the latter system virtually crushed the former out of existence. The constitution of the colony eventually conformed to the normal pattern with a governor and two chambers; but some years elapsed before it definitely took that shape. As in the case of other colonies, the primary assembly of freemen preceded a representative assembly, and only gave way to it as the colony expanded. As else- where, too, the deputies and the council sat together. The proprietor seems at first to have claimed the right to place his own nominees on the council without any limit of number. In 1647, however, the two chambers were separated; and the proprietor's right to create councillors became practically innocuous. The relations of the settlers with the savages were friendly; and the only hostilities in which they were engaged were with their civilised neighbours. At the very outset, as we have seen, there was no friendly feeling between Virginia and the proprietor of Maryland; and events soon widened the breach. The dispute was the first of a type which we shall meet almost continuously in colonial history, a quarrel due to the reckless and slovenly fashion in which the English government dealt with the soil of the New World by granting tracts with no precise definition of boundaries, and in some cases almost openly and avowedly making grants that overlapped. This was manifestly the case with Virginia and Maryland. A tract of sea-coast nearly a hundred miles long was included in each grant. The island of Kent, just off the coast, and at the northern end of the debatable land, was a point of special importance. It was used as a trading station by a small company of Virginian merchants, and so early as 1625 contained a hundred settlers. It was separated from the rest of Virginia by a stretch of unoccupied territory. The utility of the island for the Indian trade made it specially desirable to Virginia; proximity seemed to attach it naturally to Maryland; its detached and therefore vulnerable position made it specially important that the place should be held definitely and securely; while the character of Clayborne, the manager of the trading station, enterprising, un- scrupulous, and a strong Protestant, made it certain that the claims of Virginia would be resolutely upheld. The Virginians in the first instance appealed to the Committee of the Privy Council for the Plantations and to the Crown, and got from both an equivocal reply. The advisers of the Crown suggested a compromise; but it was clear that nothing was further from the thoughts of either side. In 1635 the crews of a pinnace belonging to Clayborne and of two vessels sent out by Calvert came to blows ; and lives were lost on both sides. No decisive result was reached, and the Isle of Kent remained a source of possible dispute till the matter became an incident in a wider struggle.