Page:English Law and the Renaissance.djvu/44

 various 'hundreds' of Virginia were assembling, and the first-born child of the mother of parliaments saw the light. Maryland was granted to Lord Baltimore with view of frankpledge and all that to view of frankpledge doth belong, to have and to hold in free and common socage as of the castle of Windsor in the county of Berks, yielding yearly therefor two Indian arrows of those parts on the Tuesday in Easter week. The port and island of Bombay in one hemisphere, and in another Prince Rupert's land stretching no one knew how far into the frozen north were detached members of the manor of East Greenwich in the county of Kent. Nearly twenty-five hundred copies of Blackstone's Commentaries were absorbed by the colonies on the Atlantic seaboard before they declared their independence. James Kent, aged fifteen, found a copy, and (to use his own words) was inspired with awe; John Marshall found a copy in his father's library; and the common law went straight to the Pacific.