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8 Company before it had been deprived of its charter, in 1624, by a judgment of the Court of King's Bench. During his visit to Virginia, it is probable that Lord Baltimore personally explored the Chesapeake Bay; at all events his experienced judgment readily detected the advantages that would be secured to a colony upon its shores. Accordingly, upon his return to England, he procured from his royal master, Charles I., the promise of a grant of territory in the region which he had just visited.

The Virginia colonists were not unmindful of the facilities for traffic afforded by the Chesapeake, which stretches inland for a distance of two hundred miles from the ocean, with rivers emptying into it whose head- waters are far back in the interior. In the years 1626, 1627 and 1628, William Clayborne, Secretary of State for the colony of Virginia, obtained from the English government authority "to discover the source of the Chesapeake, and to make other explorations within the government of Vir- ginia." Vested with this authority Mr. Clayborne appears to have improved the opportunities it gave him for establishing and conducting a trade with the natives upon the shores of the upper part, of the bay; and for the further- ance of this object he probably erected some trading houses upon the Isle of Kent, which thus became the first place within the limits of Maryland in which any European settlements were made. The value which the Virginians placed upon the bay and the adjacent country, is further shown by the violent opposition they manifested to the establishment of Lord Baltimore's colony; and in a petition preferred to the King shortly after the grant had been made to Lord Baltimore, they particularly complain "that grants had lately been made of a great portion of the lands and territory of their colony, being the places of their traffic."

The advantages for trade, together with the attractions of a fertile soil and a grateful climate, determined Lord Baltimore in the selection of the site for his future colony; but in consequence of his death, which occurred early in 1632, the charter promised to him, but which did not pass the seals until June 20th of the same year, was issued to his son Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, upon whom devolved, together with his father's title and estates, the work of carrying out his wise and beneficent plans of colonization.

The territory embraced in Lord Baltimore's grant is described in the charter as follows: "all that part of the Peninsula, or Chersonese, lying in the parts of America between the ocean on the east, and the bay of Chesapeake on the west; divided from the residue thereof by a right line drawn from the promontory, or headland called Watkin's Point, situate upon the bay aforesaid, near the river Wighco, on the west unto the main ocean on the east; and between that boundary on the south, unto that part of the bay of Delaware on the north, which lieth under the fortieth degree of north latitude from the equinoctial; and passing from the said bay, called Delaware Bay, in a right line, by the degree aforesaid, unto the true meridian of the first fountain of the river of Potomac, thence verging towards the south, unto