the Crown's agent, but really because he was heir presumptive. Penn therefore petitioned the King for a grant of the land north of Maryland, bounded on the east by the Delaware River, and extending westward as far as Maryland extended, and northward as far as plantable. It is probable that Charles II, who had once released 500 Quakers from imprisonment, and was at heart a Roman Catholic, had been made aware of and sympathized with the object of securing a land for religious toleration. When the petition had been referred to the Committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations, Penn appeared before those Lords. He says in a letter of August 14, 1683, that on that occasion, he standing at the chair of the Lord President, some said that Lord Baltimore had but two degrees, whereupon the Lord President (who was John Robartes, Earl of Radnor) turned his head to Penn, and said "Mr. Penn, will not three degrees serve your turn?" and Penn replied "I submit both the what and the how to this honourable Board." The minutes say that he declared that he would be satisfied with three degrees, and would, in consideration, release the debt or part of it, and wait for the balance until the King could better pay it.

Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, had died and been succeeded by his son Charles, who had gone to Maryland before Penn made his application. The Duke of York was also away from England. Copies of Penn's petition were sent to the agents of Lord Baltimore, and to Sir John Werden, representing the Duke of York. Baltimore's agents, in answer, claimed the Susquehanna Fort-undoubtedly the one marked on the map printed seven years before-as the boundary of Maryland, and asked that Penn and his people be prohibited from furnishing the Indians with arms and ammunition. There had been war with the Susquehannocks since the printing of the map. The agents

asked that the boundary line run east from the Fort to the Delaware River, and west from the Fort. The Duke's agent, Werden, in his turn, stated that the land applied for had been held as an appendix and part of the government of New York, and, although it should not prove to be strictly within the bounds of the Duke of York's patent, his right was preferable to all others. Penn was told to arrange this matter with the Duke, and, as to Maryland, Penn agreed that Susquehanna Fort should be its boundary, and that he be subjected to restrictions as to furnishing arms or ammunition to Indians. It may surprise us that the latter stipulation does not appear in the charter granted to Penn, but the disregarding of Susquehanna Fort in framing the description inserted was perfectly fair. Maryland extended along the Susquehanna River or Chesapeake Bay to the fortieth parallel, and would go beyond the Fort, if that was south of the parallel; so, if any occupation of the site of the Fort was an encroachment upon what the King was free to grant, Penn could ask abandonment. Penn obtained the consent of the Duke to a grant north of the actual colony of which New Castle was the chief town, such grant extending northward and westward as far as the King should please, "beginning about the latitude of forty degrees." If Penn's land therefore ran north from 40°, he would be clear of any claim by either Lord Baltimore or the Duke, and need not care who had the right on the south. A month later, having seen a description drafted by Penn, Werden wrote that it was the Duke's intention that the southern limits should be twenty or thirty miles above New Castle, which distance, Werden said, "we guess may reach as far as the beginning of the fortieth degree." The last words "beginning of the fortieth degree," may have been merely an awkward rendering of the Duke's words, and intended for "as far as the beginning spoken of by the Duke, namely,

forty degrees." Werden may have been one of those who called the space north of the fortieth parallel "the fortieth degree," having in mind that at such parallel the latitude begins to be forty degrees and so many minutes. In fact, although this is not found to have been contended, the "beginning of the fortieth degree" could mean the part of it first reached in a description reading downwards. Those who say that Werden meant the thirty-ninth parallel, that is the end or completion reading northwards of thirty-nine of the ninety spaces from the equator to the north pole, must see that in such case Werden, in explaining the Duke's intention, would be contradicting what the Duke had said; moreover, it being pretty accurately known how near Cape May was to the thirty-ninth parallel, and that it was a long distance from Cape May to New Castle, Werden could not have been looking for that parallel twenty or thirty miles above New Castle. As twentythree miles due north of the old centre of that town would actually carry any location clearly above the fortieth parallel, we must conclude that he had the latter in mind, with remarkably accurate data concerning it, in saying twenty or thirty miles above New Castle.

Other people's opinion was more agreeable to Penn, who became dissatisfied with the amount of river frontage proposed for him, that is below the unnavigable rapids at Trenton. He was willing to leave twelve miles between his land and New Castle, and he expressed the opinion, so Werden wrote to the secretary of the Committee, that twelve miles "would fall under" an expression similar to "subjacet" in the Baltimore patent-"the beginning of the fortieth degree." Certainly, it was not being urged in favor of a new starting-point that it would be south of the fortieth parallel, and so conflict with the boundaries of Maryland. Penn was meaning the same scientific line

as Werden: and, after the expression "the beginning of" was finally put into the charter, it was for years deemed by everybody either as equivalent to "the extremity of" or as surplusage. Markham at Upland in 1682 had no other view; for, while the northern boundary of Pennsylvania was similarly fixed at "the beginning of the three and fortieth degree," he, according to his account, told those present that Penn's grant ran to latitude 43d 00'. There is no reason to doubt that before Werden's last mentioned letter to the secretary, Penn had been told that New Castle was much nearer the fortieth parallel than it is: in fact Lord Baltimore's commissioners eighteen months later made it out to be about ten minutes of latitude nearer. After much pertinacity, Penn seems to have convinced everybody. Lord Chief Justice North wrote a description, making, as appears from the certified copy used in the case of Penn v. Lord Baltimore, the southern boundary the straight line which he followed Werden by calling "the beginning of the fortieth degree," but excepting all lands in the possession of the Duke within twelve miles of New Castle. This exception was afterwards crossed out, and into the description was interlineated the fixing of the starting-point at the distance of twelve miles northward of New Castle, and also there was an alteration of the southern boundary to a circle drawn at twelve miles distance from that town north and westward "unto the beginning of the fortieth degree and thereon by a straight line westwards to the limit of longitude." Hazard's Annals of Pennsylvania has combined both the original and alteration as the Chief Justice's description. The interlineations and alterations appear to have been the work of Werden. On January 15, 1680-1, the boundaries with the alterations of Werden were read and approved by the Committee. It will be seen that, as the Delaware runs, the frontage thus withdrawn from the operation

of Lord Baltimore's charter, i.e. lying between the end of twelve miles from New Castle and the fortieth parallel, was about twenty-six miles, but the agents of his Lordship, and in fact the other people in England, had no such knowledge of the course of the river and the location of the parallel as to appreciate this. If the twelve-mile circle would indeed strike the parallel, his Lordship would be losing at most a trifle of frontage not worth considering. The officials, on the other hand, were convinced that the frontage south, as well as north, of the parallel was not Lord Baltimore's, but the King's, to give to whom he pleased, or the Duke's, yielded by his consenting to the gift. As to the land west of the semicircle, or arc, of twelve mile radius, nothing within Lord Baltimore's lines was supposed to be taken from him, for that semicircle, or arc, would, it was said, reach the fortieth parallel, which would from the point of intersection be the southern boundary of the new province.

While the treatment of the words "the beginning of" as surplusage would have made Penn's southern boundary, for nearly all the length, recede from the state's present line, the northern boundary would have been recognized as running along the forty-third parallel through the present territory of New York from the point north of the source of the Delaware to the Niagara River, and the sites of St. Johnsville, Richfield, Waterville, Cazenovia, Auburn, Geneva, and Buffalo would have been in Pennsylvania with three times the frontage on Lake Erie which our Commonwealth afterwards bought. With the question of the northern boundary, this history is not concerned.

As finally issued, the patent to William Penn called for the tract bounded on the east by the Delaware River "from twelve miles distance northward of New Castle towne unto the three and fortieth degree of northern latitude," if the river should extend so far