stated in the authority for it, the reader may assume, unless it is otherwise declared, that it is according to that "Old Style." The only difference in the length of the months in the two calendars during the period was that the old had a twenty-ninth of February in the year 1700, while the new had not: so that the English first of March, 1700, was the French twelfth of March, 1701, and so on, the discrepancy of ten days becoming eleven days.

The year of our Lord according to the Old Style will be found in this book in parenthesis when a document dated by the year of a king's reign is mentioned; a mode of dating which would puzzle the reader, particularly as to the acts of Charles II, who dated his reign from the execution of Charles I, January 30, 1648-9, although Charles II was not restored to power until May 8, 1660, when proclaimed King, or May 29, 1660, when he entered London, in what was called the twelfth year of his reign. It may be useful to state that, counting the day of accession as the first day of the first year of the reign,

the first year of James I ended on March 23, 1603-4, O. S.,

the first year of Charles I ended on March 26, 1626, O. S.,

the first year of Charles II ended on January 29, 1649-50, O. S.,

the first year of James II ended on February 5, 1685-6, O. S.,

the first year of William III ended on February 12, 1689-90, O. S.,

the first year of Anne ended on March 7, 1702-3, O. S.,

the first year of George I ended on July 31, 1715, O. S.,

the first year of George II ended on June 10, 1728, O. S.

Although by the time with which these Chronicles start, the dream of a Scandinavian world-power had vanished, the furs of America had been diverted from Amsterdam, and the Europeans on the western shore of Delaware Bay and River had accepted the status of tenants of William Penn, it is necessary, even before studying the people, the proprietaryship, and the government, to take a retrospect as far as before the reign of Gustavus Adolphus and the voyages of Henry Hudson, in order to explain the boundary dispute which overhung a large part of the present extent of Pennsylvania during the whole period chronicled.

When there were no white people on the Atlantic Coast between Maine and Florida, King James I of England authorized two settlements to be made within certain limits by a number of his subjects in two companies, or colonies, as he called them. After one of these companies had made an establishment on the James River, the King, by charter dated May 23rd in the seventh year of his reign over England (1609), granted to those contributing, called "The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the first Colony in Virginia," the Atlantic coast for 200 miles northward and southward of Point Comfort with a depth inward to the Pacific Ocean, which was not then supposed to be very far off. This charter, which was annulled in 1625, before any lots were sold north or east of the Chesapeake, is only mentioned here because this disposal of land, nearly, if not quite, up to the latitude forty degrees north, was in force when the other company also received a separate charter from the same King. The Stuart kings personally transacted the affairs of their realm: the policy during a reign was as continuous as that under a party Cabinet in later times, either changing as exigencies arose; and the theories of James I or the carelessness of Charles II affected history. James I incorporated

in 1620 those who had been expected to make the other settlement, calling them "The Council established at Plymouth in the County of Devon for planting, ruling, and governing of New England in America." The charter to this Council recited the depopulation of the coast "between the degrees of forty and forty-eight," and gave the name New England to all the territory in America lying and being in breadth from forty degrees of northerly latitude from the equinoctial line to forty-eight degrees of said northerly latitude, and in length by all the breadth aforesaid throughout the main land from sea to sea. In the granting clause, but nowhere else, the word "inclusively" occurs after the words "to forty-eight degrees of said northerly latitude," but this can hardly be thought so to enlarge the description as to cover anything south of what is just forty degrees north of the equator. The parallels of latitude used by geographers mark the end or completion of just so many degrees as the number attached to them on the map, in other words the completion of just that many, starting from the equator, of the ninety parts into which the surface of the earth from the equator to the pole is divided. There has been some confusion in such expressions as "the fortieth degree," "the forty-eighth degree," etc., some persons meaning the parallels marking forty degrees, fortyeight degrees, etc., and some even meaning the space north of the parallels marking so many degrees. Early instances of the use of the expression with one or other of these meanings can be found, but, what is much in point, William Penn and Lord Baltimore, sixty years after the granting of the New England charter, were speaking of the parallel marking forty degrees as "the fortieth degree." In strictness, the later Penns were right in saying that the fortieth degree is the fortieth of the ninety spaces from the equator to the pole, the space beginning at the equa

tor, and running to parallel marked 1°, being the first; in other words, that the fortieth degree is the space between the parallel marked 39° and that marked 40°. A description, however, like that of New England, "from forty degrees to forty-eight degrees" is obviously from where you count forty degrees complete from the equator to where you count forty-eight degrees complete. Against an interpretation that this region was to start northward from the parallel 39°, is the fact that it would then have covered a considerable part of the southern colony's 200 miles north of Point Comfort, and this could not have been intended. Although in the charter an exception was made of all land actually possessed or inhabited by other Christian princes or states, or within the bounds of the southern colony, it is most likely that the description was meant to run from as near as possible just where the southern colony ended. Therefore, the southern termination of what was meant by New England for many years after 1620, must have been the parallel marked 40°, the completion of forty degrees north of the equator.

This parallel, which will be spoken of in these pages as "the fortieth parallel," will be seen in modern maps to strike the New Jersey coast at Chadwick, about two miles south of Mantoloking, and the western side of the Delaware River at Bridesburg, and to cross Broad Street, in Philadelphia, below Clearfield Street, and the city line below Bala, and to pass through Downingtown, and south of, but not far from, Lancaster, Columbia, Shippensburg, Bedford, and Brownsville.

In the same year that James I made the aforesaid grant for the southern colony, Henry Hudson, while sailing in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, gave to the sovereign of that company by exploring both the Delaware Bay and the Hudson River a claim from the first authenticated discovery to the

shores of each; and at the time when James I made the aforesaid grant of New England, citizens of Holland, etc., were trading on what they called the North River, and perhaps on the Delaware, which they called the South River. It was not long afterwards that those acknowledging allegiance to the Netherlandish Estates General came into undisputed possession of the valley of the Hudson and a large part of Connecticut and some part of New Jersey, having forts on the east side of the Delaware River, buying land in 1629 on the west side of Delaware Bay, and for a short time keeping a fort there, and even, in 1633, erecting a fort on the Schuylkill.

About 1630, Sir George Calvert, first Baron Baltimore in the peerage of Ireland, who had been one of the Virginia Company, and one of James I's secretaries of state, sought from Charles I a tract of land north of the settled part of Virginia. It is not necessary to go into the question of the King's right to convey or set off what had been granted to the dissolved company; for this did not affect the Penn and Baltimore controversy. Cecil Calvert, the second Baron, presented after the first Baron's death a further petition, describing the region desired as "uncultivated and occupied in parts by barbarians having no knowledge of Divine Inspiration." In the charter's recital of the petition the words are "hactenus inculta et barbaris nullam divini numinis notitiam habentibus in partibus occupata.' Under date of June 20th, in the eighth year of the reign (1632), King Charles granted to the said second Baron and his heirs and assigns, according to transcript of the enrolment of the charter, printed, with its bad spelling, etc., with the Report of Commissioners of 1872 on Boundary of Maryland and Virginia: Totam illam partam Peninsule sive Chersonnessus jacentem in partibus Americe inter Oceanum ex oriente et Sinum de Chesopeake ab occidente a