544                           THE COUNTIES OF MARYLAND

It is, however, interesting to note the claims implied by the limits of
these counties in their bearing on the broader question of the ownership
of the Delaware seaboard which was the subject of so much discussion
before the Privy Council Committee of Trade and Plantations during
the years 1683 to 1685. According to the Herrman map of 1670 Mount
Scarborough lay just south of the present town of Snow Hill in Wor-
cester County. It would accordingly appear that in the lord proprie-
tor's mind his title to the territory from the Calvert-Searborough line
of 1668 to the Whorekill was equally good in all parts, a fact which has
its bearing on the assertions of the Penns that Cape Henlopen lay some
15 or 20 miles south of the Whorekill at the time of the original grant.

The unnamed county foreshadowed in the proprietary's instructions
of 1669 was approximately the same as that named and defined by the
proclamation of June 19, 1672, by which Worcester County was erected
out of a portion of Somerset. According to the proclamation the pro-
prietor states

" for that we are informed that Several Persons are seated there without our
Leave or License or without the Leave or License of our Captain General of
our said Province and we having erected that part of oursd Province Begin-
ning at the Southernmost Branch of a Bay now called Rehoboth Bay and
from thence running Northerly up the Sea Board side to the South Cape of
Deleware Bay and thence to the Whore keil Creeke and up the Bay to the
fortieth degree Northerly Latitude into a County and do hereby erect the
same into a County and it is our will and Pleasure that it shall be a County
and called by the name of Worcester County in our said Province of Mary-
land." (Md. Arch., 5: 108.)

This county, like its companion Durham County, was only temporary
and is distinct from the Worcester County erected in 1742, although the
area included is approximately the same except in so far as the modifi-
cation of the exterior limits of Maryland influenced the county. As in
the case of the original instructions the boundary line between Somer-
set and Worcester was not defined even in the more detailed proclamation
of 1672. It is probable that the line, if occasion had arisen for its loca-
tion, would have been placed about the same as the later line prescribed
by the Act of 1742,

In the fall of 1684 the question of jurisdiction over the territory