DATE: July 23, 2000
Database: 12CHAR
Subject: King Charles's first response to George Calvert's 1629
plea for a new grant of land near Virginia: South of the River James, North
of Sir Robert Heath's grant which ended at the Passa Magnus River.
1) The Heath grant:
The earliest grant of the lower part of the territory claimed by England under the discovery of Cabot, was made by His Majesty King Charles I., in the fith year of his reign, to Sir Robert Heath, his attorney-general. In that patent it is called, and the designated limits extended from the river Matheo in the thirtieth degree, to the river Passa Magna in the thirty-sixth degree of north latitude. There is good reason for the belief that actual possession was taken under this concession, and that, in an effort to colonize, considerable sums were expended by the proprietor and those claiming under him. Whether this grant was subsequently surrendered, or whether it was vacated and declared null for non user or other cause, we are not definitely informed. Certain it is that King Charles II., in the exercise of his royal pleasure, issued to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina two grants of the same territory with some slight modifications of boundaries. The latter of these grants, bearing date of the 30th of June in the seventeenth year of his reign, conveys to the Lords Proprietors of that portion of America between the thirty-sixth and one half and the twenty-ninth degrees of north latitude. Source: Charles C. Jones, Jr., LL.D., Chapter VI, The English Colonization of Georgia, 1733-1752, in Justin Winsor; editor, Narrative and Critical History of America, (Boston, 1887), Vol. V., Part II, p. 358. [ecp-4-2865]2) The present day boundaries of what was intended in the Heath grant and in the first proposed 'Virginia' grant to Lord Baltimore are difficult to sort out precisely given the contemporary understanding of where the 36th parallel of north Latitude lay. John White's 1585 map of the area printed by DeBry (see Lorant, New World (1965 ed.) end pages and pp. 274-275; ecp-4-2528) does not give latitude, but his manuscript map does (Lorant, New World (1965 ed.), p. 187, and Hulton, America 1585 (1984) p. 85, plate 59). In his manuscript map,White places the 36th parallel (the southern boundary of the proposed Calvert grant and the northern boundary of Heath's) at about where Cape Hatteras is today. Subsequent early printed maps (e.g. Blaeu, Virginia and Florida, 1660 in Portinaro and Knirsch, The Cartography of North America (1987), p. 181, and Bellin, La Caroline et Georgie, ibid., p. 243 [ecp-4-3450]) show the 36th parallel on or about Albemarle Sound, near where it is shown on modern maps. It is the modern placement of the 36th parallel which is used for discussion purposes here and is illustrated by the Johnson map of North and South Carolina.
3) The bounds of the grant to Lord Baltimore to the south of the
James River (a grant actually signed by the King; see the discussion of
the second warrant below) which created such opposition among the Virginia
investors and planters, and led to his grant being shifted (at his request)
to the northward, are taken from the original first warrant for a grant
to Lord Baltimore (a warrant is the first step in the process of the granting
of a patent to land; see Andrews, Proceedings of a Patent Through the
Seals [ecp-12-33-1]; This first warrant on behalf of Lord Baltimore
passed through all the necessary steps in February 1632 and the King signed
the 'bill' granting the land under the terms of the warrant). This
first warrant reads in part:
all that tract or precinct of land, lying from the Bay of Chesapeack and the River of Pohatan otherwise called James River on the North (including on league from the shoare within them both) into unto the River of Passa=magnus on the South (which River is the bounds of an ohter proportion of countrey lately granted by his Maty unto Sir Robert Heath Lord Cheife Justice of the Common pleas) and betweixt Cape Henry to the East and the Creek of Warrowsqueak to the West and from the head or bottom of that Creek to the head or fountain of the great River of Wyapennock, and from thence southerly to the lymmits of the precinct granted to Sir Robert Heath, and on the East from Cape Henry afforesaid all along the sea coast to the mouth of the River of Passamagnus, together with all islands lying eastward upon the said Coast over against this porcon of land thus described, or within one league of the South Shoare of the bay of Chesapeack, and James River, from Cape Henry to Warrowsqueack.
...
His Maty is likewise pleased that the said Lord Baltimore shall have free fishing for himself and the people of his plantation in the Bay of Chesapeack, and the said River of Pohatan. And that all ships boates or other vessels bound to or from any part of the precinct within his Governement may passe freely with their persons and goods, without Search controule or other molestation of the other Collony there planted or of any of their fforts built or to be built hereafter. And that the said preccinct now intended to be granted by his Maty. unto the Lo. Baltimore, shall not have any dependance of the now Colony of Virginia,nor be reputed as any part thereof, nor subject to their government in any sort but shall depend and hold solely and immediately upon his Jaty and his Imperial Crowne. Fo all which you are to draw a bill accordinly fitt for his Matys Royall signature, and this ahall be your warrant.From Whitehall the of February 1631[2]
[ecp-12-33-5]