Proceedings of the Council of Maryland^ 1681-85. 381

Pen to the place, where the friends meeting was to be that
day, and there took his leave and parted with the said Penn,
who the next day went to a general meeting at Choptank
river in Talbot County, where the Lord Baltemore had ordered
Colonel Philaemon Lloyd and his Major with some horsemen to
waite on the said Pen in his returne, This is what past between
the Lord Baltemore and William Pen who by agreement are
to meete some time in March next for the finding out the
degree of forty, northerly latitude. The King's letter which
M^r Pen delivered at the Conference to the Lord Baltemore,
bearing date the 19^th day of August 1682. in the foure and
thirtieth yeare of His Majestie's reign makes mention of an
admeasurement of two degrees according to the usuall compu-
tation of sixty miles to a degree to be the best, and certaine
method of setting forth and ascertaining the boundaries
between Maryland and Pensilvania; but the Lord Baltemore
humbly conceiving that His Majestie had received some
misinformation touching the bounds of his Province, did,
at the Conferrence, produce his Pattent, and the bounds
of the same were read to M^r Pen, and the Gentlemen,
then at the Board; After which M^r Pen proposed, as a
more equall way for him, and the Lord Baltemore to take their
cofnencement from the Capes which (as the said Pen affirmed)
lay in thirty seaven degrees, and five minutes, and that having
bin received for a long time to be the true latitude of the capes,
and by which masters of shipps have governed themselves
would be as well for the Lord Baltemore, as the said William
Pen. Urgeing that an uncertainty of soe long standing would
be better than to runn into new errors, which discourse of M^r
Pens seemed to shew a jealousie in him, and not to carry much
reason with it, or which many of the Gentlemen, then present,
imagined rather proceeded from an unwillingness to have the
bounds ascertained the surest, and most certaine way, which, as
the Lord Baltemore had often urged might be by a sextant of
six, eight or tenn foote, diameter, which being large and fixt in
a frame, and the frames standing sure upon firme ground,
must by all Artists be held a more certaine way of taking an
observacon, then by a small sea quadrant, and that held up by
the hand, which is always in motion, and the persons perhaps
aboard a ship who tooke the latitude of the capes; where there
was the shaking of the hand and error in the Instrument besides
the unskillfullness & ignorance of those observators against
which M^r Pen spoake soe much; But in a fixt Instrument oi
the Diameter abovesaid and that set in a frame on firm land a
certain observation may be taken, and that with out the help of
an horrison, and this M^r Pen it's beleeved knew well enough to
be the surest way; but he having been misinformed as to the

P. R. O.

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