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Proceedings of the County Courts of Kent (1648-1676), Talbot (1662-1674), and Somerset (1665-1668)
Volume 54, Preface 29   View pdf image (33K)
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                      Somerset County.           xxix

   as representing Virginia had made a demand for quit rents upon John Elzey,
   one of the residents of Manokin (Arch. Md. iii, 473-475), and it was un-
   questionably as the result of this anticipated demand that Scarburgh and Revell
   had been dropped from the Maryland commission for granting lands. On
   October 12, 1663, apparently without orders from Gov. Berkeley and without
   waiting for a meeting of representatives from the two colonies to mark the
   boundary lines, Scarburgh at the head of some forty-five armed men from
   Virginia marched into Annemessex and Manokin and demanded that the in-
   habitants recognize the authority of Virginia. This the Quakers at Anne-
   messex, headed by Stephen Horsey, a dissenter although possibly not a Quaker,
   refused to do, although the resistance of the Anglicans at Manokin was less
   vigorous than that of their Quaker neighbors. Scarburgh himself wrote a
   lengthy report to the November, 1663, Accomac County Court on this filibuster-
   ing expedition which he had headed. His unrestrained language and especially
   the contemptuous epithets which he hurled at his Quaker opponents are most
   amusing (Va. Mag. Hist. xix, 173-180; Torrence's Old Somerset, 388-392).
     Gov. Charles Calvert, the son of Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, at once proceeded
   to Virginia and registered a vigorous protest against Scarburgh, whose actions
   Gov. Berkeley promptly disavowed. In May, 1664, a joint commission headed
   respectively by Philip Calvert, the Chancellor of Maryland, and Scarburgh rep-
   resenting Virginia, met to determine the boundary line, but owing to the lat-
   ter's truculent behavior nothing was then accomplished. Again on June 2, 1664,
   Calvert visited Berkeley, and it was formally agreed “that persons living near
   the land [in dispute] shall live peaceably together until the differences be settled
   between the two colonies “. The actual boundary line was not finally marked out
   and agreed upon, however, until 1668. In April, and again in May, 1668, the
   meetings of the Somerset County Court were postponed so that the justices might
   “give their attendance on the honble Chancellr for the Laying out of the bounds
   of the Province” (pp. 708, 709). Why it should have required four years to
   establish this dividing line is difficult to understand, but it was not until June
   25, 1668, that what may be termed a territorial treaty of peace was finally
   signed. This settlement sustained at every point Maryland's contentions, and
   recognized the thirty-mile-wide strip of land in dispute to be part of the Calvert
   domain. That this delayed settlement and recognition of the justice of the
   Maryland claim was a foregone conclusion seems certain, for otherwise it is
   not likely that the Lord Proprietary in 1666 would have added fuel to the
   flame and have further complicated matters by creating the new county of
   Somerset embracing the disputed territory.
     Pending the settlement of the dispute, and a year before the erection of
   Somerset in August 1666, the Governor and Council of Maryland, August 28,
   1665, issued a commission “of the Peace on the Eastern Shore” to Stephen
   Horsey, William Thorne, George Johnson, William Stevens, John White, John
   Winder, James Jones, and Henry Boston, Horsey and Thorne being of the
   quorum (Arch. Md. iii, 533); and again on February 23, 1665/6, recom-
   missioned these same justices (Arch. Md. iii, 537); and in a proclamation
   issued August 22, 1666, creating Somerset, these same men were reappointed
   


 
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Proceedings of the County Courts of Kent (1648-1676), Talbot (1662-1674), and Somerset (1665-1668)
Volume 54, Preface 29   View pdf image (33K)
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