514                           THE COUNTIES OF MARYLAND

should become Cecil County. On the 19th of the month a second proc-
lamation was issued reciting the fact that upon further consideration
it was thought best

" that so much of the Eastern side as was formerly added to Kent County
doe still remaine and belong to the said county as afore."

This applies to the territory along the Bay shore chiefly south of Swan
Point in the vicinity of Chester River, which had become settled ten or
fifteen years earlier. There are no records to show just where the divid-
ing line between Kent and Cecil counties was put at this time but the
map of Augustine Herrman, supposed to have been finished in 1670 and
copyrighted January 21, 1674-5, carries the name Cecil to a point near
Church Hill. It would thus appear that the original intention had been
to establish the lines given in the first proclamation. The settlements
represented here are for the most part clustered about Swan Point and
north on the Sassafras River, suggesting that the temporary line passed
indefinitely northwesterly from the neighborhood of Chestertown to the
mouth of the Sassafras. No records have been found indicating when the
transfer referred to in the second proclamation had been made to Kent
County. By 1706 the settlements had increased on the Eastern Shore
and a general Act was passed April 19, 1706,

"dividing and regulating several counties on the eastern shore" (1706
Ch. 3).

According to this Act af ter the first of May, 1707, the boundaries of Kent
County were to

" begin at the south point of Eastern neck, and from thence run up Chesa-
peake bay to Sassafras river, and up said river to the south end of long
Horse bridge lying over the head of the said river, and from thence with a
line drawn east and by south, to the exterior bounds of this province, and
with the exterior bounds of this province until it intersect the line of Queen
Anne's County, and with the said county down Chester river to Eastern neck,
where it first begun, ....... "

Although this boundary was defined prior to the settlement of the
Delaware-Maryland boundary line, it very closely describes the boundaries
of the present Kent County. At the time it was enacted the Proprietor
and people of Maryland were actively resisting the claims of William