Note 164 — Chapter IV

Mr. Lucas has recently brought together and edited, with some excellent notes, the most important of the ‘Charters of the Old English Colonies in America,’ Lond. 8, 1850. Among these will be found three charters, one to Virginia, to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island respectively, Massachusetts’ second charter, and that to New Hampshire and Maine. With these are also the “proprietary” charters to Maryland, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; and also those of New York, New Jersey, and Georgia. The careful study of these documents shows clearly on what liberal terms our ancestors commenced colonising, when we bear in mind that, according to the theory of those times, colonies were assumed to be the property of the Crown.