[10] Penn intended to call his tract New Wales, but to please the king changed it to Sylvania, before which the king put the name Penn, in honor of Penn's father. The king owed Penn's father £16,000, and considered the debt paid by the land grant.
[11] All laws were to be proposed by the governor and the upper house; but the lower house might reject any of them. At the first meeting of the Assembly Penn offered a series of laws called The Great Law. These provided that all religions should be tolerated; that all landholders and taxpayers might vote and be eligible to membership in the Assembly; that every child of twelve should be taught some useful trade; and that the prisons should be made houses of industry and education.
[12] Pennsylvania extended five degrees of longitude west from the Delaware. The south boundary was to be "a circle drawn at twelve miles' distance from Newcastle northward and westward unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude, and then by a straight line westward." This was an impossible line, as a circle so drawn would meet neither the thirty-ninth nor the fortieth parallel. Maryland, moreover, was to extend "unto that part of Delaware Bay on the north which lieth under the fortieth degree of north latitude."
Penn held that the words of his grant "beginning of the fortieth degree" meant the thirty-ninth parallel. The Baltimores denied this and claimed to the fortieth. The dispute was finally settled by a compromise line which was partly located (1763-67) by two surveyors, Mason and Dixon. In later days this Mason and Dixon's line became the boundary between the seaboard free and slave-holding states. The north boundary of Pennsylvania was to be "the beginning of the three and fortieth degree of northern latitude," which, according to Penn's argument in the Maryland case, meant the forty- second parallel, and on this New York insisted.
[13] The grant extended from the 31st to the 36th degree of north latitude, and from the Atlantic to the South Sea; it was given to eight noblemen, friends of the king. In 1665 strips were added on the north and on the south, and Carolina then extended from the parallel of 29 degrees to that of 36 degrees 30 minutes.
[14] This plan, the Grand Model, as it was called, was intended to introduce a queer sort of nobility or landed aristocracy into America. At the head of the state was to be a "palatine." Below him in rank were "proprietaries," "landgraves," "caciques," and the "leetmen" or plain people. Read Fiske's Old Virginia and her Neighbours, Vol. II, pp. 271-276.
[15] Read Fiske's Old Virginia and her Neighbours, Vol. II, pp. 310-319.
[16] Read Fiske's Old Virginia and her Neighbours, Vol. II, pp. 361-369.
[17] Ever since the early voyages of discovery Spain had claimed the whole of North America, and all of South America west of the Line of Demarcation. But in 1670 Spain, by treaty, acknowledged the right of England to the territory she then possessed in North America. No boundaries were mentioned, so the region between St. Augustine and the Savannah River was left to be contended for in the future. England, in the charter to the proprietors of Carolina (1665), asserted her claim to the coast as far south as 29°. But this was absurd; for the parallel of 29° was south of St. Augustine, where Spain for a hundred years had maintained a strong fort and settlement. The possessions of England really stopped at the Savannah River, and sixty-two years passed after the treaty with Spain (1670) before any colony was planted south of that river.