The only evidence we possess that any result flowed from this fresh attempt to promote emigration to New Albion is derived from documents in the Public Record Office at London,[759] stating that March 21, 1649-50, a “Petition of the Earl of New Albion relating to the plantation there” was “referred to the consideration of the Committee of Council;” that April 3, 1650, it was “referred to the Committee for Plantations, or any three of them, to confer with the Earl of Albion concerning the giving good security to Council, that the men, arms, and ammunition, which he hath now shipped in order to his voyage to New Albion, shall go thither, and shall not be employed either there or elsewhere to the disservice of the public;” and that June 11, 1650, “a pass” was “granted for Mr. Batt and Mr. Danby, themselves and seven score persons, men, women, and children, to go to New Albion.” We have no other proof of the sailing of these people, nor any knowledge of their arrival in America.
In 1651, there was offered for sale in London, A mapp of Virginia, compiled by “Domina Virginia Farrer,”[760] designating the territory on the Delaware as “Nova Albion,” as well as “Sweeds’ Plantation,” with a note: “This River the Lord Ployden hath a Patten of, and calls it New Albion; but the Sweeds are planted in it, and have a great trade of Furrs.” On the Jersey side of the stream are indicated the sites of “Richnek Woods,” “Raritans,” “Mont Ployden,” “Eriwoms,” and “Axion,” and on the sea-coast “Egg Bay,” all of which are mentioned in Plantagenet’s New Albion.
At that time Plowden was still in England,[761] and we do not know that he ever returned to his province. In his will, dated July 29, 1655, he styles himself “Sir Edmund Plowden, of Wansted, in the County of Southton [Southampton], Knight, Lord, Earle Palatine, Governor and Captain-Generall of the Province of New Albion in America,” and thinks “it fit that” his “English lands and estates be settled and united to” his “Honour, County Palatine, and Province of New Albion, for the maintenance of the same.” In consequence of the “sinister and undue practises” of his eldest son, Francis Plowden, by whom, he says, “he had been damnified and hindered these eighteene yeares,” “his mother, a mutable woman, being by him perverted,” he bequeaths all his titles and property in England and America, including his “Peerage of Ireland,” to his second son, Thomas Plowden, specially mentioning “the province and County Palatine of New Albion,” whereof, he says, “I am seized as of free principality, and held of the Crowne of Ireland, of which I am a Peere, which Honor and title and province as Arundell, and many other Earledomes and Baronies, is assignable and saleable with the province and County Palatine as a locall Earledome.” He provides for the occupation and cultivation of New Albion as follows: “I doe order and will that my sonne Thomas Plowden, and after his decease his eldest heire male, and if he be under age, then his guardian, with all speed after my decease, doe imploy, by consent of Sir William Mason, of Greys Inne, Knt., otherwise William Mason, Esquire, whom I make a Trustee for this my Plantation, all the cleare rents and profits of my Lands, underwoods, tythes, debts, stocks, and moneys, for full ten yeares (excepted what is beqeathed aforesaid), for the planting, fortifying, peopling, and stocking of my province of New Albion; and to summon and enforce, according to Covenants in Indentures and subscriptions, all my undertakers to transplant thither and there to settle their number of men with such as my estate yearly can transplant,—namely, Lord Monson, fifty; Lord Sherrard, a hundred; Sr Thomas Danby, a hundred; Captain Batts, his heire, a hundred; Mr. Eltonhead, a Master in Chancery, fifty; his eldest brother Eltonhead, fifty; Mr. Bowles, late Clerke of the Crowne, forty; Captain Claybourne, in Virginia, fifty; Viscount Muskery, fifty; and many others in England, Virginia, and New England, subscribed as by direction in my manuscript bookes since I resided six yeares there, and of policie a government there, and of the best seates, profits, mines, rich trade of furrs, and wares, and fruites, wine, worme silke and grasse silke, fish, and beasts there, rice, and floatable grounds for rice, flax, maples, hempe, barly, and corne, two crops yearely; to build Churches and Schooles there, and to indeavour to convert the Indians there to Christianity, and to settle there my family, kindred, and posterity.”
To each of eleven parishes in England, where he owned land, he left forty pounds; and directs that he be buried in the chapel of the Plowdens at Ledbury, in Salop, under a stone monument, with “brasse plates” of his “eighteene children had affixed at thirty or fourty powndes charges, together with” his “perfect pedigree as is drawne at” his “house.” He “died,” says “Albion,” “at Wanstead, county of Southampton, in 1659,” his will being admitted to probate in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, July 27 of that year.[762] Thomas Plowden survived his father forty years, but what benefit he derived from the inheritance of New Albion does not appear. His own will is dated May 16, 1698, and was admitted to probate in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury the 10th of the following September. In it he describes himself as “Thomas Plowden, of Lasham, in the county of Southton, Gent;” and after leaving all his children and grandchildren “ten shillings a piece of lawfull English money,” proceeds: “I do give and bequeath unto my son Francis Plowden the Letters Pattent and Title, with all advantages and profitts thereunto belonging, And as it was granted by our late Sovereign Lord King Charles the first over England, under the great Seal of England, unto my ffather, Sir Edmund Plowden, of Wansted, in the County of Southton, now deceased, The province and County palatine of New Albion, in America, or in North Virginia and America, which pattent is now in the custody of my son-in-law, Andrew Wall, of Ludshott, in the said County of Southton, who has these severall years wrongfully detained it, to my great Loss and hinderance. And all the rest and residue of my goods, chattles, and personall Estate, after my debts and Legacies be paid and funerall discharged, I give and devise unto my wife, Thomazine Plowden, of Lasham.”[763]
That Plowden’s claim to the territory of New Albion was not forgotten in America, appears from the following allusions to it. In a conversation recorded by the Swedish engineer, Peter Lindström,[764] as occurring in New Sweden, June 18, 1654, between the Swedes and “Lawrence Lloyd, the English Commandant of Virginia,” concerning the rights of their respective nations to jurisdiction over the Delaware, the latter laid particular stress upon the fact that “Sir Edward Ployde and Earl of Great Albion had a special grant of that river from King James.” On the other hand, on occasion of the embassy of Augustine Herman and Resolved Waldron on behalf of the Director-General of New Netherland to the Governor of Maryland, in October, 1659, Plowden’s title was spoken of by them as “subretively and fraudulently obtained” and “invalid;” while Secretary Philip Calvert affirmed that “Ployten had had no commission, and lay in jail in England on account of his debts, relating that he had solicited a patent for Novum Albium from the King, but it was refused him, and he thereupon applied to the Viceroy of Ireland, from whom he had obtained a patent, but that it was of no value,”[765]—allegations, it is understood, of interested parties, which therefore possess less weight as testimony against the rights of Plowden. At the same time the title of the Earl Palatine to his American province was recognized in the last edition of Peter Heylin’s Cosmographie, which was revised by the author, and published in London in 1669,[766] and in Philips’s enlarged edition of John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain and Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, printed in London in 1676.[767]
From this period the history of New Albion is more obscure. There is proof, however, of the residence in Maryland, in May, 1684, of certain Thomas and George Plowden, affirmed, on grounds of family tradition, by persons who claim to be descended from one of them, to be sons of a son of the original patentee, who had brought his wife and children to America to take possession of his estates, but had been murdered by the Indians. That the ancestral jurisdiction over the province was never entirely lost sight of, is shown by the circumstance that the title peculiar to it was constantly retained by later generations of this race.[768] Just before the American Revolution, Charles Varlo, Esq., of England, purchased the third part of the Charter of New Albion, and in 1784 visited this country with his family, “invested with proper power as Governor to the Province, ... not doubting,” as he says, “the enjoyment of his property.” He made an extended tour through Long Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, and distributed among the inhabitants a pamphlet,[769] comprising a translation in English of the Latin charter enrolled at Dublin, copies of the lease to Danby, and the release of Ryebread and others, before referred to, an address of the “Earl Palatine of Albion” to the public, and conditions for letting or selling land in New Albion. He likewise issued “a proclamation, in form of a handbill, addressed to the people of New Albion, in the name of the Earl of Albion,”[770] and published in the papers of the day (July, 1785) “A Caution to the Good People of the Province of New Albion, alias corruptly called, at present, The Jerseys,” not to buy or contract with any person for any land in said province.[771] He formed the acquaintance of Edmund (called by him Edward) Plowden, representative of St. Mary’s County in the Legislature of Maryland, a member of the family already mentioned, and endeavored to interest that gentleman in his schemes. Finding his land settled under the grant to the Duke of York, he also sought counsel of William Rawle, a distinguished lawyer of Philadelphia, and “took every step possible,” he affirms, “to recover the estate by law in chancery, but in vain, because judge and jury were landowners therein, consequently parties concerned. Therefore, after much trouble and expense,” he “returned to Europe.”[772] Varlo’s last act was to indite two letters to the Prince of Wales, reciting his grievances and appealing for redress, but conceived in such a tone as would seem to have precluded a response.[773] Thus ended this curious episode in the history of English colonization in America.[774]
