[754] Scull’s Evelyns in America, p. 361 et seq. The lawyers referred to were Henry Clerk and Arthur Turner, serjeants-at-law, and Arthur Ducke, Thomas Ryves, Robert Mason, William Merricke, Giles Sweit, Robert King, and William Turner, doctors of laws; of whom, says the editor, two at least, Ducke and Ryves, are “recognized as very able and learned lawyers in their day.” The rest, as well as Bysshe, speak of the letters patent as “under the Great Seal of Ireland.” I am informed by Mr. Scull that the documents mentioned constitute a manuscript folio volume now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
[755] A Description of the Province of New Albion. And a Direction for Adventurers with small stock to get two for one, and good land freely: And for Gentlemen, and all Servants, Labourers, and Artificers to live plentifully. And a former Description reprinted of the healthiest, pleasantest, and richest Plantation of New Albion in North Virginia, proved by thirteen witnesses. Together with a Letter from Master Robert Evelin, that lived there many years, shewing the particularities, and excellency thereof. With a briefe of the charge of victuall, and necessaries, to transport and buy stock for each Planter, or Labourer, there to get his Master £50 per Annum, or more in twelve trades, at £10 charges onely a man. Printed in the Year 1648. Small 4º, 32 pp. (Sabin’s Dictionary, vol. v. no. 19,724.) On the verso of the titlepage (reproduced here from the copy of the book in the Philadelphia Library) appear: “The Order, Medall, and Riban of the Albion Knights, of the Conversion of 23 Kings, their support;” the medal (given also in Mickle’s Reminiscences of Old Gloucester) bearing on its face a coroneted effigy of Sir Edmund Plowden, surrounded by the legend, ‘Edmundus. Comes. Palatinus. et. Guber. N. Albion,’ and on the reverse two coats of arms impaled; the dexter, those of the Province of New Albion, namely, the open Gospel, surmounted by a hand dexter issuing from the partiline grasping a sword erect, surmounted by a crown; the sinister, those of Plowden himself, a fesse dancettée with two fleurs-de-lis on the upper points; supporters, two bucks rampant gorged with crowns,—the whole surmounted by the coronet of an Earl Palatine, and encircled with the motto, ‘Sic suos Virtus beat;’ and the order consisting of this achievement encircled by twenty-two heads couped and crowned, held up by a crowned savage kneeling,—the whole surrounded with the legend, ‘Docebo iniquos vias tuas, et impii ad te convertentur.’ These engravings are accompanied by Latin mottoes and English verses on “Ployden” and “Albion’s Arms.” The work is the subject of an essay entitled “An Examination of Beauchamp Plantagenet’s Description of the Province of New Albion,” by John Penington, in the Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. iv. pt. i. pp. 133 et seq. (Philadelphia, 1840), for which the writer is very justly censured by a reviewer in the Gentleman’s Magazine for August, 1840, in these terms: “He has shown himself not unskilful in throwing ridicule upon the exaggerations and falsifications with which (as unhappily has been generally the case with such compositions in all ages) the prospectus of Ployden, or Plowden, abounds; but he has failed in the more difficult task of separating truth from falsehood.” The same critic says: “It is clear to us that the pamphlet was issued with the consent, and probably at the procuration and charges, of Sir Edmund Ployden;” and he attempts to throw some light upon the personality of the author, whose name of “Plantagenet,” undoubtedly, is fictitious. Besides the copy of the Description of New Albion in the Philadelphia Library, there is another in the Carter-Brown Library (Catalogue, vol. ii. no. 649), at Providence; three are mentioned by Mr. Penington as included in private libraries; and two, says the writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, are preserved in the British Museum. The book was reprinted from the Philadelphia copy in Tracts and Other Papers collected by Peter Force, vol. ii. no. 7 (Washington, 1838), and again reprinted from Force in Scull’s Evelyns in America, p. 67 et seq. The citations in the text are taken directly from the Philadelphia and Carter-Brown copies, which will account for some variations from these occasionally inaccurate reprints. A second edition of the original is mentioned by Lowndes as published in 1650. See the Huth Catalogue, which says: “The original edition was doubtless published at Middleburgh in 1641 or 1642.”
[756] An intimacy which authorized Plantagenet to speak thus of the Earl Palatine: “I found his conversation as sweet and winning, as grave and sober, adorned with much Learning, enriched with sixe Languages, most grounded and experienced in forain matters of State policy, and government, trade, and sea voyages, by 4 years travell in Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium, by 5 years living an Officer in Ireland, and this last 7 years in America.” “Sir Edmund Plowden,” says “Albion,” “was not inferior to any of his co-governors in ability, fortune, position, or family.”
[757] Reproduced in Heylin’s Cosmographie, in Philips’s enlarged edition of Speed’s Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, in Stith’s History of Virginia (Williamsburg, 1747), and in the Pocket Commentary of the first Settling of New Jersey by the Europeans (New York, 1759). Compare “Councells Opinions concerning Coll. Nicholls pattent and Indian purchases,” in Doc. Col. Hist. N. Y., xiii. 486, 487 (Albany, 1881). On certain of these points, see “Expedition of Captain Samuel Argall,” by George Folsom, in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., second series, i. 333 et seq. (New York, 1841), and Brodhead’s History of the State of New York, i. 54, 55, 140, and notes E and F.
[758] See Sketches of the Primitive Settlements on the River Delaware, by James N. Barker (Philadelphia, 1827), Penington’s work already cited, and “An Inquiry into the Location of Mount Ployden, the Seat of the Raritan King,” by the Rev. George C. Schanck, in New Jersey Hist. Soc. Proc., vi. 25 et seq. (Newark, N. J., 1853). According to Plantagenet, “The bounds is a thousand miles compasse, of this most temperate, rich Province, for our South bound is Maryland North bounds, and beginneth at Aquats or the Southermost or first Cape of Delaware Bay in thirty-eight and forty minutes, and so runneth by, or through, or including Kent Isle, through Chisapeack Bay to Pascatway, including the fals of Pawtomecke river to the head or Northermost branch of that river, being three hundred miles due West; and thence Northward to the head of Hudson’s river fifty leagues, and so down Hudson’s river to the Ocean, sixty leagues; and thence by the Ocean and Isles a crosse Delaware Bay to the South Cape, fifty leagues; in all seven hundred and eighty miles. Then all Hudson’s river, Isles, Long Isle, or Pamunke, and all Isles within ten leagues of the said Province being; and note Long Isle alone is twenty broad, and one hundred and eighty miles long, so that alone is four hundred miles compasse.” These limits of New Albion, as given in Smith’s History of New Jersey, are cited by the Rev. William Smith, D.D., in An Examination of the Connecticut Claim to Lands in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1774), with the remark, page 83: “This Grant, which was intended to include all the Dutch Claims, was the Foundation of the Duke of York’s Grant.”
[759] Domestic Interregnum, Entry Book, xcii. 108, 159, 441. Reprinted in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll. 1869, pp. 221-22.
[760] Reproduced herewith from a copy in the possession of John Cadwalader, Esq., of Philadelphia. It will be seen that Mr. Penington was correct in his account of this map, op. cit., notwithstanding the criticisms of the reviewer of his work in the Gentleman’s Magazine, which were based not on this, but on a similar map in The Discovery of New Britaine (London, 1651), in the British Museum, collated by “John Farrer, Esq.” Cf. Editorial Note A, following chapter v.
[761] Neill’s Sir Edmund Plowden, before cited.
[762] The document is on file in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, London, and has two seals attached to it,—described by “Albion” as Sir Edmund’s “private seal of the Plowdens, and his Earl’s with supporters, signed ‘Albion,’ the same as is given in Beauchamp Plantagenet’s New Albion.” The extracts in the text were copied from the original will by a London correspondent of the writer.
[763] Extract courteously made from the original at Somerset House, London, by the same correspondent. This gentleman assures me that, notwithstanding the declaration of “Albion” to the contrary, the will contains “no allusion whatever to the death of anybody at the hands of American Indians.”