The legislature was one-chambered. The
office of lord proprietary was hereditary in the Penn family. For
about eighty years the Penns and Calverts quarrelled, like true
sovereigns, about the boundary-line between their principalities,
until in 1763 the matter was finally settled. A line was agreed upon,
and the survey was made by two distinguished mathematicians, Charles
Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. The line ran westward 244 miles from the
Delaware River, and every fifth milestone was engraved with the arms
of Penn on the one side and those of Calvert on the other. In later
times, after all the states north of Maryland had abolished slavery,
Mason and Dixon's line became famous as the boundary between slave
states and free states.
[Sidenote: Other proprietary governments.]
At first there were other proprietary colonies besides those just
mentioned, but in course of time the rights or powers of their lords
proprietary were resumed by the crown. When New Netherland was
conquered from the Dutch it was granted to the duke of York as lord
proprietary; but after one-and-twenty years the duke ascended the
throne as James II., and so the part of the colony which he had kept
became the royal province of New York.
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