Master William Claiborne

In the year of grace, 1625, one William Claiborne of England, who had come to America to survey the land for the Virginia Company, was made Secretary of State in the province governed by that company.

Two years later, which is as if I had said in the year 1627, Governor. Yeardley, who was then ruler over Virginia, gave this same William Claiborne a license to trade with the Indians in the bay of Chesapeake, and so successful was he in such venture that, going to England, he interested a London merchant in the undertaking, who advanced to him a sufficient amount of money to carry on the traffic in a large way.

In the year of grace, 1631, which, as you must remember, was two years before my Lord Baltimore sent out the Ark  and the Dove, this William Claiborne, with the London merchant as partner, got a commission from King Charles I of Scotland, which gave him permission to trade in all parts of New England and Nova Scotia where others were not then trading.

Now a full year before our company sailed from London, William Claiborne had built a home upon the island of Kent, which is, as you know, many miles up the bay from the mouth of the river Potomac. He bought from the Indians the land of that island, and with the pinnaces and many canoes, carried on a large business among the brown-skinned men in that portion of the New World.

You will do well to keep in mind that all this was done before we of Lord Baltimore's company left London, and also to remember what I have set down concerning the gift which his Majesty made to the old lord, for that covered all the land extending north from Virginia and on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay, including the peninsula on the eastern shore.