pages, bearing at its head the royal arms of Charles I,
which, with some show of reason may in its turn be sug-
gested as the earliest printed document relating to the
colony in question. Every one that examines a copy of
this edition of the Charter admits it as a publication of
the first half of the seventeenth century and all agree
that the publication of a charter was ordinarily, and
naturally, the first step in publicity considered by the
individual or company to whom it had been granted.
But the status of this edition of the Charter of Mary-
land¹ has not yet been determined with sufficient
exactness to justify a claim for it as the earliest printed
piece relating to Lord Baltimore's colony. It may be
said, however, that the same caution which forbids the
complete acceptance at this stage of the Charles I edi-
tion of the Charter as a publication of the months
immediately following the passage of the instrument
itself under the Great Seal, on June 20, 1632, forbids
also its relegation to a later date of issue.

   A Relation of the successeful beginnings of the Lord Bal-
temore's Plantation in Mary-land, published in London
in the year 1634 is an abridged and tactfully amended
version in English of an account of the Maryland settle-
ment best known in the form of a Latin manuscript, the
"Relatio Itineris in Marilandiam", believed to have
been composed by Father Andrew White, the chief of the
Jesuit missionaries accompanying the expedition. Ap-
pended to it, occupying pages 11-14, is a section headed
"Conditions of the plantation," dated July 15, 1634. Be-
cause of its early date, its association with Father White,
its fresh interest and fine literary quality, and because of
the prime historical importance of both of its sections,
this first printed account of the Maryland settlement

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