68 JOHN GEORGE BOURINOT ON 
Each hundred or barony was to consist of somewhat less than eight square miles, and the 
lord of each was bound to erect and maintain forever a castle or blockhouse as the capital 
seat of his property, and as a place of retreat and rendezvous for the settlers; and thus, on 
any alarm of sudden danger, every inhabitant might have a place of security within four 
miles of his habitation. A cannon fired at one of the castles would be heard at the next, 
and thus the firing would proceed in regular order from castle to castle, and be “the 
means,” adds the noble memorialist, “of putting every inhabitant of the whole island 
under arms and in motion in the space of one quarter of an hour.” ' 
But this proposition was not entertained by the king, who had had some experience 
of a similar plan which failed in Carolina.” The division, however, of the whole island, 
among a few proprietors, appears to have had consequences probably fully as disastrous 
as would have been the concession to a single nobleman, who might have taken a deep 
interest in its settlement, as was notably done by Lord Baltimore in Maryland. 
The island was originally laid out in counties,’ parishes and townships. The county 
lines appear to have been run from north to south across the island at two of its widest 
parts. Where the boundaries of townships or parishes touch the county lines, they are 
coterminous therewith. The same is true of the township and parish lines. The average 
area of the townships is 20,000 acres, though number 66, the last regular township 
surveyed, contains only 6,000, and number 67, an irregular block in the centre of the 
island, is somewhat larger than the average. 
Each parish includes from three to six townships. In addition to the territorial 
divisions before mentioned, there was laid out in each county, at the time of the original 
survey, a site for a chef lieu, or county town. For Queen’s County, a town plot was laid 
out on the site of the present city of Charlottetown, at the head of Hillsboro’ Bay, where 
the North-West and Hillsboro’ Rivers unite. The town of King’s County was laid out at 
Georgetown, on the south-east coast, on Cardigan Bay, and, for Prince County, a town site 
was surveyed on the east side of Richmond or Malpeque Bay, near its mouth. To each 
of these town sites there were attached distinct areas of land called ‘ commons” * and 
“royalties,” ° which covered about 6,000 acres each, and were not included in any of the 
townships. Instead of being reserved for their original purpose, the common and royalty 
attached to each town site were subsequently sold by the crown as farm lands, and are 


! Campbell’s History, ch. i. p. 11. 
2 Shaftesbury and Locke attempted to frame a constitution for Carolina, which would “ connect political power 
with hereditary wealth.” Bancroft’s History of the United States, ii. 146. 
3“Tn 1768 the Island was divided into three counties :—(1.) King’s, containing 20 townships, 412,100 acres; 
county town, Georgetown, 4,000 acres (Les Trois Rivières). (2.) Qneen’s, 23 townships, 486,600 acres; county town, 
Charlottetown, 7,300 acres (Port la Joie). (3.) Prince County, 23 townships, 467,000 acres; county town, Princetown, 
4,000 acres (Halpeqne)” Murdoch’s History, ii. 474 The names in parentheses are those of the old French 
settlements. 
4 These common lands were a memorial of Anglo-Saxon times. “The pleasant green commons or squares 
which occur in the midst of towns and cities in England and the United States most probably originated from the 
coalescence of adjacent mark-communities, whereby the border-land used in common by all was brought into the 
centre of the new aggregate....In old towns of New England.... the little park....was once the common 
pasture of the town.” Fiske’s American Political Ideas, pp. 39, 40. 
5“In its primary and natural sense, ‘royalties’ is merely the English translation or equivalent of 
regalitates, jura regalia, jura regia.” See an interesting definition of the term given by the judicial committee of 
the privy council, Legal News (Montreal), vi. 244 ; and Bourinot, p. 690. 
