course, that no clear-cut solution was ever reached, if, indeed, in those quarters 
it was thought necessary or desirable. The prerogative of the crown over its 
overseas dominions was sufficiently large and unrestrained for long-continued 
evasion of definition to be feasible. 
The controversies which we are about to discuss all related to disputed 
boundaries, a subject matter of the greatest jurisdictional significance, and the 
parties in the several causes, with one exception, were of equal capacity. The 
exception was the case between the Mohegan Indians and the colony of Connecticut, 
once described as "the greatest cause that ever was heard at the Council 
Board." 1 This litigation, which dragged on for decades, is properly considered 
in connection with the intercolonial boundary disputes, since the 
plaintiff tribe was recognized to possess attributes of internal sovereignty sufficient 
at least to maintain and prosecute an action. 
Before discussing the specific cases, let us examine the basis of the jurisdiction. 
There were various available choices. In the first place, there was the 
possibility that the Privy Council possessed the power to hear a cause originally. 
In a controversy, for example, between two proprietors enfeoffed 
through the medium of charters granting palatine powers, the ancient precedents 
which made the Council a forum for tenurial disputes between tenants 
in capite were conceivably applicable. Some precedent existed for the exercise 
of original jurisdiction in the November, 1685, settlement of the boundaries 
between Pennsylvania and Maryland proprietaries. But in this case 
the judicial element was somewhat obscured by counter-contentions that the 
determination was made by the agreement of the parties, and ex parte, as well 
as by the fact that the crown was virtually a party. 2 There was, secondly, available 
the special commission, an implicit waiver of direct conusance, but by 
the reservation of appeal an adequate medium for maintaining final judgment 
over the controversy. We have already seen that this device was used in 
the Pawtuxet purchase claims where the domestic corporation analogy was 
intimated to be the basis of jurisdiction. 3 There was a much stronger precedent 
in the case of the Channel Islands, stronger chiefly because it had the unqualified 
certification of Sir Edward Coke, 4 whose authority was highly regarded 
in the colonies. Nevertheless, when the commission was again used in the 
1 See the statement of solicitor Thomas Life 
(3 Trumbull MSS, 76 a, b). 
2 For accounts of the controversy, see Shepherd, 
History of Proprietary Government in 
Pennsylvania (1896), 117-31; E. B. Mathews, 
History of the Boundary Dispute between the 
Baltimores and Penns Resulting in the Original 
Mason and Dixon Line; Report on the Resurvey 
of the Maryland-Pennsylvania Boundary Part 
of the Mason and Dixon Line (1909),'138-54. 
For the hearings before the Lords Committee 
of Trade and Plantations and the November 
13, 1685, Order in Council see The Breviate 
in the Boundary Dispute between Pennsylvania 
and Maryland, 16 Pa. Archives (2d ser.), 394— 
95, 400-406. 
3 See supra, p. 121 et seq. 
* Fourth Institute, 286.