Proprietary Colony - Historical Precedent

Historical Precedent

The Monarch repeatedly granted transatlantic territory to an individual or a small group, rather than to a chartered company — which would of course then be no more than an individual or a group of people using a group name in place of their own names. The men who received these grants, called Proprietary Governors, or sometimes "Lords Proprietors", were invested with property and with gubernatorial authority to administer it with extraordinary control.

A similar mode had been the arrangement made in Norman times for certain English border counties. These territories were known as Counties Palatine and they lasted at least in part to 1830 and for the same good reasons: remoteness, poor communications, governance carried out under difficult circumstances. The State, i.e. the monarch and his or her government, retained its usual right to separate head and body, figuratively or literally, at any time.

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