1. William Claiborne featured in disputes between the colonists of Virginia and the later settling of Maryland, partly because of his earlier trading post on Kent Island in the mid-way of the Chesapeake Bay, which provoked the first naval military battles in North American waters.
William Claiborne repeatedly attempted and failed to regain Kent Island from the Maryland Calverts, sometimes by force of arms, after its inclusion in the lands that were granted by a 1632 Royal Charter to the Calvert family.
William Claiborne was an Anglican, a Puritan sympathizer, and deeply resentful of the Calverts' Catholicism.
William Claiborne played a role in the submission of Virginia to parliamentary rule in this period.
William Claiborne died around 1677 at his plantation, Romancoke, on Virginia's Pamunkey River.
William Claiborne mapped out "New Towne", an expansion of the growing Jamestown.
William Claiborne survived the attack, but recommended that the king take over the colony's management.
William Claiborne wanted to establish a trading post on Kent Island in the mid-way of the Chesapeake Bay, which he planned to make the center of his mercantile operations along the Atlantic Coast.
William Claiborne arrived soon afterwards and expressed the concerns of Virginia that its territorial integrity was being threatened.
William Claiborne was joined in his protests by a group of London merchants who planned to build a sugar colony in the same area.
William Claiborne was able to gain the support of the Virginia Council for his project and, as a reward for London merchant Maurice Thomson's financial support, helped Thomson and two associates get a contract from Virginia guaranteeing a monopoly on tobacco.
Some historical reports claim that William Claiborne tried to incite the natives against the Maryland colonists by telling them that the settlers at St Mary's were actually Spanish and enemies of the English, although this claim has never been proven.
William Claiborne tried to recover it by force, but was defeated; although he retained his settlement on Kent Island.
William Claiborne optimistically called his new colony Rich Island, but Spanish power in the area was too strong and the colony was destroyed in 1642.
William Claiborne found a new ally in Richard Ingle, a pro-Parliament Puritan merchant whose ships had been seized by the Catholic authorities in Maryland in response to a royal decree against Parliament.