5
(return)
[ De Vries,
Voyages
(N.Y. Hist. Soc.,
Collections, 2d series, III., 34).]
6
(return)
[ Smith,
Works
(Arber's ed.), 887.]
7
(return)
[
Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 288. In 1639 Alexander Stonar, brickmaker, patented land on Jamestown Island "next to the brick-kiln," Tyler,
Cradle of the Republic, 46, 99.]
8
(return)
[ Mass. Hist. Soc.,
Collections, 4th series, IX., 108.]
9
(return)
[ De Vries,
Voyages
(N.Y. Hist. Soc.,
Collections, 2d series, III., 37)]
10
(return)
[
William and Mary Quarterly, VII., 66, 114.]
11
(return)
[
Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 117.]
12
(return)
[ Hening,
Statutes, I., 225.]
13
(return)
[ Winthrop,
New England, I., 67.]
14
(return)
[ Mass. Hist. Soc.,
Collections, 4th series, IX., 110.]
15
(return)
[
Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 184.]
16
(return)
[ Winthrop,
New England, I., 228.]
17
(return)
[
Va. Magazine, V., 123-128.]
18
(return)
[
Virginia and Maryland, or the Lord Baltimore's Printed Case, uncased and answered
(Force,
Tracts, II, No. ix.).]
19
(return)
[
Va. Magazine, II., 281-288.]
20
(return)
[ Hening,
Statutes, I., 230-235.]
21
(return)
[
Manuscript Collection of Annals relating to Virginia
(Force,
Tracts, II., No. vi.).]
22
(return)
[ Latané,
Early Relations between Maryland and Virginia
(Johns Hopkins University Studies, XIII., Nos. iii. and iv.).]
23
(return)
[ Winthrop,
New England, III, 198, 199].
24
(return)
[ Ibid.; Beverley,
Virginia, 48.]
25
(return)
[
Va. Magazine, VIII., 71-73.]
26
(return)
[
A Perfect Description of Virginia
(Force,
Tracts, II., No. viii.); Beverley,
Virginia, 49.]
27
(return)
[ Hening,
Statutes, I., 323-326.]
28
(return)
[ Latané,
Early Relations
(Johns Hopkins University Studies, XIII.).]
29
(return)
[
William and Mary Quarterly, VIII., 239.]
30
(return)
[ Hammond,
Leah and Rachel
(Force,
Tracts, III., No. xiv.).]
31
(return)
[
Perfect Description
(ibid., II., No. viii.).]
32
(return)
[ Neill,
Virginia Carolorum, 238; Tyler,
Cradle of the Republic, 90.]
33
(return)
[ Hening,
Statutes, I., 359-361.]
34
(return)
[
Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 343.]
35
(return)
[
Md. Archives, III., 265-267.]
36
(return)
[
Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 393.]
37
(return)
[ See report of the commissioners,
Va. Magazine, XI., 32.]
38
(return)
[ Hening,
Statutes, I., 363, 371.]
39
(return)
[ Virginia Land Grants,
MSS.]
40
(return)
[
Md. Archives, IV., 268, 315.]
41
(return)
[ Bancroft,
United States
(22d ed.), II, 134.]
42
(return)
[ Tyler, "Colonial Brick Houses," in
Century Magazine, February, 1896.]
43
(return)
[ Hammond,
Leah and Rachel
(Force,
Tracts, III., No. xiv.).]
44
(return)
[ Tyler, "Virginians Voting in the Colonial Period," in
William and Mary Quarterly, VI., 9.]
45
(return)
[ "Education in Colonial Virginia,"
William and Mary Quarterly, V., 219-223, VI., 1-7, 71-86, 171-186, VII., 1-9, 65, 77.]
46
(return)
[ Neill,
Virginia Carolorum, 112.]
47
(return)
[ "Eaton's Deed," in
William and Mary Quarterly, XI, 19.]
The founding of Maryland was due chiefly to the personal force of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, son of Leonard Calvert. He was born near Kiplin, in Yorkshire, about 1580, and graduated at Trinity College, Oxford, 1597. After making a tour of Europe he became the private secretary of Sir Robert Cecil, who rapidly advanced his fortunes. He served upon several missions to investigate the affairs of Ireland, was knighted in 1617, and in 1619 succeeded Sir Thomas Lake as principal secretary of state.
In this office he began to revolve plans of colonization in America, to which his attention was directed as a member of the Virginia Company since 1609. In 1620 he bought from Sir William Vaughan the southeastern peninsula of Newfoundland, known as Ferryland, and the next year sent some colonists thither. He supported the Spanish match; and when Charles changed his policy he obtained from the king in 1623 a charter for his province, which he called Avalon. In 1625 he resigned his secretaryship and openly avowed his adherence to the church of Rome; but the king, as a mark of favor, raised him to the Irish peerage, with the title of Baron of Baltimore, after a small town of that name in Ireland.1
Baltimore returned to his plans of colonization, and in 1627 went to Newfoundland with his wife and children. But the country proved too cold for him and he determined to "shift" to a warmer climate. Accordingly, in August, 1629, he wrote to the king for a "grant of a precinct of land in Virginia," with the same privileges as those which King James gave him in Newfoundland.2 Without waiting for a reply he left Avalon, and in October, 1629, arrived in Virginia, where the governor, Dr. John Pott, and his council received him politely but coldly. Neither his religion nor his past career as a court favorite, nor the design which he made known of establishing an independent state within the confines of Virginia, commended him to the people of Jamestown.
Naturally, they wished to get rid of him, and the council tendered him the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, which, in the various instructions from the king, they were strictly enjoined to require of all new-comers. The oath of allegiance occasioned no difficulty, but the oath of supremacy, which required Baltimore to swear that he believed the king to be "the only supreme governor in his realm in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes," was repugnant to him as a Catholic, and he declined to take it, but offered to subscribe to a modified form. This was refused, and after several weeks' sojourn Lord Baltimore sailed away to England to press his suit in person before the king.3
So far as the law of England stood at that time, the effect of the dissolution of the London Company was to extinguish the debts of the corporation and vest all its property undisposed of in the crown. On the other hand, there were the repeated official pledges of Charles and his father not to disturb the interest of either planter or adventurer in any part of the territory formerly conveyed by the charter of 1609.4 Nevertheless, the king preferred law to equity, and October 30, 1629, granted to Sir Robert Heath the province of Carolana in the southern part of Virginia, between thirty-one and thirty-six degrees.5 But there was a clause in this charter excepting any land "actually granted or in possession of any of his majesty's subjects."
About the same time Cottington, the secretary of state, was directed to answer Lord Baltimore's letter written from Newfoundland and promise him "any part of Virginia not already granted." Lord Baltimore arrived in London soon after this letter was written, and in December, 1629, petitioned to be permitted to "choose for his part" a tract south of James River and north of Carolana. A charter was made out for him in February, 1631, and would have passed the seals but for the intervention of William Claiborne, one of those Virginia councillors who had offered the oath to Baltimore.6
William Claiborne, the second son of Sir Edward Claiborne, of Westmoreland County, England, went over to Virginia with Governor Wyatt in 1621 as surveyor-general of the colony. Shortly afterwards he was made a councillor, and in 1625 secretary of state of the colony. In the Indian war, which began with the massacre in 1622, he was appointed general, and in 1629 received lands in the Pamunkey Neck for valuable military service. Active and fearless, he engaged with great success in the trade for furs in the bay, and was recognized as the foremost man in Virginia. Sent in May, 1630, by the Virginia council to watch the movements of Lord Baltimore, he co-operated in England with ex-Governor Francis West, of Virginia, Sir John Wolstenholme, and other gentlemen who wished the restoration of the London Company.
Aided by these friends, Claiborne defeated the proposed grant, but Baltimore persevered, and, in April, 1632, received from the crown a patent for a portion of the Virginia territory lying north of Point Comfort, and having for bounds the ocean, the fortieth parallel of north latitude, the meridian of the western fountain of the Potomac, the southern bank of the Potomac River, and a line drawn east from Watkins Point. In the grant the land was described as "hitherto unsettled and occupied only by barbarians ignorant of God." The king first proposed to call it Mariana, in honor of his wife, Henrietta Maria, but on Baltimore objecting that it was the name of a Spanish historian who had written against the doctrine of passive obedience, Charles modified the appellation, and said, "Let it be called Terra Mariæ—Maryland."7
April 15, 1632, George Calvert died, and the charter was made out in the name of his eldest son, Cecilius, and was signed by the king, June 20, 1632. Cecilius Calvert, named after Sir Robert Cecil, was born in 1605, and in 1621 entered Trinity College, Oxford University. He married Anne Arundel, daughter of Lord Thomas Arundel, of Wardour. As Cecilius, unlike his father, never held public positions in England, his character is best revealed by his conduct of his province in America, which shows him to have been a man of consummate prudence and tact.
Baltimore's grant called forth a strong remonstrance from members of the Virginia Company and all the leading planters in Virginia, including Claiborne. The matter was referred by the king to the Commissioners for Foreign Plantations, who heard the complaint, and July 3, 1633, decided to "leave Lord Baltimore to his patent" and "the other partie to the course of the law."8 This certainly meant a decision against the wholesale claim of Virginia to the ancient limits, and was deemed by Lord Baltimore as authorizing him to go on with his settlement; and his patent authorized a form of government entirely different from anything yet tried in America.
The English colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts were founded by joint-stock companies really or ostensibly for profit. After the suppression of the London Company in 1624, the powers of government in Virginia devolved upon the king, and the government was called a crown government. Had Charles been a Spanish or French king he would have appointed an absolute governor who would have tyrannized over the people. But Charles, as an English king, admitted the colonists into a share of the government by permitting them to elect one of the branches of the law-making body. This concession effectually secured the liberties of the people, for the House of Burgesses, possessing the sole right to originate laws, became in a short time the most influential factor of the government.
Baltimore's government for Maryland, on the other hand, was to be a palatinate similar to the bishopric of Durham, in England, which took its origin when border warfare with Scotland prevailed, and the king found it necessary to invest the bishop, as ruler of the county, with exceptionally high powers for the protection of the kingdom. Durham was the solitary surviving instance in England of the county palatinate, so called because the rulers had in their counties jura regalia as fully as the king had in his palace. In Durham the bishop had the sole power of pardoning offences, appointing judges and other officers, coining money, and granting titles of honor and creating courts. In the other counties of England all writs ran in the king's name, but in Durham they ran in the bishop's. The county had no representation in the House of Commons, and were it not that the bishop was a member of the House of Lords, an officer of the church, paid taxes into the national treasury, and had to submit to appeals to the court of exchequer in London, in cases to which he was a party, he was, to all intents and purposes, a king, and his county an independent nation.
Baltimore by his charter was made even more independent of the king of England than the bishop, for neither he nor his province had any taxes to pay into the British treasury, and he held his territory in free and common socage by the delivery of two Indian arrows yearly at the palace of Windsor and a promise of the fifth part of all gold and silver mined. In legislation the bishop had decidedly the advantage, for his power to make law was practically uncontrolled, while the proprietor of Maryland could only legislate "with the advice, assent, and approbation of the freemen or the greater part of them or their representatives."9
One cardinal feature of Lord Baltimore's colony found no expression either in the government of Durham or in his own charter. On their liberality in the question of religion the fame of both George and Cecilius Calvert most securely rests. While neither realized the sacredness of the principle of religious freedom, there is no doubt that both father and son possessed a liberality of feeling which placed them ahead of their age. Had policy been solely their motive, they would never have identified themselves with a persecuted and powerless sect in England. In the charter of Maryland, Baltimore was given "the patronage and advowsons of all churches which, with the increasing worship and religion of Christ within the said region, hereafter shall happen to be built, together with the license and faculty of erecting and founding churches, chapels, and places of worship in convenient and suitable places within the premises, and of causing the same to be dedicated and consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of England." This clause was far from establishing religious freedom; but while it permitted Baltimore to found Anglican churches, it did not compel him to do so or prohibit him from permitting the foundation of churches of a different stamp.
About the middle of October, 1633, Baltimore's two ships got under way for America—the Ark, of three hundred tons, and the Dove, of sixty tons. The emigrants consisted of twenty gentlemen and about three hundred laborers; and, while most of the latter were Protestants, the governor, Leonard Calvert, brother of Lord Baltimore, was a Catholic, as were Thomas Cornwallis and Gabriel Harvey, the two councillors associated with him in the government, and the other persons of influence on board. Among the latter were two Jesuit priests, to one of whom, Father Andrew White, we owe a charming account of the voyage. Baltimore, in his written instructions to his brother, manifested his policy of toleration, by directing him to allow no offence to be given to any Protestant on board, and to cause Roman Catholics to be silent "upon all occasions of discourse concerning matters of religion."10
The expedition did not get away from England without trouble. The attempt to divide the territory of Virginia was not popular, and Catholics were looked upon as dangerous persons. The effort of the emigrants to sail without subscribing the necessary oaths caused the ships to be brought back by Admiral Pennington.11 It was not until November 22, 1633, that they got off, and the ships took the old route to Virginia—by way of the West Indies.
February 27, 1634, they reached Point Comfort, where the king's letter addressed to Sir John Harvey insured them a kind reception. Here they learned that the Indians of the Potomac were excited over a rumor that they were Spaniards coming to subdue the country. After a stay of eight or nine days for fresh provisions the emigrants set sail up Chesapeake Bay and soon entered the Potomac River, "in comparison with which the Thames seemed a rivulet." At its mouth they saw natives on shore in arms, and at night their watch-fires blazed throughout the country.
March 25 the settlers landed on St. Clement's Island and erected a cross. Then leaving the Ark with most of the passengers, Governor Calvert, with the Dove, and a pinnace bought at Point Comfort, explored the river and made friends with the Indians. He found that they all acknowledged the sovereignty of the "emperor of Piscataqua," who, relieved of his apprehensions, gave them permission to settle in the country. The final choice of a seating-place was due to Captain Henry Fleet, a well-known member of the Virginia colony, who guided them up St. George's River, about nine miles from its juncture with the Potomac; and there, on its north bank, March 27, 1634, Leonard Calvert laid out the city of St. Mary's.12
Though we have little record of the early social and economic conditions of the settlers, the colony appears to have been remarkably free from the sufferings and calamities that befell the Virginians. This exemption was probably due to the following causes: there was no common stock, but the property was held in severalty; there was a proper proportion of gentlemen and laborers, few of one class and many of the other; Virginia was near at hand and provisions and cattle could be easily secured; and they had immediate use of Indian-cleared fields, because when they arrived at St. Mary's, the Yaocomocos, harassed by the Susquehannas, were on the point of removing across the Potomac to Virginia, and were glad to sell what they had ceased to value. It seems, too, that Maryland was healthier than Virginia.
Hence, the very first year they had an excellent crop of corn, and sent a ship-load to New England to exchange for salt fish and other provisions.13 Imitating the example of the Virginians, they began immediately to plant tobacco, which, as in Virginia, became the currency and leading product. Its cultivation caused the importation of a great number of servants, "divers of very good rank and quality,"14 who, after a service of four or five years, became freemen. In the assembly of 1638 several of the servants in the first emigration took their seats as burgesses. As the demand for houses and casks for tobacco was great, a good many carpenters and coopers came out at their own expense and received shares of land by way of encouragement.
A state of society developed similar in many respects to that in Virginia. Baltimore, accustomed to the type of life in England, expected the settlements in Maryland to grow into towns and cities; and, under this impression, in January, 1638, he erected the population on the south side of St. George's River into a "hundred," and afterwards created other hundreds in other parts of the colony. But the wealth of watercourses and the cultivation of tobacco caused the population to scatter, and made society from the first distinctly agricultural and rural. St. Mary's and St. George's Hundred, in Maryland, shared the fate of Jamestown and Bermuda Hundred, in Virginia, and no stimulus of legislation could make them grow.
The application of the powers of the palatinate intensified these conditions by creating an agricultural and landed aristocracy. There was a council like that in Durham, whose members, appointed by the lord proprietor, held all the great offices of state.
Outside of the council the most important officer was the sheriff, who, like the sheriff of Durham, executed the commands of the governor and the courts, of which there were (in addition to the council) the county court and the manorial courts, answering respectively to the court of quarter-sessions and the courts baron and leet in Durham. As for the manorial courts, feudal relicts transplanted to America, they sprang from Lord Baltimore's attempt to build up an aristocracy like that which attended upon the bishop in his palace in Durham. In his "Conditions for Plantations," August 8, 1636, after providing liberally for all who brought emigrants to the colony, he directed that every one thousand acres or greater quantity so given to any adventurer "should be erected into a manor with a court-baron and court-leet to be from time to time held within every such manor respectively."
There were many grants of one thousand acres or more, and Maryland "lords of the manor" became quite common. These "lords" were the official heads of numerous tenants and leaseholders who were settled on their large estates. Yet the manor, as a free-governing community, was a stronghold of liberty. At the courts baron and leet the tenants elected the minor officers, tried offences, and made by-laws for their own government. Later, when negroes substituted white laborers, these feudal manors changed to plantations worked by slaves instead of free tenants.15
Even great office-holders and a landed aristocracy were insufficient to sustain the regal dignity to which Lord Baltimore aspired. Apparently, his right of initiating legislation and dictating the make-up of the assembly ought to have been sufficient. But political and social equality sprang from the very conditions of life in the New World; and despite the veneering of royalty, Maryland came soon to be a government of the people. The struggle began in the assembly which met in February, 1635, but not much is known of the proceedings of this assembly beyond the fact that it assumed the initiative and drew up a code to which Lord Baltimore refused his assent.
Of subsequent assemblies the record is copious enough. Lord Baltimore had the right under his charter to summon "all the freemen, or the greater part of them, or their representatives," and thus for a long time there was a curious jumble of anomalies, which rendered the assembly peculiarly sensitive to governmental influence. The second assembly met at St. Mary's, January 25, 1638, and consisted of the governor and council, freemen specially summoned, freemen present of their own volition, and proxies.16 Governor Calvert submitted a code of laws sent from Lord Baltimore, and it was rejected by a vote of thirty-seven to fourteen; but twelve of the minority votes were in two hands, the governor and Secretary Lewger, an illustration of the danger of the proxy system.
Not long after, in a letter August 21, 1638, the proprietor yielded by authorizing Leonard in the future to consent to laws enacted by the freemen, which assent should temporarily make them valid until his own confirmation or rejection should be received. To the next assembly, held February 25, 1639, Leonard Calvert, instead of summoning all the freemen, issued writs to different hundreds for the election of representatives.
Among the laws which they enacted was one limiting seats in the assembly to councillors, persons specially summoned by the proprietor's writ, and burgesses elected by the people of the different hundreds. This law controlled the make-up of the next four assemblies (October, 1640, August, 1641, March and July, 1642). Nevertheless, in September, 1642, Baltimore reverted to the old practice.
In 1649 Baltimore made another and last attempt for his initiative. He sent over a learned and complicated code of sixteen laws which he asked the assembly to adopt; but they rejected his work and sent him a code of their own, begging him in their letter not to send them any more such "bodies of laws, which served to little end than to fill our heads with jealousies and suspicions of that which we verily understand not." The next year, 1650, a constitutional system was perfected not very different from the plan adopted in the mother-country and Virginia. The assembly was divided into two chambers, the lower consisting exclusively of burgesses representing the different hundreds, and the upper of the councillors and those specially summoned by the governor.17
1
(return)
[ Brown,
Genesis of the United States, II., 841.]
2
(return)
[
Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, pp. 83, 93, 100.]
3
(return)
[
Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 104;
Md. Archives, III., 17.]
4
(return)
[
Md. Archives, III., 19.]
5
(return)
[ Heath's grant, in
Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1674, p. 70.]
6
(return)
[ Neill,
Founders of Maryland, 46, 47.]
7
(return)
[ Neill,
Terra Mariæ, 53; Ogilby,
America, 183.]
8
(return)
[
Md. Archives, III., 21.]
9
(return)
[ Fiske,
Old Virginia and Her Neighbors; Bassett,
Constitutional Beginnings of North Carolina; Lapsley,
County Palatinate of Durham.]
10
(return)
[
Calvert Papers
(Md. Hist. Soc.,
Fund Publications, No. 28), p. 132.]
11
(return)
[
Md. Archives, III., 23.]
12
(return)
[ White,
Relation
(Force,
Tracts, IV., No. xii.); letter of Leonard Calvert,
Calvert Papers
(Md. Hist. Soc.,
Fund Publications, No. 35), pp. 32-35; Baltimore,
Relation
(London, 1635).]
13
(return)
[ Winthrop,
New England, I., 166.]
14
(return)
[ Neill,
Founders of Maryland, 80.]
15
(return)
[ Johnson,
Old Maryland Manors (Johns Hopkins University Studies, I., No. iii.).]
16
(return)
[
Md. Archives, I., 1-24.]
17
(return)
[
Md. Archives, I., 32, 74, 243, 272.]
The delay in the constitutional adjustment of Maryland, while mainly attributable to the proprietors, was partially due to the prolonged struggle with Virginia, which for years absorbed nearly all the energies of the infant community. The decision of the Commissioners for Foreign Plantations in July, 1633, disallowing the Virginia claim to unoccupied lands, was construed by the Virginians to mean that the king at any rate intended to respect actual possession. Now, prior to the Maryland charter, colonization in Virginia was stretching northward. In 1630, Chiskiack, on the York River, was settled; and in August, 1631, Claiborne planted a hundred men on Kent Island, one hundred and fifty miles from Jamestown.1
Though established under a license from the king for trade, Kent Island had all the appearance of a permanent settlement. Its inhabitants were never at any time as badly off as the settlers in the early days at Jamestown and Plymouth, and the island itself was stocked with cattle and had orchards and gardens, fields of tobacco, windmills for grinding corn, and women resident upon it. Had it, however, been only a trading-post, the extension over it of the laws of Virginia made the settlement a legal occupation. And we are told of Kent that warrants from Jamestown were directed there. "One man was brought down and tried in Virginia for felony, and many were arrested for debt and returned to appeare at James City."2 In February, 1632, Kent Island and Chiskiack were represented at Jamestown by a common delegate, Captain Nicholas Martian.3 The political existence of the whole Virginia colony, and its right to take up and settle lands, the king expressly recognized.
Accordingly, when Leonard Calvert, on his arrival at Point Comfort in February, 1634, called upon Claiborne to recognize Baltimore's paramount sovereignty over Kent Island, because of its lying within the limits of his charter, the council of Virginia, at the request of Claiborne, considered the claim, and declared that the colony had as much right to Kent Island as to "any other part of the country given by his majesty's patent" in 1609.4 After this, acquiescence in Baltimore's wishes would have been treason, and Claiborne declined to acknowledge Lord Baltimore's authority in Kent Island, and continued to trade in the bay as freely as formerly.
Calvert's instructions5 had been, in case of such a refusal, not to molest Claiborne for at least a year. But Captain Fleet, Claiborne's rival in the fur trade, started a story that Claiborne was the originator of the rumor which so greatly alarmed the Indians at the time of the arrival of the emigrants at St. Mary's. Though Claiborne promptly repelled the calumny, Baltimore, in September, 1634, sent an order to his brother Leonard to seize Kent Island, arrest Claiborne, and hold him prisoner.6 As this mandate was contrary to the order in July, 1633, of the lords commissioners, which enjoined the parties to preserve "good correspondence one with another," Claiborne's partners petitioned the king against it.
Thereupon the king, by an order7 dated October 8, 1634, peremptorily warned Lord Baltimore, or his agents, "not to interrupt the people of Kent Island in their fur trade or plantation." Nevertheless, April 5, 1635, Thomas Cornwallis, one of the Maryland councillors, confiscated a pinnace of Claiborne's for illegal trading, and this act brought on a miniature war in which several persons on both sides were killed.8 Great excitement prevailed in both colonies, and in Virginia the people arrested Harvey, their governor, who upheld Cornwallis's conduct, and shipped him off to England; while two of the councillors were sent to Maryland to protest against the violent proceedings affecting Claiborne.9
These measures induced a truce, and for nearly three years there were no further hostilities in the bay. Claiborne brought his case before the king, who referred it to the Lords Commissioners for Plantations; then, as his partners feared to take further risk, he carried on the trade in the bay almost solely with his own servants and resources. In December, 1636, these partners, becoming dissatisfied at their loss of profit, made the capital mistake of sending, as their agent to Kent Island, George Evelin, who pretended at first to be an ardent supporter of Claiborne, but presently, under a power of attorney, claimed control over all the partnership stock.
Claiborne, naturally indignant and not suspecting any danger, sailed for England in May, 1637, to settle accounts with his partners, having just previously established another settlement on Palmer's Island at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, believed by him to be north of the Maryland patent. After he was gone, Evelin tried to persuade the inhabitants to disown Claiborne and submit to Lord Baltimore; and when they declined he urged Governor Calvert to attempt the reduction of the island by force. After some hesitation the latter consented, and while the assembly was sitting at St. Mary's, in February, 1638, Calvert made a landing at night with thirty men, and, taking the inhabitants by surprise, succeeded in reducing the island to submission.10
Calvert's after-conduct reflects little credit upon his reputation for leniency. In March, 1638, he caused Claiborne to be attainted by the assembly as a rebel and his property confiscated, and Thomas Smith, who commanded one of Claiborne's pinnaces in the battles three years before, was tried and hanged for murder and piracy.11 In England, in the mean time, Claiborne and Baltimore were contending zealously for the favor of the king. Both had powerful interests behind them, but Baltimore's were the stronger. At last the Commissioners for Foreign Plantations rendered a report (April 4, 1638), giving Kent Island and the right of trade in the bay wholly to Lord Baltimore, leaving all personal wrongs to be redressed by the courts.
The question of title at least seemed settled, and in October, 1638, Sir John Harvey, now restored as governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation recognizing the validity of the decision. Claiborne submitted, and, being left to "the course of the law," empowered George Scovell to recover, if possible, some of the confiscated property in Maryland; but Scovell was told that the law-courts of Maryland were closed against such a rebel as Claiborne.12 The justice of the English decision depends on the impartiality of the board which made it, and of any board with Bishop Laud at the head only partisanship could be expected.
While these turbulent proceedings were going on, the Jesuit priests introduced into the colony by Lord Baltimore were performing a work of peace and love. They visited the Indian tribes and made many Christian converts. Tayac, chief of the Piscataquas, received baptism, and his example was followed by the chiefs and inhabitants of Port Tobacco. The main trouble came from the Nanticokes on the eastern shore, and the fierce Susquehannas to the north of the settlements, and at different times armed expeditions were sent out against them; but there was nothing like a war.
For sixteen years the only clergy in the colony were priests, who were so zealous in their propaganda that nearly all the Protestants who came in 1638 were converted to Catholicism and many later conversions were made.13 Nevertheless, the Catholic governor and council acted up to the spirit of the instructions given by Baltimore to his brother on the sailing of the first emigrants from the port of London, and would permit no language tending to insult or breach of peace. Not long after the arrival at St. Mary's a proclamation to this end was issued, of which only two violations appear in the records; in both cases the offenders were Roman Catholics, and they were arrested and promptly punished.14
Baltimore would not even exempt the Jesuit priests in Maryland from the ordinary laws as to lands and taxes, and by the "Conditions of Plantations," published in 1648, he prohibited any society, temporal or spiritual, from taking up land.15 In 1643 his liberality carried him so far as to induce him to extend, through Major Edward Gibbons, an invitation to the Puritans of Massachusetts to emigrate to Maryland, with a full assurance of "free liberty of religion"; but Winthrop grimly writes, "None of our people had temptation that way."16
In the year of this invitation the possibility of a new shuffle of the political cards occurred through the breaking out of the war so long brewing in England between the king and Parliament. The struggle of party made itself strongly felt in Maryland, where, among the Protestants, sympathy with Parliament was supplemented by hatred of Catholics. In 1643, Governor Leonard Calvert repaired to England, where he received letters of marque from the king at Oxford commissioning him to seize ships belonging to Parliament. Accordingly, when, three months later, in January, 1644, Captain Richard Ingle arrived in his ship at St. Mary's and uttered some blatant words against the king, he was arrested by Acting Governor Brent, for treason. The charges were dismissed by the grand jury as unfounded, but Brent treated Ingle harshly, and fined and exiled Thomas Cornwallis for assisting the captain in escaping.17
In September, 1644, when Calvert returned to Maryland, there were strong symptoms of revolt, which came to a head when Ingle came back to St. Mary's with a commission from Parliament in February, 1645. Chaotic times ensued, during which Catholics were made victims of the cruel prejudices of the Protestants. The two Jesuit priests, Father Andrew White and Father Philip Fisher, were arrested, loaded with irons,18 and sent prisoners into England, while Leonard Calvert himself was driven from Maryland into Virginia.19
During these tumults so many persons went over from Virginia to Maryland that the Virginia assembly sent Captain Edward Hill and Captain Thomas Willoughby to compel the return of the absentees,20 with curious result. As the province was without a governor, some of the council of Maryland issued, in the name of the refugee Calvert, a commission to Hill to act as governor of Maryland. The revolutionists flattered themselves that a stable government under a Protestant governor was now at hand. But the unexpected came to pass, when, in December, 1646, Governor Calvert suddenly appeared with a strong body of soldiers furnished by Sir William Berkeley and re-established his authority by capturing both Hill and the Protestant assembly then sitting at St. Mary's.
These two years of civil war in Maryland are called the "plundering time." Claiborne again appears, though there is no evidence that he had any part in Ingle's spoliations.21 He did visit Kent Island about Christmas, 1645, and put Captain Brent, to whom Governor Calvert had assigned his house and property, in a terrible fright. One year later he visited the island a second time, when he offered to aid the Kent Islanders in marching upon St. Mary's with a view of reinstating Hill. When the men of Kent declined to take the risk, Claiborne returned to Virginia, and Kent Island fell once more under the government of Lord Baltimore.22 On this visit Claiborne, instead of posing as a friend of the Parliament, showed a commission and letter from the king, by whom he appears to have stood till the king's death in 1649. Charles I., in his turn, who deposed Lord Baltimore as a "notorious parliamentarian," appointed Claiborne, in 1642, treasurer of Virginia;23 and Charles II. included his name among the list of councillors in the commission issued by Sir William Berkeley in 1650.24
While Maryland was thus convulsed with civil war an ordinance settling the Maryland government in Protestant hands passed the House of Lords. Before the Commons could concur, Lord Baltimore appeared and asked for time to inquire into the charges. This was after the battle of Marston Moor, and perhaps marks the moment when Lord Baltimore, conceiving the king's cause desperate, began to trim his sails to the parliamentary side. His request was granted, and Parliament, diverted from immediate action, left Baltimore's authority unaffected for several years.25
In this interval Baltimore busied himself in reorganizing his government on a Protestant basis. Leonard Calvert died in June, 1647, not long after his coup d'état at St. Mary's, and upon his deathbed he appointed Thomas Greene, a Catholic and royalist, as his successor. Lord Baltimore removed him and appointed in his stead a Protestant, Captain William Stone, of Northampton County, Virginia, giving him a Protestant secretary and a Protestant majority of councillors. Yet Baltimore took care not to surrender the cardinal principle of his government. Before Stone and his chief officers were allowed to take office they were required to swear not to "molest any person in the colony professing to believe in Jesus Christ for or in respect of his or her religion, and in particular no Roman Catholic."26
The famous Toleration Act of 1649 was passed at the first assembly succeeding Stone's appointment. It was very probably in great part a copy of a bill in the code of sixteen laws which Baltimore sent over at this time, and it very nearly repeated the provisions of the oath required of Governor Stone. While the terms of the act did not place the right on that broad plane of universal principle stated later in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, it proclaimed toleration, even if it was a toleration of a very limited nature.27
Stone had recommended himself to Calvert by promising to lead five hundred persons of British or Irish descent28 into Maryland; and this engagement he was soon able to perform through the Puritans, whose story of persecution in Virginia has been already related. The new emigrants called the country where they settled "Providence," from feelings akin to those which led Roger Williams to give that comforting name to his settlement on Narragansett Bay. They were to prove a thorn in Baltimore's flesh, but for the moment they seemed tolerably submissive. In January, 1650, soon after their arrival, Governor Stone called an assembly to meet at St. Mary's in April, and to this assembly the colony at "Providence" sent two representatives, one of whom was made speaker.
Apprehension of William Claiborne was still felt, and the assembly, though dominated by the new-comers, declared their readiness to resist any attempts of his to seize Kent Island.29 Only in one particular at this time did they oppose Lord Baltimore's policy. The oath of fidelity required them to acknowledge Lord Baltimore as "absolute lord" and his jurisdiction as "royal jurisdiction."30 The Puritans, having scruples about these words, struck them out and inserted a proviso that the oath "be not in any wise understood to infringe or prejudice liberty of conscience."31 About this time Charles II., although a powerless exile, issued an order deposing Baltimore from his government and appointing Sir William Davenant as his successor, for the reason that Baltimore "did visibly adhere to the rebels in England and admit all kinds of schismatics and sectaries and ill-affected persons into the plantation."32
Thus when Parliament soon after took up his case again, Lord Baltimore came full-handed with proofs of loyalty to the commonwealth. His enemies produced evidence that Charles II., in 1649, was proclaimed in Maryland, but Baltimore showed that it was done without his authority by Thomas Greene, who acted as governor a second time during a brief absence of Captain Stone from Maryland. When they accused him of being an enemy of Protestants he produced the proclamation of Charles II., deposing him from the government on account of his adherence to them. Finally, he exhibited a declaration in his behalf signed by many of the Puritan emigrants from Virginia, among whom were William Durand, their elder, and James Cox and Samuel Puddington, the two burgesses from Providence in the assembly of 1650.33
Nevertheless, Baltimore played a losing game. At heart the Puritans in England were unfriendly to him because of his religion; and, when persistent rumors reached Maryland that Baltimore's patent was doomed, some of the men of Providence appeared in England and urged that it be revoked.34 At length, October 3, 1650, Parliament passed an ordinance authorizing the Council of State to reduce to obedience Barbadoes, Antigua, Bermudas, and "Virginia," the last being a term which in England was often used to include Maryland. Baltimore struggled hard to have Maryland left out of the instructions drawn up afterwards by the Council of State; but though he was apparently successful, a descriptive phrase including his province was inserted, for the commissioners, Curtis, Claiborne, and Bennett, with an armed fleet, were instructed "to use their best endeavors to reduce all the plantations within the Bay of Chesopiack to their due obedience to the Parliament of England."35
After the commissioners had reduced Virginia, they found even less resistance in Maryland. The commissioners landed at St. Mary's, and, professing their intention to respect the "just rights" of Lord Baltimore, demanded that Stone should change the form of the writs from the name of Lord Baltimore to that of Parliament. Stone at first declined to comply, and the commissioners, March 29, 1652, put the government into the hands of a council of leading Protestants. Stone then reconsidered his action, and Claiborne and Bennett, returning to St. Mary's, restored him to the government, June 28, 1652, in conjunction with the councillors already appointed. The ascendency of Claiborne seemed complete, but beyond renewing his property claim to Kent and Palmer islands, he did not then further interfere.36
Maryland consisted at this time of four counties: St. Mary's, erected in 1634, Kent, 1642, and Charles and Anne Arundelin 1650, and contained a population perhaps of eight thousand. The settlements reached on both sides of the bay, from the Potomac to the Susquehanna. Society was distinctly democratic, for while there were favored families there was no privileged class, and the existence of African slavery and the temporary servitude of convicts and redemptioners tended to place all freemen on an equality. As there was no state church, educational opportunities in the province were small, but it was a land of plenty and hospitality, and charity in religion made the execution of the criminal law singularly mild. In spite of turmoils and dissensions, Maryland prospered and flourished. A home feeling existed, and there were many even among the recent exiles from Virginia who looked with hope to its future and spoke of it as "a country in which I desire to spend the remnant of my days, in which I covet to make my grave."37