There now enters upon the scene in Virginia a man of middle age, not
without experience in planting colonies, by name George Calvert, first
Lord Baltimore. Of Flemish ancestry, born in Yorkshire, scholar at
Oxford, traveler, clerk of the Privy Council, a Secretary of State under
James, member of the House of Commons, member of the Virginia Company,
he knew many of the ramifications of life. A man of worth and weight, he
was placed by temperament and education upon the side of the court party
and the Crown in the growing contest over rights. About the year 1625,
under what influence is not known, he had openly professed the Roman
Catholic faith--and that took courage in the seventeenth century, in
England!
Some years before, Calvert had obtained from the Crown a grant of a part
of Newfoundland, had named it Avalon, and had built great hopes upon its
settlement. But the northern winter had worked against him. He knew, for
he had resided there himself with his family in that harsh clime. "From
the middle of October to the middle of May there is a sad fare of winter
on all this land." He is writing to King Charles, and he goes on to
say "I have had strong temptations to leave all proceedings in
plantations... but my inclination carrying me naturally to these kind of
works... I am determined to commit this place to fishermen that are able
to encounter storms and hard weather, and to remove myself with some
forty persons to your Majesty's dominion of Virginia where, if your
Majesty will please to grant me a precinct of land... I shall endeavour
to the utmost of my power, to deserve it."
With his immediate following he thereupon does sail far southward. In
October, 1629, he comes in between the capes, past Point Comfort and so
up to Jamestown--to the embarrassment of that capital, as will soon be
evident.
Here in Church of England Virginia was a "popish recusant!" Here was an
old "court party" man, one of James's commissioners, a person of rank
and prestige, known, for all his recusancy, to be in favor with
the present King. Here was the Proprietary of Avalon, guessed to be
dissatisfied with his chilly holding, on the scent perhaps of balmier,
easier things!
The Assembly was in session when Lord Baltimore came to Jamestown.
All arrivers in Virginia must take the oath of supremacy. The Assembly
proposed this to the visitor who, as Roman Catholic, could not take it,
and said as much, but offered his own declaration of friendliness to
the powers that were. This was declined. Debate followed, ending with
a request from the Assembly that the visitor depart from Virginia. Some
harshness of speech ensued, but hospitality and the amenities fairly
saved the situation. One Thomas Tindall was pilloried for "giving my
lord Baltimore the lie and threatening to knock him down." Baltimore
thereupon set sail, but not, perhaps, until he had gained that knowledge
of conditions which he desired.
In England he found the King willing to make him a large grant, with no
less powers than had clothed him in Avalon. Territory should be taken
from the old Virginia; it must be of unsettled land--Indians of course
not counting. Baltimore first thought of the stretch south of the river
James between Virginia and Spanish Florida--a fair land of woods and
streams, of good harbors, and summer weather. But suddenly William
Claiborne was found to be in London, sent there by the Virginians, with
representations in his pocket. Virginia was already settled and had the
intention herself of expanding to the south.
Baltimore, the King, and the Privy Council weighed the matter. Westward,
the blue mountains closed the prospect. Was the South Sea just beyond
their sunset slopes, or was it much farther away, over unknown lands,
than the first adventurers had guessed? Either way, too rugged hardship
marked the west! East rolled the ocean. North, then? It were well to
step in before those Hollanders about the mouth of the Hudson should
cast nets to the south. Baltimore accordingly asked for a grant north of
the Potomac.
He received a huge territory, stretching over what is now Maryland,
Delaware, and a part of Pennsylvania. The Potomac, from source to mouth,
with a line across Chesapeake and the Eastern Shore to the ocean formed
his southern frontier; his northern was the fortieth parallel, from the
ocean across country to the due point above the springs of the
Potomac. Over this great expanse he became "true and absolute lord and
proprietary," holding fealty to England, but otherwise at liberty to
rule in his own domain with every power of feudal duke or prince. The
King had his allegiance, likewise a fifth part of gold or silver found
within his lands. All persons going to dwell in his palatinate were to
have "rights and liberties of Englishmen." But, this aside, he was lord
paramount. The new country received the name Terra Mariae--Maryland--for
Henrietta Maria, then Queen of England.
Here was a new land and a Lord Proprietor with kingly powers. Virginians
seated on the James promptly petitioned King Charles not to do them
wrong by so dividing their portion of the earth. But King and Privy
Council answered only that Virginia and Maryland must "assist each
other on all occasions as becometh fellow-subjects." William Claiborne,
indeed, continued with a determined voice to cry out that lands given
to Baltimore were not, as had been claimed, unsettled, seeing that he
himself had under patent a town on Kent Island and another at the mouth
of the Susquehanna.
Baltimore was a reflective man, a dreamer in the good sense of the term,
and religiously minded. At the height of seeming good fortune he could
write:
"All things, my lord, in this world pass away.... They are but lent
us till God please to call for them back again, that we may not esteem
anything our own, or set our hearts upon anything but Him alone, who
only remains forever." Like his King, Baltimore could carry far his
prerogative and privilege, maintaining the while not a few degrees of
inner freedom. Like all men, here he was bound, and here he was free.
Baltimore's desire was for "enlarging his Majesty's Empire," and at
the same time to provide in Maryland a refuge for his fellow Catholics.
These were now in England so disabled and limited that their status
might fairly be called that of a persecuted people. The mounting
Puritanism promised no improvement. The King himself had no fierce
antagonism to the old religion, but it was beginning to be seen that
Charles and Charles's realm were two different things. A haven should be
provided before the storm blackened further. Baltimore thus saw put into
his hands a high and holy opportunity, and made no doubt that it was
God-given. His charter, indeed, seemed to contemplate an established
church, for it gave to Baltimore the patronage of all churches and
chapels which were to be "consecrated according to the ecclesiastical
laws of our kingdom of England"; nevertheless, no interpretation of the
charter was to be made prejudicial to "God's holy and true Christian
religion." What was Christian and what was prejudicial was, fortunately
for him, left undefined. No obstacles were placed before a Catholic
emigration.
Baltimore had this idea and perhaps a still wider one: a land--Mary's
land--where all Christians might foregather, brothers and sisters in
one home! Religious tolerance--practical separation of Church and
State--that was a broad idea for his age, a generous idea for a Roman
Catholic of a time not so far removed from the mediaeval. True, wherever
he went and whatever might be his own thought and feeling, he would
still have for overlord a Protestant sovereign, and the words of his
charter forbade him to make laws repugnant to the laws of England. But
Maryland was distant, and wise management might do much. Catholics,
Anglicans, Puritans, Dissidents, and Nonconformists of almost any
physiognomy, might come and be at home, unpunished for variations in
belief.
Only the personal friendship of England's King and the tact and suave
sagacity of the Proprietary himself could have procured the signing of
this charter, since it was known--as it was to all who cared to busy
themselves with the matter--that here was a Catholic meaning to take
other Catholics, together with other scarcely less abominable sectaries,
out of the reach of Recusancy Acts and religious pains and penalties, to
set them free in England-in-America; and, raising there a state on the
novel basis of free religion, perhaps to convert the heathen to all
manner of errors, and embark on mischiefs far too large for definition.
Taking things as they were in the world, remembering acts of the
Catholic Church in the not distant past, the ill-disposed might find
some color for the agitation which presently did arise. Baltimore was
known to be in correspondence with English Jesuits, and it soon appeared
that Jesuit priests were to accompany the first colonists. At that time
the Society of Jesus loomed large both politically and educationally.
Many may have thought that there threatened a Rome in America. But,
however that may have been, there was small chance for any successful
opposition to the charter, since Parliament had been dissolved by the
King, not to be summoned again for eleven years. The Privy Council was
subservient, and, as the Sovereign was his friend, Baltimore saw the
signing of the charter assured and began to gather together his first
colonists. Then, somewhat suddenly, in April, 1632, he sickened, and
died at the age of fifty-three.
His son, Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, took up his father's
work. This young man, likewise able and sagacious, and at every step in
his father's confidence, could and did proceed even in detail according
to what had been planned. All his father's rights had descended to
him; in Maryland he was Proprietary with as ample power as ever a Count
Palatine had enjoyed. He took up the advantage and the burden.
The father's idea had been to go with his colonists to Maryland, and
this it seems that the son also meant to do. But now, in London, there
deepened a clamor against such Catholic enterprise. Once he were away,
lips would be at the King's ear. And with England so restless, in a
turmoil of new thought, it might even arise that King and Privy Council
would find trouble in acting after their will, good though that might
be. The second Baltimore therefore remained in England to safeguard his
charter and his interests.
The family of Baltimore was an able one. Cecil Calvert had two brothers,
Leonard and George, and these would go to Maryland in his place. Leonard
he made Governor and Lieutenant-general, and appointed him councilor.
Ships were made ready--the Ark of three hundred tons and the Dove of
fifty. The colonists went aboard at Gravesend, where these ships rode at
anchor. Of the company a great number were Protestants, willing to take
land, if their condition were bettered so, with Catholics. Difficulties
of many kinds kept them all long at the mouth of the Thames, but at
last, late in November, 1633, the Ark and the Dove set sail. Touching at
the Isle of Wight, they took aboard two Jesuit priests, Father White and
Father Altham, and a number of other colonists. Baltimore reported that
the expedition consisted of "two of my brothers with very near twenty
other gentlemen of very good fashion, and three hundred labouring men
well provided in all things."
These ships, with the first Marylanders, went by the old West Indies sea
route. We find them resting at Barbados; then they swung to the north
and, in February, 1634, came to Point Comfort in Virginia. Here they
took supplies, being treated by Sir John Harvey (who had received
a letter from the King) with "courtesy and humanity." Without long
tarrying, for they were sick now for land of their own, they sailed on
up the great bay, the Chesapeake.
Soon they reached the mouth of the Potomac--a river much greater than
any of them, save shipmasters and mariners, had ever seen--and into this
turned the Ark and the Dove. After a few leagues of sailing up the wide
stream, they came upon an islet covered with trees, leafless, for spring
had hardly broken. The ships dropped anchor; the boats were lowered; the
people went ashore. Here the Calverts claimed Maryland "for our Savior
and for our Sovereign Lord the King of England," and here they heard
Mass. St. Clement's they called the island.
But it was too small for a home. The Ark was left at anchor, while
Leonard Calvert went exploring with the Dove. Up the Potomac some
distance he went, but at the last he wisely determined to choose for
their first town a site nearer the sea. The Dove turned and came back
to the Ark, and both sailed on down the stream from St. Clement's Isle.
Before long they came to the mouth of a tributary stream flowing in
from the north. The Dove, going forth again, entered this river, which
presently the party named the River St. George. Soon they came to a high
bank with trees tinged with the foliage of advancing spring. Here upon
this bank the English found an Indian village and a small Algonquin
group, in the course of extinction by their formidable Iroquois
neighbors, the giant Susquehannocks. The white men landed, bearing a
store of hatchets, gewgaws, and colored cloth. The first Lord Baltimore,
having had opportunity enough for observing savages, had probably handed
on to his sagacious sons his conclusions as to ways of dealing with the
natives of the forest. And the undeniable logic of events was at last
teaching the English how to colonize. Englishmen on Roanoke Island,
Englishmen on the banks of the James, Englishmen in that first New
England colony, had borne the weight of early inexperience and all the
catalogue of woes that follow ignorance. All these early colonists alike
had been quickly entangled in strife with the people whom they found in
the land.
First they fell on their knees,
And then on the Aborigines.
But by now much water had passed the mill. The thinking kind, the wiser
sort, might perceive more things than one, and among these the fact that
savages had a sense of justice and would even fight against injustice,
real or fancied.
The Calverts, through their interpreter, conferred with the inhabitants
of this Indian village. Would they sell lands where the white men might
peaceably settle, under their given word to deal in friendly wise with
the red men? Many hatchets and axes and much cloth would be given in
return.
To a sylvan people store of hatchets and axes had a value beyond many
fields of the boundless earth. The Dove appeared before them, too, at
the psychological moment. They had just discussed removing, bag and
baggage, from the proximity of the Iroquois. In the end, these Indians
sold to the English their village huts, their cleared and planted
fields, and miles of surrounding forest. Moreover they stayed long
enough in friendship with the newcomers to teach them many things of
value. Then they departed, leaving with the English a clear title to as
much land as they could handle, at least for some time to come. Later,
with other Indians, as with these, the Calverts pursued a conciliatory
policy. They were aided by the fact that the Susquehannocks to the
north, who might have given trouble, were involved in war with yet more
northerly tribes, and could pay scant attention to the incoming white
men. But even so, the Calverts proved, as William Penn proved later,
that men may live at peace with men, honestly and honorably, even though
hue of skin and plane of development differ.
Now the Ark joins the Dove in the River St. George. The pieces of
ordnance are fired; the colonists disembark; and on the 27th of March,
1634, the Indian village, now English, becomes St. Mary's.
On the whole how advantageously are they placed! There is peace with
the Indians. Huts, lodges, are already built, fields already cleared
or planted. The site is high and healthful. They have at first few
dissensions among themselves. Nor are they entirely alone or isolated
in the New World. There is a New England to the north of them and a
Virginia to the south. From the one they get in the autumn salted fish,
from the other store of swine and cattle. Famine and pestilence are far
from them. They build a "fort" and perhaps a stockade, but there are
none of the stealthy deaths given by arrow and tomahawk in the north,
nor are there any of the Spanish alarms that terrified the south. From
the first they have with them women and children. They know that their
settlement is "home." Soon other ships and colonists follow the Ark and
the Dove to St. Mary's, and the history of this middle colony is well
begun.
In Virginia, meantime, there was jealousy enough of the new colony,
taking as it did territory held to be Virginian and renaming it, not
for the old, independent, Protestant, virgin queen, but for a French,
Catholic, queen consort--even settling it with believers in the Mass
and bringing in Jesuits! It was, says a Jamestown settler, "accounted a
crime almost as heinous as treason to favour, nay to speak well of that
colony." Beside the Virginian folk as a whole, one man, in particular,
William Claiborne, nursed an individual grievance. He had it from
Governor Calvert that he might dwell on in Kent Island, trading from
there, but only under license from the Lord Proprietor and as an
inhabitant of Maryland, not of Virginia. Claiborne, with the Assembly
at Jamestown secretly on his side, resisted this interference with his
rights, and, as he continued to trade with a high hand, he soon fell
under suspicion of stirring up the Indians against the Marylanders.
At the time, this quarrel rang loud through Maryland and Virginia, and
even echoed across the Atlantic. Leonard Calvert had a trading-boat of
Claiborne's seized in the Patuxent River. Thereupon Claiborne's men,
with the shallop Cockatrice, in retaliation attacked Maryland pinnaces
and lost both their lives and their boat. For several years Maryland and
Kent Island continued intermittently to make petty war on each other.
At last, in 1638, Calvert took the island by main force and hanged
for piracy a captain of Claiborne's. The Maryland Assembly brought the
trader under a Bill of Attainder; and a little later, in England, the
Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations formally awarded Kent Island
to the Lord Proprietor. Thus defeated, Claiborne, nursing his wrath,
moved down the bay to Virginia.