A FRAGMENT OF HISTORY.
Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, the son of Cecilius, was, according
to the testimony of all our annalists, a worthy gentleman and an
upright ruler. He was governor of Maryland, by the appointment of his
father, from 1662 to 1675, and after that became the Lord Proprietary
by inheritance, and administered the public affairs in person. His
prudence and judgment won him the esteem of the best portion of his
people, and the Province prospered in his hands.
All our histories tell of the troubles that beset the closing years
of his residence in Maryland. They arose partly out of his religion,
and in part out of the jealousy of the crown concerning the
privileges of his charter.
He was a Roman Catholic; but, like his father, liberal and tolerant
in opinion, and free from sectarian bias in the administration of his
government. Apart from the influence of his father's example, the
training of his education, his real attachment to the interests of
the Province, and his own natural inclination,--all of which pointed
out to him the duty as well as the advantage of affording the utmost
security to the freedom of religious opinion,--the conditions under
which he held his proprietary rights rendered a departure from this
policy the most improbable accusation that could be made against him.
The public mind of England at that period was fevered to a state of
madness by the domestic quarrel that raged within the kingdom against
the Catholics. The people were distracted with constant alarms of
Popish plots for the overthrow of the government. The King, a
heartless profligate, absorbed in frivolous pleasures, scarcely
entertained any grave question of state affairs that had not some
connection with his hatreds and his fears of Catholics and
Dissenters. Then, also, the Province itself was composed, in far the
greater part, of a Protestant population,--computed by some
contemporary writers at the proportion of thirty to one,--a
population who were guarantied freedom of conscience by the Charter,
and who possessed all necessary power both legal and physical to
enforce it.
Under such circumstances as these, how is it possible to impute
designs against the old established toleration, which had marked the
history of Maryland from its first settlement to that day, to so
prudent and careful a ruler as Charles Calvert, without imputing to
him, at the same time, a folly so absurd as to belie every opinion
that has ever been uttered to his advantage?
Yet, notwithstanding these improbabilities, the accusation was made
and affected to be believed by the King and his Council; the result
of which was that a royal order was sent to the Proprietary,
commanding him to dismiss every Catholic from employment in the
Province, and to supply their places by the appointment of
Protestants.
The most plausible theory upon which I can account for this harsh
proceeding is suggested by the fact that parties in the Province took
the same complexion with those in the mother country and ran parallel
with them,--that the same excitements which agitated the minds of the
people in England were industriously fomented here, where no similar
reason for them existed, as the volunteer work of demagogues who saw
in them the means of promoting their own interest,--that, in fact,
this opposition to the Proprietary grew out of a failing in our
ancestors which has not yet been cured in their descendants, a
weakness in favor of the loaves and fishes. The party in the majority
carried the elections, and felt, of course, as all parties do who
perform such an exploit, that they had made a very gigantic sacrifice
for the good of the country and deserved to be remunerated for such
an act of heroism, and thereupon set up and asserted that venerable
doctrine which has been erroneously and somewhat vaingloriously
claimed as the conception of a modern statesman, namely,--"that to
the victors belong the spoils." I rejoice in the discovery that a
dogma so profound and so convenient has the sanction of antiquity to
commend it to the platform of the patriots of our own time.
I must in a few words notice another charge against Lord Baltimore,
which was even more serious than the first, and to which the cupidity
of the King lent a willing ear. Parliament had passed an act for
levying certain duties on the trade of the Southern Colonies, which
were very oppressive to the commerce of Maryland. These duties were
gathered by Collectors specially appointed for the occasion, who held
their commissions from the Crown, and who were stationed at the
several ports of entry of the Province. The frequent evasion of these
duties gave rise to much ill-will between the Collectors and the
people. Lord Baltimore was charged with having connived at these
evasions, and with obstructing the collection of the royal revenue.
His chief accusers were the Collectors, who, being Crown officers,
seemed naturally to array themselves against him. Although there was
really no foundation for this complaint, yet the King, who never
threw away a chance to replenish his purse, compelled the Proprietary
to pay by way of retribution a large sum into the Exchequer.
I have no need to dwell upon this subject, and have referred to it
only because it explains the relation between Lord Baltimore and
Christopher Rousby, and has therefore some connection with my story.
Rousby was an enemy to the Proprietary; and from a letter preserved
by Chalmers it appears there was no love lost between them. Lord
Baltimore writes to the Earl of Anglesey, the President of the King's
Council, in 1681,--"I have already written twice to your Lordship
about Christopher Rousby, who I desired might be removed from his
place of Collector of his Majesty's Customs,--he having been a great
knave, and a disturber of the trade and peace of the Province"; which
letter, it seems, had no effect,--as Christopher Rousby was continued
in his post. He was doubtless emboldened by the failure of this
remonstrance against him to exhibit his ill-will towards the
Proprietary in more open and more vexatious modes of annoyance.
All these embarrassments threw a heavy shadow over the latter years
of Lord Baltimore's life, and now drove him to the necessity of
making a visit to England for the purpose of personal explanation and
defence before the King. He accordingly took his departure in the
month of June, 1684, intending to return in a few months; but a tide
of misfortune that now set in upon him prevented that wish, and he
never saw Maryland again.
In about half a year after Calvert's arrival in England, King Charles
the Second was gathered to his fathers, and his brother, the Duke of
York, a worse man, a greater hypocrite, and a more crafty despot,
reigned in his stead.
James the Second was a Roman Catholic, and Calvert, on that score
alone, might have expected some sympathy and favor: he might, at
least, have expected justice. But James was heartless and selfish.
The Proprietary found nothing but cold neglect, and a contemptible
jealousy of the prerogatives and power conferred by his charter.
James himself claimed to be a proprietary on this continent by virtue
of extensive royal grants, and was directly interested with William
Penn in defeating the claims of the Baltimore family to the country
upon the Delaware; he was, therefore, in fact, the secret and
prepossessed enemy of Calvert. Instead of protection from the Crown,
Calvert found proceedings instituted in the King's Bench to annul his
charter, which, but for the abrupt termination of this short,
disgraceful reign in abdication and flight, would have been
consummated under James's own direction. The Revolution of 1688
brought up other influences more hostile still to the Proprietary;
and the Province, which was always sedulous to follow the fashions of
London, was not behindhand on this occasion, but made, also, its
revolution, in imitation of the great one. The end of all was the
utter subversion of the Charter, and a new government of Maryland
under a royal commission. How this was accomplished our historians
are not able to tell. From 1688 to 1692 is one of our dark intervals
of which I have spoken. It begins with a domestic revolution and ends
with the appointment of a Royal Governor, and that is pretty nearly
all we know about it. After this, there was no Proprietary dominion
in Maryland, until it was restored upon the accession of George the
First in 1715, when it reappears in the second Charles Calvert, a
minor, the grandson of the late Proprietary. This gentleman was the
son of Benedict Leonard Calvert, and was educated in the Protestant
faith, which his father had adopted as more consonant with the
prosperity of the family and the hopes of the Province.
Before Lord Baltimore took his departure, he made all necessary
arrangements for the administration of the government during his
absence. The chief authority he invested in his son Benedict Leonard,
to whom I referred just now,--at that time a youth of twelve or
fourteen years of age. My old record contains the commission issued
on this occasion, which is of the most stately and royal breadth of
phrase, and occupies paper enough to make a deed for the route of the
Pacific Railroad. In this document "our dearly beloved son Benedict
Leonard Calvert" is ordained and appointed to be "Lieutenant General,
Chief Captain, Chief Governor and Commander, Chief Admiral both by
sea and land, of our Province of Maryland, and of all our Islands,
Territories, and Dominions whatsoever, and of all and singular our
Castles, Forts, Fortresses, Fortifications, Munitions, Ships, and
Navies in our said Province, Islands, Territories, and Dominions
aforesaid."
I hope to be excused for the particularity of my quotation of this
young gentleman's titles, which I have given at full length only by
way of demonstration of the magnificence of our old Palatine Province
of Maryland, and to excite in the present generation a becoming pride
at having fallen heirs to such a principality; albeit Benedict
Leonard's more recent successors to these princely prerogatives may
have reason to complain of that relentless spirit of democracy which
has shorn them of so many worshipful honors. But we republicans are
philosophical, and can make sacrifices with a good grace.
As it was quite impossible for this young Lieutenant General to go
alone under such a staggering weight of dignities, the same
commission puts him in leading-strings by the appointment of nine
Deputy or Lieutenant Governors who are charged with the execution of
all his duties. The first-named of these deputies is "our dearly
beloved Cousin," Colonel George Talbot, who is associated with "our
well-beloved Counsellor," Thomas Tailler, Colonel Vincent Low,
Colonel Henry Darnall, Colonel William Digges, Colonel William
Stevens, Colonel William Burgess, Major Nicholas Sewall, and John
Darnall, Esquire. These same gentlemen, with Edward Pye and Thomas
Truman, are also commissioned to be of the Privy Council, "for and in
relation to all matters of State."
These appointments being made and other matters disposed of, Charles
Calvert took leave of his beautiful and favorite Maryland, never to
see this fair land again.