CENTRIFUGAL FORCES IN COLONY-PLANTING.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
_THE CATHOLIC MIGRATION._
I.
[Sidenote: Centrifugal forces.]
At every new stage in the history of the American settlement, we are
afresh reminded that colonies are planted by the uneasy. The
discontent that comes from poverty and financial reverse, that which
is born of political unrest, and that which has no other cause than
feverish thirst for novelty and hazardous adventure, had each a share
in impelling Englishmen to emigrate. But in the seventeenth century
religion was the dominant concern--one might almost say the dominant
passion--of the English race, and it supplied much the most efficient
motive to colonization. Not only did it propel men to America, but it
acted as a distributing force on this side of the sea, producing
secondary colonies by expelling from a new plantation the discontented
and the persecuted to make fresh breaks in the wilderness for new
settlements. Connecticut and Rhode Island were secondary plantings of
this kind. Religious differences also made twain the Chesapeake
region, the first home of the English in America, one of the two rival
colonies being intolerantly Protestant, the other a home for Catholic
refugees.
II.
[Sidenote: Character of George Calvert.]
George Calvert, the first Baron Baltimore, who projected the Maryland
colony and left it to his son to carry forward, belonged to the order
of men who are shrewd without being creative--men of sagacity as
differentiated from men of ideas. The man in whose mind there is a
ferment of original ideas has theories to promulgate or expound.
Sagacity has small necessity for speech--its very reticence gives an
advantage in the conduct of affairs. The parliamentary antagonist and
political rival who confronted Calvert was no other than our old
acquaintance Sir Edwin Sandys, of the Virginia Company. Calvert and
Sandys were alike men of rare accomplishments, and both were
interested in schemes for colonization; otherwise they were antipodal.
Sandys was a statesman of advanced ideas, creative, liberal, and
original, fitted to be the founder of representative government in the
English colonies. In that age of worn and brittle institutions it was
not deemed wholly safe to suffer so robust a thinker as Sandys to be
always at large, and it was one of Calvert's most difficult duties, as
the king's secretary and chosen intermediary, to explain to Parliament
why its leader was under restraint. Sandys, as we have already said,
was described as "right-handed to every great employment"; when
Calvert came upon the scene, he was aptly characterized as "a forward
and knowing person in matters relating to the state." The phrase
denotes, perhaps, clever adroitness within the limits of that
mediocrity which in those perilous times was a safeguard to the man
who ventured into politics. After having started well at court, Sandys
had fallen into irretrievable disfavor by his resolute advocacy of the
liberties of his countrymen. The message to the Virginia Company,
already recited, "Choose the devil, but not Sir Edwin Sandys,"
expressed the depth of the king's antipathy. But if Sandys seemed to
the king a devil, Calvert became for him a convenient angel. Notions
about human rights and the liberty of Parliament did not obstruct
Calvert's career. Not that he was a man to prove unfaithful to his
convictions, as did his bosom friend Wentworth, or to suppress liberal
opinions in order to smooth an ascending pathway, as did his great
contemporary Bacon. Calvert played a far simpler part and one less
dishonorable. It was his fortune to be a man of facile mind, naturally
reverential toward authority. The principles enunciated by his
sovereign and the measures by which those in power sought to attain
the end in view were pretty sure to seem laudable or at least
excusable to him. Such a mind can not be called scrupulous, neither is
it consciously dishonest. The quality most highly esteemed at the
court of James was fidelity, unswerving devotion to the interests of
the king and of one's friends. And this, the dominant virtue of his
time and of his class--this honor of a courtier--Calvert possessed in
a high degree; it is a standard by which he has a right to be judged.
To a French ambassador he seemed an honorable, sensible, courteous,
well-intentioned man, devoted to the interests of England, but without
consideration or influence.
[Sidenote: Calvert's rise.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
Whatever his lack of influence in councils of state, Calvert's
fidelity, useful abilities, and many accomplishments won the
friendship of James, and in that lavish reign when all the fairy
stories came true at a court which was "like a romance of knight
errantry," as the Spanish minister declared, the favor of the king was
sure to result in good fortune to the favorite. From being secretary
to Burleigh, Calvert rose to be principal Secretary of State, was
knighted, and at last ennobled. Grants of estates in Ireland and of
great unexplored tracts of territory in the wilderness of America,
pensions, sinecure offices, grants of money out of increased customs
fees, and presents from those who had ends to serve at court, were the
means by which a successful courtier bettered his estate, and by some
or all of these Secretary Calvert thrived. That he did thrive is
proved by the great sum he was able to lose in his futile attempt to
plant a colony in Newfoundland. It was believed that he had accepted a
share of the money dispensed lavishly in presents and pensions to
English courtiers by Spain, but this Calvert denied, and one can
believe that a man of his fidelity to king and country would be able
to resist a temptation to which others succumbed.
III.
[Sidenote: The colony of Avalon.]
[Sidenote: Cal S. P. America, pp. 25, 26, March 16, 1620.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
Calvert was very early interested in colonization. He was a member of
the Virginia Company in 1609, and later one of the councilors for New
England. In 1620 he was one of a commission appointed to settle the
affairs of a Scotch company for colonizing Newfoundland, and in the
next year he dispatched his first colony to the southeastern peninsula
of that island which he had bought from Sir William Vaughan. In this
latter year (1621) he secured a grant of the whole vast island, but in
1622 he accepted a re-grant of the peninsula alone, and this became
his first proprietary colony. Captain Whitbourne's pamphlet on
Newfoundland was just then circulating gratuitously by the aid of
collections made in the churches with the sanction of royal authority.
It described a Newfoundland of Edenic fruitfulness. Even cool-headed
statesmen like Calvert appear to have been captivated by the stories
of this veteran seaman and weather-beaten romancer. Calvert called his
new province Avalon. The name signifies the land of apples--that is,
the fruitful country. In old British mythology it was the paradise of
the blessed, the island in the western seas to which King Arthur was
translated in the famous legend. This name of promise suited the
situation of the new island state, and fitted well the enthusiastic
tales of Whitbourne and the groundless hopes of Calvert. The bleak
Newfoundland coast had already blossomed with fanciful names; there
was the Bay of Plesaunce and the Bay of Flowers, Robin Hood's Bay and
the River of Bonaventure; there was the Harbor of Formosa and the
Harbor of Heartsease. Avalon, the earthly paradise, was but the
complement of these.
IV.
[Sidenote: The charter of Avalon.]
[Sidenote: Note 4.]
[Sidenote: Note 5.]
Sir George Calvert probably drafted with his own hand--the hand of an
expert and accomplished man of the court--the charter of April 7,
1623, that conferred on him an authority little short of sovereignty
over his new territory. This masterpiece of dexterous charter-making
afforded a model for other proprietary charters, and Calvert himself
bettered it but little in the Maryland charter of a later date. The
ambiguous passages in the Maryland charter, which have been accounted
evidence of a design to make way for the toleration or even the
possible dominance of Roman Catholicism, appear already in the charter
of Avalon. Was the colony of 1621 or its charter of 1623 intended to
supply a refuge, if one should be needed, for Englishmen of the
Catholic faith? The question is not easily answered. The primary
design of the Avalon colony was, no doubt, to better the fortunes of
Sir George Calvert and to lift him and his successors into the
authority and dignity of counts-palatine in the New World. But there
can hardly be a doubt that, before the charter of 1623 was granted,
Secretary Calvert was already a Catholic, secretly or latently, if not
overtly. His charter of Avalon naturally left open a door for the
toleration of the faith to which he was already attached, or toward
which he was tending.
V.
[Sidenote: Calvert's conversion.]
Calvert's conversion was almost inevitable. He favored the project for
the Spanish match, and he was, like some other courtiers, under the
influence of Gondomar, a consummate master of intrigue. He was bound
by ties of friendship, and later by the marriage of his son, to Lord
Arundel of Wardour, a Catholic, and the constitution of his mind and
all the habits of a lifetime made him a lover of authority in church
and state. Under favoring circumstances such a man becomes a Roman
Catholic by gravitation and natural affinity.
[Sidenote: Petition in Rushworth, Part I, i, 141. Compare Neal, Part
II, c. ii.]
There was a Catholic revival in England at this time, especially among
the courtiers and upper classes. In 1623 there was a large influx to
England of priests and Jesuits. English Romanists flocked to the
vicinage of London, and resorted in great numbers to the mass in the
houses of foreign ambassadors; and in many English country houses the
mass was openly celebrated in defiance of law. The Commons, in alarm,
adopted what James fitly called "a stinging petition against the
papists."
VI.
[Sidenote: His resignation.]
[Sidenote: 1624.]
[Sidenote: 1625.]
[Sidenote: Note 6.]
Calvert had staked his hopes for himself and for English Catholicism
on the Spanish match. This otherwise pliant courtier was intractable
where his religious convictions were concerned. He scrupled to draw
back at the bidding of Charles and Buckingham, when drawing back
involved a violation of the treaty oath of the king and council, the
plunging of England into a Spanish war, the sacrifice of the interests
of the Catholic church, and a fresh exposure of his co-religionists in
England to a harsh persecution. Calvert was one of that party in the
junta for Spanish affairs which was unwilling to break a solemn treaty
in order to gratify the wounded vanity of Buckingham and Charles, and
he paid dearly for his firmness. To bring about his resignation, his
antagonists diverted business from his office, thus reducing his fees
and subjecting his pride to mortification. Under this treatment it was
noted by a letter writer of the time that Mr. Secretary Calvert
"droops and keeps out of the way." It was reported that he was ill,
and then that he had been rebuked by the king and the prince, and it
was known that he wished to sell his office to some one acceptable to
Buckingham. Calvert's cleverness as a courtier did not fail him in his
fall. He succeeded at the last in mollifying Buckingham, whose consent
he gained to the sale of the secretaryship. After nearly a year of the
prolonged agony of holding office in disfavor, he resigned in
February, 1625, receiving six thousand pounds for his office, which
was worth to the incumbent two thousand a year. He was at the same
time raised to the Irish peerage as Baron Baltimore. He made his
religious scruples the ostensible reason for his resignation, and he
was already known to be "infinitely addicted to the Catholic faith."
He made no secret of his proscribed religion; he exposed to visitors
the altar, chalice, and candlesticks in his best room; and he
catechised his children assiduously in the doctrines of the ancient
church. At the accession of Charles he retired from the Privy Council
rather than take an oath offensive to his conscience.
VII.
[Sidenote: Calvert deserts Newfoundland.]
[Sidenote: Letters of Wynne, Daniel, and Hoskins, in Whitbourne's
second ed.]
[Sidenote: Note 7.]
During the period of his decline from court favor Calvert's colony of
Avalon probably suffered from neglect. He now gave his new leisure to
the work of rescuing it. In 1627 he made a voyage to Newfoundland,
taking a company of Catholic settlers and two priests. He went again
in 1628. From Newfoundland he wrote to one of the Jesuits in England a
letter of affection, declaring his readiness to divide with him "the
last bit" he had in the world. In Avalon began the long chapter of the
troubles of the Baltimores with the Puritan opposition. Besides his
contentions with Puritan settlers, who abhorred the mass as a Jewish
prophet did idolatry, he found it necessary to fight with French
privateers bent on plunder. By the time the almost interminable
Newfoundland winter had begun, he discovered that Avalon was not the
earthly paradise it appeared in the writings of pamphleteers and in
the letters of his own officeholders interested only in the
continuance of their salaries. The icy Bay of Plesaunce and the bleak
Bay of Flowers mocked him with their names of delight; of little avail
was the fast-bound River of Bonaventure to its unlucky lord, or the
Harbor of Heartsease to him who had sunk a fortune of thirty thousand
pounds in the fruitless attempt to plant a settlement on a coast so
cold. Ill himself, and with half his company down with scurvy, some of
them dying, Baltimore turned his thoughts toward Virginia, now, after
all its trials, prosperous under a genial sun.
[Sidenote: Sails to Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Rymer's Foedera, tom. vii, iv, 147.]
He knew the conditions of that colony and the opportunities it
afforded. A member of the Virginia Company during nearly all the years
of its stormy existence, he had been made one of the fifty-six
councilors that took over its effects at its demise, and he was one of
the eight who constituted the quorum, and who probably transacted the
business of this Council for Virginia. Even under the government of
the Company there had been precedents for the establishment of a
"precinct" within Virginia independent of the Jamestown government.
Such a plantation had been that of Captain Martin and that proposed by
Rich and Argall, and a charter for such had been given to the Leyden
pilgrims. Baltimore wrote to ask for a precinct, pleading the king's
promise already made that he might choose a part of Virginia. Here he
would still be the head of a little independent state--a state in
which the mass might be said without molestation. Before another
winter set in he abandoned Avalon to fishermen and such hardy folk,
and took ship for the James River, where he arrived in October, 1629.
VIII.
[Sidenote: Virginia antagonism.]
[Sidenote: Note 8.]
[Sidenote: Note 9.]
Baltimore's reception in Virginia was most inhospitable. He had
perhaps counted on his former relation to the colony as a councilor to
assure him a welcome. But the Virginians of that time were Sandys and
Southampton men. They may have remembered that Calvert had been
Sandys's enemy and political rival, and that he belonged to the
faction of Sir Thomas Smyth in the company. The members of that
faction had been the executioners of the company when they could no
longer control it. Calvert was one of the later council, which had
tried to take away insidiously the privileges granted to Virginians by
their charter from the Virginia Company. This attack on their
liberties they had stoutly resisted, even to cutting off a piece of
one of the ears of the clerk of their own assembly for abetting it.
Now a nobleman of the detested faction, an advocate of absolute
government and a close friend of the king, had come among them.
Baltimore might easily expect to secure the governorship of Virginia
itself. Perhaps it is hardly necessary to go even so far afield for a
motive. The prospect of a settlement of Roman Catholics within the
limits of the colony was in itself enough to excite the opposition of
the Virginia churchmen. Baltimore's party of Catholics was not the
only one repelled from Virginia about this time. Soon after Lord
Baltimore's visit, perhaps, or just before, the Virginians refused
permission to a company of Irish Catholics to settle within their
bounds. These appear to have gone afterward to the island of St.
Christopher's, where again Protestant fellow-colonists fell out with
them about religion, so that they were finally sent to settle the
neighboring island of Montserrat.
[Sidenote: Character of the early Virginians.]
[Sidenote: Leah and Rachel, and De Vries Voyages, _passim_.]
The Virginians, after all their sufferings, were now prosperous in a
gross way, reaping large profits from tobacco, and living in riotous
profusion after the manner of men beginning to emerge from the
hardships and perils of a pioneer condition into sudden opulence.
Their rude living did not at all prevent the colonists from being
fastidious about their religion--it was the seventeenth century. Most
of the Virginia clergy at this period were as reckless in life as the
people, but the Protestantism of the colony was incorruptible. Some of
the rabble even showed their piety by railing at the newly arrived
papist nobleman.
[Sidenote: Expulsion of Baltimore.]
[Sidenote: MS. Book of Instructions, Library of Congress, folio 136.]
A weapon of defense against Baltimore was ready to hand. Three years
before his coming instructions had been sent from England to Yeardley
to proffer the oath of supremacy "to all such as come thither with an
intention to plant and reside, which, if any shall refuse, he is to be
retorned or shipped from thence home." This order may not have been
intended for so great a personage as a nobleman of the Court. It may
have been meant only to head off humble Irishmen like those who
settled Montserrat, or it may have been merely a fence against
Separatists. But it served the turn of the alarmed colonists. Pott and
Mathews, Claiborne and Roger Smyth, who led the opposition, offered
the oath to Baltimore. Baltimore had sacrificed his place in the Privy
Council rather than take this oath so contrary to his conscience, and
he now again stood by his religious convictions, and took ship for
England as ordered by the Virginia Council. He was disappointed and
already shaken in health. The members of the council, appalled at
their own boldness, perhaps, wrote to the king in self-defense. There
is still extant an old manuscript record book of the seventeenth
century which contains the instructions to Yeardley. Immediately
following, as if to put it under the shelter of royal authority, is
the report of the council, without date or signature, that the oath
had been offered to Baltimore and refused.
IX.
[Sidenote: Baltimore's seal.]
Baltimore's hardships during two voyages to Newfoundland, and a winter
in the rude abodes of pioneers there, his illness during that winter,
the constant spectacle of sickness and death about him, and the
disappointment caused by his rude reception in Virginia, were enough,
one would think, to have broken his resolution. He went back to
England "much decayed in his strength," as he confessed; but,
strangely enough, this accomplished man of the world, whose career had
been that of a courtier, was far from living in ease and quietness as
his friends had expected him to do. He was possessed of a passion for
peopling the wilderness. He had written to the king from America that
he was resolved to spend "the poore remaynder" of his days in
colony-planting, his "inclinations carrying him naturally" to such
work. To what extent he was prompted by a desire to leave to his heir
the semi-sovereignty of a principality, and how far he was carried by
a naturally adventurous temper hitherto latent, we have no means of
deciding; but one can hardly resist the conclusion that a fervent
religious zeal was the underlying spring of a resolution so
indomitable. Like many another man of that time, Calvert was lifted
from worldliness to high endeavor by religious enthusiasm. The king
felt obliged to interpose his authority; he forbade Baltimore's
risking his life in another voyage, but he granted him a charter for a
new palatinate on the north side of the Potomac.
[Sidenote: Death of the first Lord Baltimore.]
Lord Baltimore was doomed never to see the desire of his eyes. He died
on the 15th of April, 1632, before the charter had passed, leaving the
planting of Maryland to be carried forward by his son and heir,
Cecilius. The charter of Maryland passed the seals on the 22d of the
following June in favor of Cecilius, the second Lord Baltimore.
X.
[Sidenote: The charter of Maryland.]
[Sidenote: Note 10.]
[Sidenote: Rushworth, Part I, vol. i, 141, 1623.]
[Sidenote: Note 11.]
[Sidenote: Note 12.]
The Maryland charter was no doubt the work of George Calvert's own
hand. Its main provisions are identical with those of Avalon; but it
put the proprietary in a still better position. He held Avalon by
knight's service, Maryland in free and common soccage, and the
holdings of Maryland settlers would be under the proprietary, not
under the crown. In fact, the crown retained practically no rights of
value in Maryland beyond the bare allegiance of the settlers. Larger
privileges of trade were conceded to Maryland than had been given to
Avalon. In one respect the liberties of the future settlers were
apparently better guarded in the Maryland charter, for there is a
faint promise of a representative government in its phraseology. But
even this was not definitely assured. In a single regard the charter
of Maryland appears less favorable to the Catholic religion than its
predecessors. Historic specialists with a religious bias, doing their
small best to render the current of history turbid, have not failed to
convince themselves by means of the new clause that Maryland was a
Protestant colony. The patronage and advowsons of all churches had
been conferred on the proprietary in the Avalon charter, and a like
concession is made in the Maryland grant; but to this, in the Maryland
charter, is attached a sort of "lean-to"--a qualifying clause that
appears to limit the ecclesiastical organization of the colony to
Anglican forms. "Together with license and power," runs the charter,
"to build and found Churches, Chapels and Oratories in convenient and
fit places within the premises, and to cause them to be dedicated and
consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of our kingdom of
England." In 1632 the Baltimore family was openly Catholic. The
Puritans were raging against every indulgence shown by the court to
Romanists. The clamor of the Catholic-baiters did not stop with a
demand that Romanists should be expelled from England. The Commons had
a few years earlier petitioned the King that they be excluded from
"all other Your Highness's dominions." The founding of an English
colony that might make a home for English and Irish Romanists was a
more difficult project in the reign of Charles than it had been in the
time of James when Avalon was granted. The clause which allowed
Baltimore to dedicate his churches according to the ecclesiastical
laws of England excites admiration. It graciously permitted an
Anglican establishment in Maryland; it did not oblige Baltimore to do
anything at all, nor did it, in fact, put any constraint whatever on
his actions in this regard. The impotent clause which seemed to limit,
but did not limit, the ecclesiastical organization was breathlessly
followed by one far from impotent--a masterpiece of George Calvert's
skill. It gave to the proprietary the legal power exercised from
ancient times by the Bishops of Durham as counts-palatine. The
regalities of Durham having been pared down by Henry VIII, the charter
somewhat furtively reached back after the local absolutism of the
middle ages by giving Baltimore all the temporal power ever possessed
by any Bishop of Durham. But if alarm should be taken at the giving of
powers so vast to a Roman Catholic subject, there might be reassurance
for timid souls in a clause in imitation of older charters than
Calvert's, which stipulated that no interpretation should be put upon
the charter by which God's holy and true Christian religion might be
prejudiced. Ambiguity spread from the charter to some of the early
Maryland laws, which wore a Protestant or a Catholic face according to
the side from which they were approached.
XI.
[Sidenote: Condition of English Catholics.]
[Sidenote: An act for the better discovering and repressing of popish
recusants. Also, An act to prevent, etc., 3 Jac. I, chaps. iv and v.]
When George Calvert projected his new southern colony he had every
reason to suppose that it would be quickly supplied with settlers from
the discontented English and Irish Catholics. The statute enacted in
the third year of James, soon after the Gunpowder Plot, put those who
adhered to the Roman communion in a precarious and exasperating
situation. For the first year that a Catholic wholly neglected the
sacraments of the English church he must pay twenty pounds. This was
raised to forty the second year, and to sixty for every year of
conscientious abstention thereafter. If he did not attend the parish
church at all, the luxury of a conscience cost him twenty pounds a
month, which, as money then went, was a large sum. If he were a rich
landholder, the king might take the use or rentals of two thirds of
his land until he should conform. The oath of allegiance by which he
was to be tested was made ingeniously offensive to a Catholic
conscience. If a Romanist should persuade a Protestant to accept his
own faith he was guilty of treason, as was also his convert. The man
who harbored a Roman Catholic neglecting to attend the parish church
was to be fined ten pounds a month. Marriage by a Romish priest
invalidated accruing land tenures. The Catholic was not suffered to
send his children beyond seas for an education, nor yet to keep a
schoolmaster of his own faith; he could not serve as an executor; he
might not have the charge of any child; his house might be searched
for Catholic books; he was not allowed to keep weapons; and when at
last his vexed and troubled life was over, his dead body might not be
buried among the graves of his forefathers in the parish churchyard.
[Sidenote: Administration of the law.]
[Sidenote: Lingard, viii, 189, cites Rymer, xxii, 13; Hardwicke
Papers, 1446, and a private letter.]
The administration of this law was attended by many aggravations. The
pursuivants took the very cattle and household goods of the poor; from
the rich they exacted large payments, failing which, they pounced on
valuable plate and jewels, which they seized under pretense that these
were articles of superstition or the concealed property of Jesuits.
It is said that James derived a revenue of thirty-six thousand pounds
a year from the fines of lay Catholics. To the several Scotch
favorites of the king were assigned certain rich recusants from whom
they might squeeze whatever could be got by the leverage of the law.
[Sidenote: Influence of foreign policy.]
[Sidenote: 1583, reprinted 1688.]
[Sidenote: 1609, sm. 4to, pp. 112.]
[Sidenote: Ellis Collection, first series, iii, 128.]
[Sidenote: Neal, ii, ch. ii. Rapin, 215, 2d ed.]
Very embarrassing to the foreign policy of England was the severity of
English laws against Catholics, and Lord Treasurer Burleigh found it
needful to publish in Elizabeth's time, for circulation in all the
courts of Europe, a treatise on The Execution of Justice in England
and the Maintenance of Public Order and Christian Peace; and in the
following reign James himself turned pamphleteer and published an
Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance. There were periods when pressure
from abroad softened the administration of the law. But it was only
irregularly and intermittently that the Government could be brought to
grant indulgences that roused the pious wrath of Puritans and reduced
the revenue of the king and his favorites. If Spain, and afterward
France, made it a condition precedent to a marriage treaty that the
penal laws against English recusants should be relaxed, Parliament,
resenting foreign dictation, demanded of the king a renewal of the
severities against papists. Twenty-four Catholics suffered capitally
in James's reign, before 1618; and when in 1622 it was necessary to
condone Catholicism in order to conciliate Spain, it is said that four
hundred Jesuits and priests were set free on bail at one time. The
number of Catholics, lay and cleric, released in this year is put at
four thousand, but this may be an exaggeration.
XII.
[Sidenote: Catholic emigration small.]
[Sidenote: Harl. Miscell., ii, 492, and following, where passages from
contemporary writers are quoted.]
In 1627, and again in 1628, Lord Baltimore took Catholics with him to
Newfoundland and settled priests there. The English court was just
then sailing on a Protestant tack, and England had allied itself with
the Huguenots of La Rochelle. Another of the good works by which the
government of Charles and Buckingham was endeavoring to prove its
sanctification was the enforcement of the penal statutes against Roman
Catholics. It is notable that Baltimore sailed with the first Catholic
emigrants to Avalon about the time of the setting in of the movement
toward Massachusetts which swelled at length into the great Puritan
exodus. The five years of delay caused by the change from Avalon to
Maryland, and also perhaps by the exhaustion of Baltimore's resources
and his death, was unfavorable to the project of a Catholic province.
The English government by 1634 had grown more lenient toward
Romanists, the co-religionists of the queen. The work at which Laud
kept all hands busy just then was the suppression of Puritanism, and
thousands of Puritans were by this time shaking the dust of England
from their feet and seeking a home in the western wilderness,
persuaded that the Church of England under Laud had all sails set for
Rome. This illusion regarding the purposes of the archbishop and his
party, which alarmed the Puritans, heartened the Catholics, who
naturally preferred to stay at home where a flood tide seemed to be
setting toward Catholicism. The small Catholic migration to Maryland
was not to be compared with that stream of Puritan emigration that
about this time poured into New England twenty thousand people in a
decade. The fall of Laud and the rise of the Puritans to power put a
complete stop to the New England migration, but it failed to quicken
the Catholic movement, for Maryland herself had become sadly involved
in the civil commotions of the time.
[Sidenote: Baltimore's partners.]
[Sidenote: Note 13.]
Cecilius Calvert undoubtedly counted on a large migration of Catholic
recusants, and the documents show that the Jesuit order in England
took great interest in the movement. The second Lord Baltimore was
joined by partners in the financial risks of the venture, and though
we meet with more than one allusion to these adventurers whose
interest in the colony was apparently still active twenty years after
its beginning, they were profoundly silent partners; their names are
nowhere recorded, and we are left to conjecture the origin of their
interest in Maryland.
XIII.
[Sidenote: The religious aim.]
"The first and most important design of the Most Illustrious Baron,
which ought also to be the aim of the rest, who go in the same ship,
is, not to think so much of planting fruits and trees in a land so
fertile, as of sowing the seeds of religion and piety." This was Lord
Baltimore's authoritative declaration, and because it varies in form
from the stock phrases so common at the time, it bears an air of some
sincerity, though it is diplomatically ambiguous.
[Sidenote: Efforts to obstruct the ships.]
[Sidenote: Letters of Baltimore to Wentworth in Strafford papers,
_passim_.]
[Sidenote: Note 14.]
Baltimore's opponents made great exertions to prevent the departure of
the Ark and the Dove, which were to bear faithful Catholics across the
flood to a new world. A story was started that these ships were
carrying nuns to Spain, and another tale that found believers was that
they had soldiers on board going to France to serve against the
English. It was told that Calvert's men had abused the customs
officers at Gravesend, and sailed without cockets in contempt of all
authority, the people on board refusing the oath of allegiance. The
Ark was stopped and brought back by order of the Privy Council, and
the oath of allegiance was given to a hundred and twenty-eight
passengers. But the ships came to again at the Isle of Wight, and when
they got away at last there were near three hundred passengers on
board, including Jesuit priests. Most of the passengers were "laboring
men"; how many were Catholic and how many Protestant it is impossible
now to tell. That the leaders and the gentry were, most of them,
Catholics there is every reason to believe. The passengers called
Protestants were rather non-Catholics, precisely the kind of
emigrants that would give the Jesuits the converts of which they tell
exultantly in their letters. There was no Protestant minister on
board, nor was there the slightest provision for Protestant worship,
present or future.
XIV.
[Sidenote: Toleration.]
[Sidenote: Note 15.]
Toleration was the Baltimore policy from the beginning. It was no
doubt in the original plan of George Calvert and his associates,
whoever they were. The Provincial of the Society of Jesus privately
furnished Baltimore with arguments in defense of this policy before
the first colony sailed. The founders of Maryland were men of affairs
shaping plan to opportunity, and the situation was inexorable.
Toleration and protection was all that English Roman Catholics could
hope to find in traveling thus to the ends of the earth.
[Sidenote: Toleration a policy.]
Cecilius gave positive instruction that on shipboard acts of the Roman
Catholic religion should be performed with as much privacy as
possible, so as not to offend the Protestant passengers "whereby any
just complaint may hereafter be made by them in Virginia or in
England." There is no pretense of theory here; all is based on the
exigency of the situation and sound policy. The policy was George
Calvert's, whose school was the court of James, and whose whole career
shows that he entertained no advanced views of human liberty. Had he
held toleration as a theory of government, his doctrine would have
been more liberal than that of Ralegh and Bacon and far in advance of
that of contemporary Puritan leaders. They quite misunderstand the man
who regard him as a progressive thinker; he was a conservative
opportunist. Still less was Cecilius a man likely to act on general
principles.
XV.
[Sidenote: Religious observance at sea.]
[Sidenote: Relatio Itineris, p. 10.]
[Sidenote: Note 16.]
[Sidenote: Relatio Itineris, 16, 17.]
We have seen how religiously the Puritans passed their time at sea in
long daily expositions of Scripture and other devotions, and that
sometimes even the watch was set with a psalm. Not less religious were
the Catholic pilgrims, and though the form is strikingly different,
the believing and zealous age is the same. To make things safe, the
Jesuit fathers committed the principal parts of the ship in some
detail to the protection of God in the first place, and then to that
"of His Most Holy Mother and of St. Ignatius and of all the angels of
Maryland." These angels to whom the safety of Maryland was committed
were kept busy by special spiritual opponents. A dangerous storm was
raised on one occasion by all the "malignant spirits of the tempest
and all the evil genii of Maryland." But Father White circumvented
this combination of ordinary storm spirits with imps of Protestant
proclivities by setting forth to Christ and the Blessed Virgin, while
the storm was at its worst, "that the purpose of this journey was to
glorify the Blood of our Redeemer in the salvation of the Barbarians,
and also to build up a kingdom for the Saviour and to consecrate
another gift to the Immaculate Virgin his mother." The last clause
apparently refers to Maryland, as if it were named in honor of the
Virgin. The representation was effective; the good father had scarcely
ceased speaking when the storm began to abate.
[Illustration: The colony at St. Mary's.]
[Sidenote: The arrival.]
The Puritans when using a geographical name that began with the word
"saint" scrupulously uncanonized it by leaving off the prefix. But
these devout pilgrims of the Roman faith, when once the saints and
guardian angels of Maryland had piloted them safe in spite of the
malice of storm spirits and evil genii into landlocked waters and the
bounds of Lord Baltimore's grant, proceeded to sanctify the whole
region by sprinkling it with the names of saints and angels from
Michael the archangel downward. The ancient Indian designations were
marks of a heathenism they purposed to overthrow, and they began by
trying to get rid of the whole "bead roll of unbaptized names." No
convenient island, creek, river, bay, or cape escaped Christian
baptism. On Annunciation Day, 1634, they landed on Heron Island, in
the Potomac, which they named appropriately for St. Clement, who was
martyred by being thrown into the sea attached to an anchor, and here
the sacrifice of the mass was celebrated, the worshipers reflecting
that "never before had this been done in this part of the world."
After the mass they took upon their shoulders a great cross hewn out
of a tree and advanced in order to the place appointed, where the
governor and his assistants took part in its erection. The
Catholics of the party, seeing this symbol of the faith erected in a
new land, knelt upon the ground and recited the litanies of the cross
in a kind of religious ecstasy. Here in another form was that tender
attachment to their faith that one finds among the more devout
Protestant exiles, and in the nobler natures there was doubtless that
element of the heroic and the saintly often evolved in the religious
sufferings and activities of that day--a relief to the pettiness of
the debates and the irksomeness of the bigotries of the age.
XVI.
[Sidenote: A Catholic colony.]
[Sidenote: Compare Clarke's Gladstone and Maryland Toleration.]
[Sidenote: Maryland Archives, i, 23.]
[Sidenote: Excerpta de Diversis Literis, etc., 56-60.]
The colony had been named Maryland by King Charles in honor of his
wife Henrietta Maria; at least there was assigned to the king
responsibility for a name that, like nearly everything else about
Maryland, was ambiguous. But the phrase _Terra Mariae_ in the charter,
though represented there to be the equivalent of Maryland, was
significant to a devout Catholic of something better than a compliment
to a Catholic queen. The Indian village which with its gardens and
cornfields had been bought for the germinal settlement and capital,
took the name of St. Mary's, and the whole infant colony is called the
Colony of St. Maries, by its own Legislative Assembly in 1638, as
though by Maryland were intended the land of Mary. Notwithstanding the
manifest care of the second Lord Baltimore to hold the missionaries
within the limits of worldly prudence, the zealous fathers lived and
labored in a spirit of other-worldliness. They set themselves first of
all to convert those sheep without a shepherd, the Protestants of
Maryland. Some of these appear to have been men of reckless and
immoral lives, who were greatly bettered by an acceptance of religious
restraint. Those non-Catholics who were ill, and those who found
themselves languishing and dying in the wilderness without the
consolations of their own religion, were zealously visited and
converted _in extremis_ by the Jesuits. The servants and mechanics
employed by or apprenticed to the missionaries were brought under
their constant influence and were readily won. Nearly all the
Protestants who arrived in 1638 were swiftly brought over to the faith
of the missionaries, and twelve converts were joyously reckoned as
fruits of the Jesuit labors in 1639. There was more than one instance
of the miraculous, or at least of the marvelous, to help on this work.
One man of noble birth, who had by dissipation brought himself to
desperate straits, and then sunk until he became at length a bond
servant in Maryland, embraced Catholicism. After the death of this
convert a very bright light was sometimes seen burning about his place
of burial, and even those who were not Catholics were permitted to see
this wonder. The horrible punishments that resulted from the Divine
wrath against those who scoffingly rejected the Catholic faith in
Maryland remind one of the equal calamities that befell those who
were unfaithful to Puritanism in New England. Seventeenth-century
Englishmen with sky-wide differences in opinion were one in the traits
that belonged to their age. Father White was sure that the destruction
of Indians in Maryland was specially ordered by God to provide an
opening "for His own everlasting law and light"; but not more sure
than were the Puritans that the cruel plague which exterminated whole
villages on the Massachusetts coast was sent to open a way for the
planting of Calvinistic churches. Each division of Christians in turn
reduced the Almighty Creator to the level of a special tutelary
divinity, sometimes to that of a rather vindictive genius of the
place.
[Sidenote: Note 17.]
In this work of propagandism the missionaries did not forget the red
men. Their labors among the aborigines were fairly successful at
first, then interrupted by relapse and by war. Such is the history of
Indian missions. Much was made of the solemn profession and baptism of
an Indian "king," at which the governor and other distinguished men
"honored by their presence the Christian sacraments," the governor
marching behind the neophyte in the procession. Maryland was in fact
openly a Catholic colony until after 1640.
[Sidenote: Failure to make a Catholic state.]
[Sidenote: Note 18.]
[Sidenote: Note 19.]
But as a Catholic colony it was a failure. In fear of the rising
Puritan tempest in England, or the violent opposition on several
grounds of its stronger neighbor Virginia, and of the mutinous
bigotry of its own Puritan settlers, who regarded Baltimore's
government as a "Babylon" to be overthrown, it was never able to
afford to Catholics perfect security, much less was it able to promise
them domination. But the Catholics included most of the rich and
influential families, and it was a Jesuit boast that they were
superior to other American settlers in breeding and urbanity. As they
had choice of the best land in the province, the Catholic families
remained during the whole colonial period among the most prominent
people of Maryland. There is also evidence that the Catholics were
numerically considerable in proportion to the population, though the
reports on the subject are vague and conflicting. In 1641 they were
about one fourth of the whole. The ranks of the early Catholic
settlers, both of the rich and poor, seem to have been recruited from
Ireland as well as from England, but the Maryland government in Queen
Anne's Protestant time passed acts levying an import tax of twenty
pounds on each Irish Catholic servant, in order that the bond servants
and even the transported convicts in Maryland should be orthodox
Protestants.
XVII.
[Sidenote: Opposition to Maryland.]
George Calvert, the first Baron Baltimore, molded the Maryland
enterprise until the drafting of the charter, and his spirit was felt
in it after his death. Cecilius, his son, was a man of a somewhat
different sort, and his traits became more apparent as time went on.
He was strongly supported at court by Strafford, his father's most
devoted and obliged friend, and no doubt also by the queen, who was
godmother to Maryland. The opposition to Maryland was probably
embittered by the hatred to Strafford and the jealousy of a Catholic
queen.
[Sidenote: The second Lord Baltimore and Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Note 20.]
On his enemies in Virginia the younger Baltimore took ample vengeance.
He got one of the queen's household appointed treasurer of the colony,
and the Virginians found themselves obliged to pay the quitrents,
which had been neglected and apparently forgotten. Other officers of
the colony were nominated by Baltimore. Harvey, the governor, hoping
to collect money due him from the royal treasury by Baltimore's
assistance, was his obsequious tool, to the bitter indignation of the
Virginians, who hated Baltimore not only because he was a Romanist,
but also because he had divided the first colony and cut off the
northern Indian trade from Virginia. In consequence of the quarrel
between Harvey and the Virginians over Maryland there ensued a
revolution in Virginia; Harvey was shipped to England by the same bold
men who had sent the first Lord Baltimore packing. But Harvey was sent
back again by the king, and by this counter revolution the colonial
constitution of Virginia was modified for the worse. It was altogether
an exquisite revenge.
[Sidenote: Baltimore seeks to control Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Note 21.]
Cecilius meditated even a bolder stroke. He schemed through Windebank
to have himself made governor of Virginia, promising to wring out of
it eight thousand pounds more of revenue for the king from some
neglected sources. To achieve this, he proposed a scheme by which
Windebank was to impose on the king's credulity. Secretary Windebank
may have recoiled from the part he was to play; it is certain that
Charles was not persuaded to hand over Virginia bound hand and foot
into the power of the proprietary of the rival colony.
XVIII.
[Sidenote: Cautious policy of Baltimore.]
[Sidenote: Baltimore's instructions, 15 Nov., 1633, Calvert Papers.]
Intolerance on the part of the authorities of Maryland directed toward
Protestants might have brought a swift overthrow of the whole project.
The instructions given for the first voyage already cited show
throughout the need for extreme caution in the face of extreme peril.
It is required of the governor and commissioners that "they be very
careful to preserve the peace amongst all the passengers on shipboard,
and that they suffer no scandal nor offense to be given to any of the
Protestants." The rulers are to instruct the Catholics to be silent
"upon all occasions of discourse concerning matter of religion," and
those in authority are to "treat the Protestants with as much mildness
and favor as justice will permit." These instructions were to hold
good after landing, and in one notable case of religious dissension
after the arrival in Maryland, justice was meted out against the
Catholic offender in a way that showed a disposition to observe this
policy of conciliation toward Protestants at the expense of some
unfairness toward Catholics. Very early a proclamation was issued for
the suppression of all religious disputes, and Copley, the business
administrator of the Jesuits, thought they ought to be put down for
fear the writings should be sent to the governor of Virginia.
[Sidenote: Necessary ambiguity.]
[Sidenote: Note 22.]
The ambiguous charter of Maryland was a necessary hypocrisy. The plan
of toleration was also inevitable, and it was carried no further than
necessity required, for in that age, when toleration was odious, a
liberal policy had also its perils. The Act for Church Liberties of
1639 was a fine example of the studied ambidexterity of the Maryland
government. It was enacted "that Holy Church within this province
shall have all her rights, liberties, and immunities, safe, whole, and
inviolate in all things." Holy Church here is a deliberate
substitution for "the Church of England" in a similar phrase of Magna
Charta. Such an act was worthy of Bunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways.
Interpreted by judges holding office at the will of a Catholic
proprietary, it could have but one meaning. For the outside world it
might bear another sense. It did all that could be done in the
circumstances for the Roman Catholic religion and for Catholic
ecclesiastics.
XIX.
[Sidenote: Puritan settlers invited.]
[Sidenote: Note 23.]
[Sidenote: Winthrop's Journal, ii, 148, 149.]
In 1643, Parliament, dominated by Puritans, could not let the distant
Maryland province rest in peace. It passed an ordinance making the
Earl of Warwick Governor in Chief and Lord High Admiral of all the
plantations in America. This act contained covert allusions to
papists, Spaniards, and governors recently appointed by the king.
Baltimore met the rising tempest in a way characteristic of him. If he
could settle a portion of his province with Puritans they might serve
to shield him from the storm. Besides, the Catholic emigration had not
proved large, and his province needed inhabitants. He wrote to a
Captain Gibbons, of Boston, sending him a commission under the
Maryland government, and offering "free liberty of religion and all
other privileges" to such of the New England people as were willing to
remove to Maryland. There were those in New England in that day who
longed for a more genial climate, but to settle under the authority of
a papist was to them much like pitching a tent on the confines of
perdition.
[Sidenote: Puritans from Virginia.]
[Sidenote: 1643.]
Though Puritans could not be induced to move from New England, it
happened that the Puritans living in Virginia were persecuted in this
same year by that stanch cavalier and retrograde churchman, Sir
William Berkeley, who wanted his parsons to read prayers, but did not
like preaching ministers of any sort. He was new to his government,
and had brought over with him plenty of hostility to the party that
had affronted his royal master in England. Virginia Puritans had no
choice but to suffer or depart, and Maryland was convenient. They
began soon after this to seek a refuge under the protection of a
proprietary who was a papist and who practiced toleration--two things
almost equally hateful to the Puritans. Mr. James, a Puritan minister,
tarried in Maryland a short time, as early as 1643; he was probably
the only Protestant minister that set foot on Maryland soil before
1650. But the Puritan was never easy unless he was uneasy, and he was
sure to be uneasy within when there was none to molest from without.
To take an oath of fidelity to a papist was to him swearing fealty to
antichrist; but so desirous was Baltimore of Puritan settlers that
even the Maryland oath of fidelity was modified, and a saving clause
was inserted for the ease of the Puritan conscience. The coming of
Puritans who were in sympathy with the Parliament in England and who
abhorred a tolerant papist, contributed something to the multifarious
turmoils of the following years.
XX.
[Sidenote: Maryland turmoils.]
[Sidenote: Note 24.]
What we know of the petty civil wars of Maryland is tedious and
perplexing. The broils before 1649 sprang from diverse sources, some
of which we know, others we may easily conjecture. There was the old
claim of Claiborne to jurisdiction over Kent Island; there was a
disposition on the part of some of the Marylanders to relieve the
tedium of existence by taking a hand in the great struggle against
royal authority which was rending England; there was the tendency
common in frontier communities to carry debates to a violent issue;
there was perhaps a natural proneness to insurrection on the part of
bond servants and men lately out of service; and there was an innate
hunger for spoil of any sort in the seamen of that age and in the
rougher class on shore. But by 1648 the tempest had passed for the
time; order had been reestablished; the Catholic and the Puritan were
living in peace like the lion and the lamb of Hebrew prophecy; and the
Catholic proprietary, always promptly bending before the storm, had
delegated his authority to a Protestant governor who took the
Parliament side.
XXI.
[Sidenote: The Act of 1649.]
[Sidenote: Note 25.]
Before this epoch Maryland toleration had been merely a practical
fact. It had not been theoretically stated; it had not been a matter
of legislation at all; its extent and limitations were unknown. But
now that this colonial home of Catholics was to be a land of
Protestants, and particularly of Puritans, it was necessary to
formulate the principle of toleration, the more, that Baltimore's own
co-religionists were to be put under a Protestant governor. Governor
and high officers of state were required to swear that they would
molest on account of religion no person professing to believe in
Jesus Christ, "and in particular no Roman Catholic." By the mere march
of events it had come to pass that in the state founded by Catholics
as a cradle for the Roman Catholic religion, the Catholic was now
compelled to secure as best he could the toleration of his religion at
the hands of the heretic. Part of Baltimore's plan for this new
settlement of affairs involved the sending over of a code of perpetual
laws to be adopted by the Assembly. The proprietary gave orders that
the governor should not assent to any of these laws if all were not
passed; but the Assembly of Maryland farmers was too cunning to be
entrapped into passing laws which it thought inconvenient and unjust.
A humble letter was sent from the members to the lord proprietary
complaining that they were "illeterate" and "void of that
Understanding and Comprehension" necessary to the discussion of such a
code, and that in April they were too busy with their "necessary
employment in a Crop" to give attention to it. They selected certain
acts out of the code which they passed, among which was the famous Act
of Toleration of 1649. That this was part of the code sent from
England there can be no doubt; the "illeterate" colonists were not
capable of framing it, and it bears the character-mark of the
Baltimore policy throughout. Here is no philosophic theory of
toleration, no far-reaching conclusion like that of Roger Williams,
that the magistrate may not take cognizance of merely religious
offences. Williams was a thinker, a doctrinary, too far in advance of
his age to be the successful organizer of a new state. Baltimore, on
the other hand, accepted a practical toleration as an expedient--he
may even have come to believe in it as a theory by force of his own
situation. But he was not primarily a thinker at all. Even here, where
Baltimorean toleration reaches high tide, no philosophic congruity is
sought. The Jew and the Unitarian who deny the divinity of Christ are
to be put to death. Only so much toleration is granted as is needful
to the occasion. And even this toleration is not put upon any other
ground than public policy; the forcing of conscience in religion "hath
frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence"; therefore this
law is made "to preserve mutual love and amity amongst the
inhabitants." The provisions against such offences as blasphemy and
Sabbath-breaking and religious disputes precede those for toleration.
Very politic is the arrangement by which reviling of God is made a
capital offence, while reviling the Virgin Mary is adroitly associated
with speeches against the "holy apostles or evangelists" as a sort of
second-class blasphemy, a finable offence.
[Sidenote: Vicissitudes of toleration.]
And yet it was toleration, and the law was all the more influential as
an example, perhaps, because it was only practical and quite
incongruous. It was eminently prudent and statesmanlike. That it was
not perpetually effective was the fault not of Baltimore but of the
times. Puritan ideas were rampant. The government of the proprietary
was overthrown; the Jesuits fled to the inhospitable Virginia, where
they lived concealed in a low hut like a cistern or a tomb, not
lamenting their physical privations so much as the lack of wine which
deprived them of the consolation of the sacrament. The new government
of Maryland, five years after Baltimore's famous "act concerning
Religion," passed a new act with the same title--an act brusque and
curt, a law with its boots and spurs on. "That none profess and
exercise the papist religion" is its rude forbidding. The tables are
turned; it is no longer the nonresident Jew and the hypothetical
Unitarian who are excepted. But the wheels rolled swiftly once more,
and in three years Cecilius, absolute lord and proprietary, was again
master of Maryland, and the beneficent act of 1649 resumed its sway.
It protected the Catholic element, which, though always rich and
influential, came to be in latter colonial times but about a twelfth
of the population. Toleration also served to make Maryland an early
dwelling place for abounding Quakers and others holding religious
views not relished in colonies less liberal.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 223.]
"Voto a Dios que la Corte d'Inglatierra es como un libro de cavalleros
andantes." Quoted by Chamberlain in Birch, i, 413. In view of the
swift mutations of fortune among courtiers, Dudley Carleton the
younger wrote on December 18, 1624, "He is happiest who has least to
do at court"--a truth which Calvert probably had come to appreciate by
that time.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 224.]
"The third man who was thought to gain by the Spaniard was Secretary
Calvert; and as he was the only secretary employed in the Spanish
match, so undoubtedly he did what good offices he could therein for
religion's sake, being infinitely addicted to the Roman Catholic
faith, having been converted thereunto by Count Gondomar and Count
Arundel.... Now this man did protest to a friend of his own that he
never got by the Spaniards so much as a pair of pockets; which it
should seem is a usual gift among them, being excellently perfumed,
and may be valued at twenty nobles or ten pounds price." Goodman's
Court of King James, i, 376, 377.
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 225.]
Whitbourne gives these names. Those who believe that Calvert was
already actuated by religious zeal, remind us that Glastonbury (by a
curious legendary confusion of names) was also called Avalon, and that
in the Christian legend Joseph of Arimathea began at Glastonbury the
planting of the Christian religion in Britain. See Anderson's Church
of England in the Colonies, second edition, i, 325, 326. This
interpretation of Calvert's intention in naming his colony was early
given. British Museum, Sloane MSS. XXG. 3662, folio 24, date 1670.
When Calvert's first colony was sent out the Scotch settlement in
Newfoundland was of twelve years' standing, while the Bristol colony
had been seated there five years. Calvert's enterprise seems to have
been pushed with more energy and with a more liberal expenditure than
its predecessors. Compare Whitbourne _passim_ with the statement of
Sir William Alexander in his Encouragement to Colonies, 1624, p. 25.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 225.]
Among the papers at Landsdowne House which I was permitted to examine
by the kindness of Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, there is an unpublished
work by James Abercromby, written in 1752. It discusses with acuteness
the nature of the several colonial governments. I shall refer to it
hereafter under the title of Abercromby's Examination, Landsdowne
House, 47. Abercromby was, so far as I know, the first to point out
the apparently intentional ambiguity of the passages in the Maryland
charter that have to do with religion.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 226.]
It is interesting that in 1622, the year preceding the division of New
England by lot, three shares were laid off and no more. They were at
the extreme north of the territory divided the next year, and were
assigned respectively to the Duke of Lenox, the Earl of Arundel, and
Sir George Calvert. A "grand patent" was then in preparation for a
colony on the coast of Maine to be called Nova Albion. Calendar
Colonial Documents, July 24, 1622. It seems probable, from the charter
of Avalon, that Calvert intended it to be a colony that should harbor
Catholics, but on the other hand the first settlers were chiefly
Protestants, with a clergyman of their own faith, and there seem to
have been few Romanists or none in Avalon until the arrival of a
company with the lord proprietary in 1627.
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 228.]
Fuller's oft-quoted account of the circumstances of Calvert's
resignation, Worthies, Nuttall's edition, iii, 417, 418, gives
probably the commonly received story, and shows that the religious
motive was popularly accepted as the reason for his leaving office.
Archbishop Abbot was better informed though less impartial. His letter
is in the curious work entitled "The Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe in
his Embassy to the Ottoman Porte from the Year 1621 to 1628," etc.,
published in 1740. Abbot says: "Mr. secretary Calvert hath never
looked merily since the prince his coming out of Spaine: it was
thought hee was muche interested in the Spanishe affaires: a course
was taken to ridde him of all imployments and negotiations. This made
him discontented; and, as the saying is, _Desperatio facit monachum_,
so hee apparently did turne papist, whiche hee now professeth, this
being the third time that hee hath bene to blame that way. His Majesty
to dismisse him, suffered him to resigne his Secretaries place to Sir
Albertus Moreton, who payed him three thousand pounds for the same;
and the kinge hath made him baron of Baltimore in Ireland; so hee is
withdrawn from vs, and having bought a ship of 400 tuns, hee is going
to New England, or Newfoundlande, where hee hath a colony." Page 372.
The letters preserved among the state papers are the main authority,
especially those addressed to Sir Dudley Carleton, who desired to buy
Calvert's place. See, _passim_, the Calendar of Domestic Papers for
1624 and 1625 to February 12th. The circumstantial account given in
the Salvetti correspondence, though cited as authority by Mr.
Gardiner, has never been printed, for which reason it is here given in
the original from the British Museum Additional MSS. 27962 C.: "Il
Signor Cavalier Calvert primo Segretario et Consigliero di Stato,
credendosi, doppo la rottura de' trattati, che si haveva con Spagna,
(che per comandamento di sua Maesta haveva lui solo maneggiati,)
d'essere eclipsato nell' oppinione del Sig{r}. Principe et Signor
Duca, et di non essere piu impiegato con quella confidenza, che
solevano ricorse pochi giorni sono dal Signor Duca di Buchingam per
fargli intendere la sua risolutione, la quale era, che vedendo di non
potere godere della buona grazia dell' Eccellenza sua nella medesima
forma che godeva avanti della sua andata in Spagna era risoluto di
rittrarsi dalla Corte, et di mettere in sua mano, come di presente
faceva, la sua carica, perche ne disponasse ovonque le piacesse con
molte altre parole tutte piene di valore et magnanimita:
soggiugnendoli di piu come dicono, che essendo risoluto per l'avvenire
di vivere et morire Cattolicamente, conosceva di non poterlo fare nel
servizio dove era senza gelosia dello stato et pericolo del
Parlamento. Il Signor Duca ancorche non amasse questo Cavaliero, ne
nessuno altro che ha hauto le mani nel parentado di Spagna, con tutto
cio vedendo un atto cosi honorato, gli rispose: che non potera negare
che non gli fusse stato da non so che tempo in qua nemico; ma che hora
vedendo la franchezza et nobilta d'animo, col rispetto che gli haveva
mostrato, l'abracciava per amico, per mostrargliene gli effeti, sempre
che ne havesse occasione, con assicuratione de piu che operrebbe con
sua Maesta gli fusse confermato le suoi pensioni, et di piu dato
honorevole ricompensa per la sua carica di segretario. Et che quanto
alla sua religione egli l'havrebbe protetto quanto fusse mai stato
possibile," etc. Salvetti, Correspondence, iii, February 6, 1624-'25.
The letter of the 28th February (O.S.) in the same volume gives an
account of the formal resignation to the king, and states that the
greater part of the money paid to Calvert was from his successor, and
that it was paid _denari contanti_, "cash down," and adds
sympathetically that "this good lord will be able to live easily and
quietly" hereafter.
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 229.]
Calvert attributes his deception to interested letters. The principal
motives to settle in Newfoundland may be seen by the reader who has
patience enough to thread his way through the jumble of mythology,
allegory, political economy of a certain sort, verse in English and
Latin, theology, satire, and an incredible number of what-nots besides
"for the generall and perpetuall good of Great Britain," found in
Vaughan's Golden Fleece, published in 1626. The nearness of
Newfoundland to Ireland and the comparative cheapness of
transportation thither, but especially the well-established value of
its fisheries and the market they afforded for the produce of the
colony, were the most plausible reasons for settling a colony there.
Probably there was a lurking purpose to turn the shore fishery into a
monopoly such as was contemplated by projectors for the New England
coast. The fact was insisted upon that part of Newfoundland was "equal
in climate," or at least in latitude, to "Little Britain in France,"
or Brittany. Then, too, Newfoundland is an island, and Vaughan at
least persuaded himself that "Ilanders should dwel in Ilands." As some
of the apostles were fishermen, "Newfoundland the grand port of
Fishing was alloted to Professors of the Gospell." Golden Fleece, Part
Third, pp. 5 and 6 and _passim_.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 230.]
Lord Baltimore may have had the governorship of Virginia in view.
Cecilius, his son, sought to have himself made governor in 1637.
Colonial Papers, ix, 45, Record Office. See an earlier communication
on the same subject in Sainsbury, 246, under the date of February 25,
1637. It is almost the only petition of the second Lord Baltimore that
was not granted. See also section xvii of the present chapter, and
note 21 below.
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 231.]
I have ventured to conjecture so much on evidence not complete. Father
White, who was cordially entertained by the Governor of St. Kitts in
1634, speaks of the people of Montserrat as "pulsos ab anglis Virginiae
ob fidei Catholicae professionem." White's choice of words does not
necessarily imply, I suppose, an actual banishment from Virginia, but
at least a refusal of permission to come. Neither Edwards nor Oldmixon
mention this fact; but as White visited St. Kitts only two years after
the settlement at Montserrat, which was made immediately from St.
Kitts (according to Edwards) and was subject to the same governor, his
information was doubtless correct. There seems to have been another
project to plant Catholics in Virginia about this time, unless, as is
rather probable, we meet the same plan in another form. Sir Pierce
Crosby offered to plant ten companies "of the Irish Regiment into a
fruitful part of America not yet inhabited." To make the proposal
acceptable, it was stated, somewhat diplomatically perhaps, that the
major part of the officers and many of the soldiers were Protestants.
Sainsbury's Calendar, p. 95, where the conjectural date is 1628.
[Sidenote: Note 10, page 235.]
The translation quoted is that published by Cecilius Calvert in the
Relation of 1635. The original reads: "Unacum licencia et facultate
Ecclesias Capellas et Oratoria in locis infra premissa congruis et
idoneis Extruendi et fundandi eaque dedicari et sacrari juxta leges
Ecclesiasticas regni nostri Anglie facendas." Maryland Archives.
[Sidenote: Note 11, page 235.]
Sir Edward Northey, Attorney-General of England in the following
century, gave this decision: "As to the said clause in the grant of
the province of Maryland, I am of opinion the same doth not give him
power to do anything contrary to the ecclesiastical laws of England."
This is as ingeniously ambiguous as the clause itself. The
attorneys-general and solicitors-general during the eighteenth century
set themselves to the task of subordinating colonial government to
parliamentary authority by a series of opinions in which they make
rather than explain law. In the present instance Northey was more
modest than usual, for he reaches a purely negative and impotent
conclusion, which Neill turns into a positive one in his text.
Founders of Maryland, 99. There is a collection of opinions on
colonial subjects rendered by the attorneys and solicitors-general in
the first half of the eighteenth century, in a volume at Landsdowne
House which I have examined. This collection was made, or at least
furnished, for the use of Lord Shelburne. Before Northey's opinion was
given the English Parliament had assumed power to override some
provisions of the Maryland charter, as is pointed out in Abercromby's
Examination, MS. at Landsdowne House, 47. How slowly the Church of
England grew in the colony may be inferred from the statement made in
1677, that four clergymen have plantations and settled "beings" of
their own--a phrase sufficiently obscure. Others were sustained by
voluntary contributions. Colonial Papers, No. 49, Record Office,
folios 54, 55. This is Baltimore's reply to the paper at folio 56, the
order of which is evidently reversed. The population of the province,
it is stated, was composed at that time chiefly of dissenters of
various sects, Catholics and Anglicans being the smallest bodies.
[Sidenote: Note 12, page 236.]
As early as 1752 it was remarked that the Maryland charter contained
"the most extensive power of any charter in British America."
Abercromby's Examination, MS., Landsdowne House. In Collier's
Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, vol. ix, is the writ of
Edward III, A. D. 1327, by which the regalities of the bishopric of
Durham are confirmed after a trial in parliament.
[Sidenote: Note 13, page 240.]
Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, wrote to Strafford, 10 January, 1633-'34,
that he had sent "a hopeful colony into Maryland with a fair and
probable Expectation of Success, however without Danger of any great
prejudice unto myself, in Respect that many others are joined with me
in the Adventure"--that is, in the financial risk. Strafford Papers,
i, 179. Twenty years later Cromwell writes to Bennet, Governor of
Virginia, "We have therefore at the request of Lord Baltimore and of
divers other persons of quality here who are engaged in great
adventures in his interest," etc. Thurloe, i, 724. A tradition of this
co-operation may have remained in Maryland a century later, for in
1755 or 1756 there was presented to the Lord Baltimore of that day,
who was a Protestant, a petition from Roman Catholic residents of
Maryland in which this assertion occurs: "The money and persons of
this persuasion contributed chiefly to the settling and peopling of
this colony." British Museum MS. 15,489.
[Sidenote: Note 14, page 242.]
The statement of Father Henry More, in 1642, that "in leading the
colony to Maryland by far the greater number were heretics," is not
conclusive, though it is relied on by General Bradley T. Johnson and
others. More was Provincial of the Jesuits in England, and he is no
doubt repeating loosely the information contained in Father White's
letter of the year before, which says, "Whereas three parts of the
people in four at least are heretics"--a statement true, no doubt, in
1641, when the Kent Islanders and newcomers were counted, but not
true, probably, of the company of 1634, as Bancroft seems to say.
[Sidenote: Note 15, page 242.]
The original document is in the Stoneyhurst MSS., Anglia, vol. iv. It
is reprinted in full in General Bradley T. Johnson's "The Foundation
of Maryland." It tends to show that the emigration of many recusants
was confidently expected.
[Sidenote: Note 16, page 243.]
"Nubes, terrificum in morem excresentes, terrori erant intuentibus
antequam discinderentur: et opinionem faciebant prodiisse adversum nos
in aciem, omnes spiritus tempestatum maleficas, et malos genios omnes
Marylandiae." Relatio Itineris, 15.
[Sidenote: Note 17, page 247.]
See _passim_, Letters of Missionaries. A letter of Copley, the Jesuit,
to Lord Baltimore, in Calvert Papers, p. 165, implies the possibility
of Catholic incumbents of Maryland parishes. He is complaining of the
law of the Assembly of 1638 relating to glebe land: "In euery Mannor
100 acres must be laid out for Gleabe lande, if then the intention to
bind them to be pastors who enjoy it, we must either by retaining so
much euen of our owne land undertake the office of pastors or lesse
euen in our owne Mannor maintaine pastors, both which to us would be
uery Inconuenient."
[Sidenote: Note 18, page 248.]
Letters of Missionaries, p. 77. "The Catholics who live in the colony
are not inferior in piety to those who live in other countries; but in
urbanity of manners, according to the judgment of those who have
visited the other colonies, are considered far superior to them." More
than a hundred years later the Catholics retained a superiority,
according to Updike's Appendix to McSparran, 1752: "The Catholics,
having the start in point of time of the after settlers, are also to
this day ahead of them in wealth and substance; by which means the
first and best families are for the most part still of the Roman
communion," p. 492.
[Sidenote: Note 19, page 248.]
The act passed in 1704 was renewed in 1715 and still in force in
1749. I cite from Ogle's Account of Maryland, of the latter date, a
manuscript at Landsdowne House, numbered 45, folio 199. In No. 61 at
Landsdowne House is a decision of the Attorney-General in England in
1605 that Jesuits may be expelled from Maryland by order of the
queen if aliens, but not if they are subjects. The various
eighteenth-century enactments against Catholics will be found in
Bacon's Laws of Maryland, _passim_. MS. 15,489, British Museum,
cites some of these severe laws and the proceedings taken under
them. Strong petitions against these measures were signed by Charles
Carroll and others.
[Sidenote: Note 20, page 249.]
Gabriel Hawley, Robert Evelin, and Jerome Hawley, appointed to places
in Virginia, appear to have been Catholics and partisans of Baltimore.
Aspinwall Papers, i, page 101, note.
[Sidenote: Note 21, page 250.]
Baltimore's letter bears date February 25, 1637, and is in the Record
Office, Colonial Papers, xiv, No. 42. The memorial apparently sent
with it is No. 49 in the same volume. Baltimore proposes to reward
Windebank for his assistance, and he sets down the very manner in
which the secretary is to approach the king with a diplomatic
falsehood. Both the letter and memorial are printed in Maryland
Archives, Council Proceedings, pp. 41, 42.
[Sidenote: Note 22, page 251.]
The act was one of those that for some reason of expediency was never
read a third time, but was condensed into what would now be called an
omnibus bill. The act is given in Bacon's Laws, and is compared by
Bozman with Magna Charta. Bozman regards this law of 1639 as an
attempt to establish the Roman Catholic religion.
[Sidenote: Note 23, page 252.]
A copy of the ordinance as printed separately at the time is in the
Lenox Library. It is reprinted in Churchill's Voyages, viii, 776.
[Sidenote: Note 24, page 254.]