MARYLAND UNDER CHARLES II.
With the Restoration Maryland became once more a proprietary government.
Philip Calvert assumed the administration as deputy of Lord Baltimore,
and clemency drawing a veil over late offences, the colony enjoyed
tranquillity. The spirit of Lord Baltimore was broad and tolerant; a
large benevolence marks his legislation; and the persecuted and the
outcast had ever a secure home in his province. “From France came
Huguenots; from Germany, from Holland, from Sweden, from Finland, from
Piedmont, came the children of misfortune, to seek protection under the
tolerant sceptre of the Roman Catholic. Bohemia itself, the country of
Jerome and Huss, sent forth its sons, who at once were made citizens of
Maryland with equal franchises.”[7]
Though Maryland in many respects resembled Virginia, yet in others she
was strikingly different. The spirit of her people was more active and
enterprising, and hence, availing herself of her sea-coast, her traffic
at this time was not inconsiderable.
In 1662, Charles, the eldest son of Lord Baltimore, took up his
residence in the colony as governor. Misunderstandings with the Indians
were adjusted, and the colony gradually extended. The Navigation Act,
however, pressed heavily upon its commerce; Dutch vessels could no
longer export its tobacco to Europe; and following the example of
Virginia, a tax of 2_s._ per hogshead was laid on all exported tobacco,
one-half to serve as a colonial revenue for governmental purposes, and
the other as a revenue for the proprietary—an arrangement which is said
to have been advantageous to the colony, while it was equally so to Lord
Baltimore.
Maryland, like Virginia, under these restrictive commercial laws,
suffered from the over-production of tobacco, and black slaves, as being
cheaper, were preferred to white labourers; an act, therefore, was
passed in 1671, for encouraging the importation of negroes, which in
consequence of the interrupted trade with Holland had now almost ceased.
Lord Baltimore, by his prudence, moderation and wisdom, had been by far
the most successful of all proprietary governors; and now in his old age
he began to reap a rich harvest, not only of honour and respect, but of
wealth, from the colony “which he had planted in his youth, and which
crowned his old age with gratitude.” One thing only Lord Baltimore
failed in, and this was an acknowledgment of those principles of popular
liberty and popular rights which were the fundamental principles of the
Anglo-American colonies. The leaven, however, was already working in
Maryland under the paternal sway of Lord Baltimore, and nothing but his
own virtues prevented it effectually leavening the whole lump.
At the death of Lord Baltimore, after a supremacy of forty-three years,
Maryland contained ten counties, five on either side of the Chesapeake,
and about 16,000 inhabitants, the greater number of whom were
Protestants. There was no established church in Maryland, either
Catholic or Episcopal. The latter, however, had a strong hankering after
this state of privilege, and one of the clergy appealed to the
Archbishop of Canterbury regarding their forlorn condition; “the
priests,” said he, “are provided for; the Quakers take care of their own
speakers; but no care is taken to build up churches in the protestant
religion.”
Yet though the Quakers maintained their own preachers, and as a
religious sect, spite of all their “abominable heresies,” were tolerated
in Maryland, yet they were not safe even here from suffering, but that
for civil, rather than religious causes. Until the year 1688, the era of
great revolutions, the Quakers were liable to fines and imprisonment,
from their refusal to perform military duties and to take an oath.
Otherwise the Quaker was warmly welcomed. The scattered dwellers in the
wilderness, and on the hanks of the Maryland rivers, opened their souls
to “the truth” as promulgated by George Fox and his friends; their
simple hearts were as good soil into which the seed of the spirit fell
and brought forth abundantly. Many a “heavenly meeting” had George Fox
in this friendly colony. “His landing in the country,” he says, “was so
ordered by the good providence of God, that he arrived just in time to
be present at a farewell meeting which was held by John Burneyate,
before his setting sail for old England. And a very large meeting this
was, and held four days, to which came many of the world’s people, five
or six justices of the peace, a speaker of the assembly, a member of the
council, and divers others of note.” And not alone did “the world’s
people” listen with joy to this “minister of the truth, but the emperor
or sagamore of the Indians, and his subordinate chieftains, after a
great debate with his council, came to hear him, and listened in the
evening to that which he had to say to them from the Lord, and which he
enjoined them to convey to their people,” and “they, carrying themselves
courteously and lovingly inquired, where the next meeting would be, for
that they would attend it.” As in Carolina and Virginia, we have many a
graphic picture of the life of the settlers in the wilderness; of the
stranger travelling through woods and bogs, sleeping out at night, or
being hospitably entertained at some lonely dwelling, where “huge dogs”
gave the first notice of their approach; or after having travelled all
day through the woods, and seen “neither man nor woman, house nor
dwelling-place, of their being lovingly entertained by some Indian king,
who spread mats for them to lie on by the fire of their wigwam, and made
the strangers welcome to their small store of provisions.” Again we see
George Fox and his friends on their way to some great meeting, rowing in
boats, “there being so many boats on the river at that time that it was
almost like the Thames, there never having been seen before so many
together at one time;” a thousand coming to the meeting at once, so that
“never before was there seen such a concourse of people together,—people
of the world, protestants of divers sorts, and some papists; and among
them magistrates and their wives, and other people of chief account in
the country, and of common people a great many.” These large meetings,
which would last for four or five days, must have resembled the revivals
and camp-meetings of later days.
It was on an occasion of this kind, when travelling to a meeting with
his friend, “that an accident befell, which, for the time, was a great
exercise” to them. “One John Jay, a friend, of Barbadoes, was intending
to accompany us,” says George Fox, “through the woods to Maryland; and
he being to try a horse, got upon his back, and he fell a running, and
cast him down upon his head, and broke his neck, as the people said.
They that came near him took him up for dead, and carried him a good way
and laid him on a tree. I got to him as soon as I could, and feeling of
him, concluded him to be dead. And as I stood by him, pitying him and
his family, I took hold of his hair, and his head turned anyway, his
neck was so limber. Whereupon, throwing away my stick and my gloves, I
put one hand under his chin and the other behind his head, and raised
his head two or three times with all my strength, and brought it in. I
soon perceived that the neck was right; he began to rattle in the
throat, and soon after to breathe. The people were amazed, but I bid
them have a good heart and be of good faith and carry him into the
house. They did so, and set him by the fire; but I bid them get him some
warm thing to drink and put him to bed. After he had been in the house
awhile, he began to speak, but did not know where he had been. The next
day we passed away, and he with us, about sixteen miles, to a meeting,
through woods and bogs, and over a river, where we swam our horses, and
got over ourselves upon a hollow tree; and many hundreds of miles did he
travel with us after this.”
But we must now leave George Fox and his friends, and return to the
affairs of Maryland.
On the death of Lord Baltimore, in 1676, his son and successor to his
title, who had now successfully administered the government of the
colony for fourteen years, returned to England, leaving Thomas Notley as
his deputy. During his administration the whole code of laws had been
revised, and the act of toleration, which from the first had made
Maryland so honourable, was confirmed. But spite of this careful
provision for the exercise of the broad spirit of religion, scarcely had
Lord Baltimore arrived in England when he was called to account by the
Bishop of London, in whose diocese the colonies were supposed to lie,
for the neglect of religion in his province. The bishop was seconded by
the king and his ministers, who were determined that the English
episcopal church should be dominant in Maryland as it was in Virginia.
This party at home strengthened the party of the ultra-Protestants in
the colony, who had long been dissatisfied with their non-privileged
position. Besides this, the recent insurrectionary movements in Virginia
were not without their influence on the neighbour state; and Fendall,
the former governor, “a man well-experienced in commotions,” headed the
disaffected Episcopalians, and the authority of Lord Baltimore, a
“papist proprietary,” was called in question. Lord Baltimore hastened
back, and order was soon re-established. Fendall was tried, found guilty
of sedition, and banished. But Baltimore now was not at liberty to
govern his province in his own way. Having been accused, though
apparently without cause, of favour towards Papists, the English
ministry soon interfered, and an order was issued, that “all offices of
government should be intrusted exclusively to Protestants.” Catholics
were excluded from office in the very colony which they had planted.
Lord Baltimore’s hold on Maryland was being loosened now on all hands.
The colonists, among whom the doctrine of civil equality was
deep-rooted, called in question the authority of an hereditary
proprietary; and the partisans of the English church, whose monarchical
principles might otherwise have found no stumbling-block in that
circumstance, became his violent opponents as a Papist. Another cause
too existed, which affected Lord Baltimore unfortunately in his
relationship with England. In attempting “to modify the unhappy effects
of the Navigation Laws on colonial industry, he had become involved in
opposition to the commercial policy of England. A formidable adversary
was thus raised; the Governor of Virginia was made superintendent of the
custom-house officers of Maryland. This led to great dissatisfaction;
quarrels and bloodshed ensued;” and the blame of all, one way or
another, was laid on Lord Baltimore.
The accession of a catholic monarch in England might be considered as a
favourable auspice for a catholic proprietary. But no! William Penn, the
Quaker, found favour with James, when Lord Baltimore found none. The
Catholic was even obliged to relinquish to the Dissenter half the
peninsula between the Chesapeake and Delaware, besides “a wide strip
along the northern limit of his province.” Nor was that all. The charter
of Maryland was threatened. A writ of _quo warranto_ was issued against
it, and Lord Baltimore hastened to England to maintain his rights. But
before the legal process by which they were invaded was ended King James
himself was dethroned.