MARYLAND’S VICISSITUDES.
[Sidenote: Virginia and Maryland.]
The accession of William and Mary, which wrought so little change in
Virginia, furnished the occasion for a revolution in the palatinate of
Maryland. To trace the causes of this revolution, we must return to
1658, the year which witnessed the death of Oliver Cromwell and saw
Lord Baltimore’s government firmly set upon its feet through the favour
of that mighty potentate. The compromises which were then adopted
put an end to the conflict between Virginia and Maryland, and from
that time forth the relations between the two colonies were nearly
always cordial. For the next century the constitutional development of
Maryland proceeded without interference from Virginia, although on many
occasions the smaller colony was profoundly influenced by what went on
in its larger neighbour, as well as by those currents of feeling that
from time to time pervaded the English world and swayed both colonies
alike. We shall presently see, for example, that marked effects were
wrought in Maryland by Bacon’s rebellion, and we shall observe what
various echoes of the political situation in England were heard in all
the colonies, from the wild scare of the Popish Plot in 1678 down to
the assured triumph of William III. in 1691, and even later.
[Sidenote: Fuller and Fendall.]
It will be remembered that when the Puritans of Providence, in March,
1658, gave in their assent to the compromises by which Lord Baltimore’s
authority was securely established in Maryland, only three years had
elapsed since their victory at the Severn had given them supreme
control over the country. While the defeated Governor Stone languished
in jail, the victorious leader, William Fuller, exercised complete sway
and for a moment could afford to laugh at the pretensions of Josias
Fendall, the new governor whom Baltimore appointed in 1656. But this
state of things came abruptly to an end when it was discovered that
Lord Baltimore was upheld by Cromwell. Virginia, with her Puritan
rulers, Bennett and Claiborne and Mathews, was thus at once detached
from the support of Fuller, so that nothing was left for him but to
come to terms. Fendall’s policy toward his late antagonists was pacific
and generous, so much so that in the assembly of 1659 we find the names
of Fuller and other Puritan leaders enrolled among the burgesses.
Associated with Fendall, and second to him in authority, was the
secretary and receiver-general, Philip Calvert, younger brother of
Cecilius, Lord Baltimore.
[Sidenote: The duty on tobacco.]
After the fires of civil dudgeon had briskly burned for so many years,
it was not strange that their smouldering embers should send forth a
few fitful gleams before dying. Apart from questions of religion or
of loyalty, there were difficulties in regard to taxation that can
hardly have been without their effect. There seems to have been more
or less widely diffused a feeling of uneasiness upon which agitators
could play. In 1647 the assembly had granted to the lord proprietor a
duty of ten shillings per hogshead on all tobacco exported from the
colony. This grant called forth remonstrances which seem to have had
their effect, as in 1649 the act was replaced by another which granted
to the proprietor for seven years a similar duty upon all tobacco
exported on Dutch vessels if not bound to some English port.[101] This
act seemed to carry with it the repeal of that of 1647, concerning
which it was silent; if the first act continued in force, the second
was meaningless. During the turbulence that ensued after 1650 it
is not likely that the revenue laws were rigidly enforced. In 1659
Baltimore directed Fendall to have the act of 1647 explicitly repealed
on condition that the assembly should grant him two shillings per
hogshead on tobacco when shipped to British ports and ten shillings
when shipped to foreign ports. Whether this demand was popular or not,
we may gather from dates that are more eloquent than words. The act of
1647 was repealed by the assembly in 1660, but no grant in return was
made to the proprietor until 1671, and then it was a uniform duty of
two shillings. Unless the demand had been unpopular it would not have
been resisted for eleven years.
[Sidenote: Fendall’s plot.]
When the assembly met on the last day of February, 1660, to consider
this and other questions, memorable changes had occurred in England.
The death of mighty Oliver, in September, 1658, threatened the realm
with anarchy; and the prospect for a moment grew darker when in May,
1659, his gentle son Richard dropped the burden which he had not
strength to carry. For nine months England seemed drifting without
compass or helm. When our assembly met, one notable thing had just
happened, early in February, when George Monk, “honest old George,”
entered London at the head of his army, and assumed control of affairs.
The news of this event had not yet crossed the ocean, and even if it
had, our Marylanders would not have understood what it portended. To
some of them it seemed as if in this season of chaos whoever should
seize upon the government of their little world would be likely to keep
it. So Governor Fendall seems to have thought, and with him Thomas
Gerrard, a member of the council and a Catholic, but disloyal to
Baltimore. Why should not the government be held independently of the
lord proprietor and all fees and duties to him be avoided? In this view
of the case Fendall had two or three sympathizers in the council, and
probably a good many in the House of Burgesses, especially among the
Puritan members, who were in number three fourths of the whole.
[Sidenote: Temporary overthrow of Baltimore’s authority.]
In the course of the discussion over the tobacco duty the burgesses
sent a message to Governor Fendall and the council, saying that they
judged themselves to be a lawful assembly without dependence upon any
other power now existing within the province, and if anybody had any
objections to this view of the case they should like to hear them.
The upper house answered by asking the lower house if they meant that
they were a complete assembly without the upper house, and also that
they were independent of the lord proprietor. These questions led to
a conference, in which, among other things, Fendall declared it to be
his opinion that laws passed by the assembly and published in the lord
proprietor’s name should at once be in full force. Two of the council,
Gerrard and Utie, agreed with this view, while the secretary, Philip
Calvert, and all the rest, dissented. In these proceedings the governor
was plainly in league with the lower house, and this vote demonstrated
the necessity of getting rid of the upper house. Accordingly the
burgesses sent word to the governor and council, that they would not
acknowledge them as an upper house, but they might come and take
seats in the lower house if they liked. Secretary Calvert observed
that in that case the governor would become president of the joint
assembly, and the speaker of the burgesses must give place to him.
A compromise was presently reached, according to which the governor
should preside, with a casting vote, but the right of adjourning or
dissolving the assembly should be exercised by the speaker. Hereupon
Calvert protested, and demanded that his protest be put on record,
but Fendall refused. Then Calvert and his most staunch adherent,
Councillor Brooke, requested permission to leave the room. “You may if
you please,” quoth Fendall, “we shall not force you to go or stay.”
With the departure of these gentlemen the upper house was virtually
abolished, and now Fendall quite threw off the mask by surrendering
his commission from Lord Baltimore and accepting a new one from the
assembly. Thus the palatinate government was overthrown, and it only
remained for Fendall and his assembly to declare it felony for anybody
in Maryland to acknowledge Lord Baltimore’s authority.
[Sidenote: Superficial resemblance to the action of Virginia.]
These proceedings in Maryland become perfectly intelligible if we
compare them with what was going on at the very same moment in
Virginia. In March, 1660, the assembly at Jamestown, in view of the
fact that there was no acknowledged supreme authority then resident
in England, declared that the supreme power in Virginia was in the
assembly, and that all writs should issue in its name, until such
command should come from England as the assembly should judge to
be lawful. This assembly then elected Sir William Berkeley to the
governorship, and he accepted from it provisionally his commission.[102]
[Sidenote: Profound difference in the situations.]
[Sidenote: Fendall’s error.]
[Sidenote: Collapse of the rebellion.]
Now in Maryland there was a superficial resemblance to these
proceedings, in so far as the supreme power was lodged in the assembly
and the governor accepted his commission from it. But there was a
profound difference in the two situations, and while the people of
Virginia read their own situation correctly, Fendall and his abettors
did not. The assembly at Jamestown was predominantly Cavalier in its
composition and in full sympathy with the expected restoration of the
monarchy; and its proceedings were promptly sanctioned by Charles
II., whose royal commission to Sir William Berkeley came in October
of the same year. On the other hand, the assembly at St. Mary’s
was predominantly Puritan in its composition, and one of its most
influential members was that William Fuller who five years before had
defeated Lord Baltimore’s governor in the battle of the Severn, and
executed drumhead justice upon several of his adherents. The election
had been managed in the interest of the Puritans, as is shown by
Fuller’s county, Anne Arundel, returning seven delegates, whereas it
was only entitled to four. The collusion between Fuller and Fendall
is unmistakable. For two years the Puritans had acquiesced in Lord
Baltimore’s rule, because they had not dared resist Cromwell. Now
if Puritanism were to remain uppermost in England, they might once
more hope to overthrow him; if the monarchy were to be restored, the
prospect was also good, for it did not seem likely that Charles II.
would befriend the man whom Cromwell had befriended. Here was the fatal
error of Fendall and his people. Charles II. had long ago recovered
from his little tiff with Cecilius for appointing a Parliamentarian
governor, and as a Romanist at heart he was more than ready to show
favour to Catholics. Thus with rare good fortune--defended in turn by
a king and a lord protector, and by another king, and aided at every
turn by his own consummate tact, did Cecilius triumphantly weather
all the storms. When the news of Fendall’s treachery reached London
it found Charles II. seated firmly on the throne. All persons were at
once instructed to respect Lord Baltimore’s authority over Maryland,
and Sir William Berkeley was ordered to bring the force of Virginia
to his aid if necessary; Cecilius appointed his brother Philip to the
governorship; the rebellion instantly collapsed, and its ringleaders
were seized. Vengeance was denounced against Fendall and Fuller and
all who had been concerned in the execution of Baltimore’s men after
the battle of the Severn. Philip Calvert was instructed to hang them
all, and to proclaim martial law if necessary, but on second thought
so much severity was deemed impolitic. Such punishments were inflicted
as banishment, confiscation, and loss of civil rights, but nobody was
put to death. Such was the end of Fendall’s rebellion. In the course of
the year 1661, Cecilius sent over his only son, Charles Calvert, to be
governor of the palatinate, while Philip remained as chancellor; and
this arrangement continued for many years.
[Sidenote: The Quakers.]
Fendall’s administration had witnessed two events of especial interest,
in the arrival of Quakers in the colony and of Dutchmen in a part of
its territory. Quakers came from Massachusetts and Virginia, where they
suffered so much ill usage, into Maryland, where they also got into
trouble, though it does not appear that the objections against them
were of a religious nature. The peculiar notions of the Quakers often
brought them into conflict with governments on purely civil grounds,
as when they refused to be enrolled in the militia, or to serve on
juries, or give testimony under oath. For such reasons, two zealous
Quaker preachers, Thurston and Cole, were arrested and tried in 1658,
but it does not appear that they were treated with harshness or that at
any time there was anything like persecution of Quakers in Maryland.
When George Fox visited the country in 1672, his followers there were
numerous and held regular meetings.
[Sidenote: The Swedes and Dutch.]
[Sidenote: Augustine Herman.]
[Sidenote: Bohemia Manor.]
With the arrival of Quakers there appeared on the northeastern horizon
a menace from the Dutch, and incidents occurred that curiously
affected the future growth of Lord Baltimore’s princely domain.
Since 1638 parties of Swedes had been establishing themselves on the
western bank of the Delaware River, on and about the present sites
of Newcastle and Wilmington. This region they called New Sweden,
but in 1655 Peter Stuyvesant despatched from Manhattan a force of
Dutchmen which speedily overcame the little colony. Stuyvesant then
divided his conquest into two provinces, which he called New Amstel
and Altona, and appointed a governor over each. It was now Maryland’s
turn to be aroused. The governor of New Netherland had no business to
be setting up jurisdictions west of Delaware River. That whole region
was expressly included in Lord Baltimore’s charter. Accordingly the
Dutch governors of New Amstel and Altona were politely informed that
they must either acknowledge Baltimore’s jurisdiction or leave the
country. This led to Stuyvesant’s sending an envoy to St. Mary’s, to
discuss the proprietorship of the territory in question. The person
selected for this business was a man of no ordinary mould, a native
of Prague, with the German name of Augustine Herman. He came to New
Amsterdam at some time before 1647, in which year he was appointed one
of the Nine Men whose business it was to advise the governor. This
Herman was a man of broad intelligence, rare executive ability, and
perfect courage. He was by profession a land surveyor and draughtsman,
but in the course of his life he accumulated a great fortune by trade.
His portrait, painted from life, shows us a masterful face, clean
shaven, with powerful jaw, firm-set lips, imperious eyes, and long hair
flowing upon his shoulders over a red coat richly ruffled.[103] Such
was the man whom Stuyvesant chose to dispute Lord Baltimore’s title to
the smiling fields of New Amstel and Altona. He well understood the
wisdom of claiming everything, and when the discovery of North America
by John Cabot was cited against him, he boldly set up the priority
of Christopher Columbus as giving the Spaniards a claim upon the
whole hemisphere. To the Dutch, he said, as victors over their wicked
stepmother Spain, her claims had naturally passed! One is inclined
to wonder if such an argument was announced without something like a
twinkle in those piercing eyes. At all events, it was not long before
the astute ambassador abandoned his logic and changed his allegiance.
Romantic tradition has assigned various grounds for Herman’s leaving
New Amsterdam. Whether it was because of a quarrel with Stuyvesant, and
whether the quarrel had its source in love of woman or love of pelf,
we know not; but in 1660 Herman wrote to Lord Baltimore, asking for
the grant of a manor, and offering to pay for it by making a map of
Maryland. The proposal was accepted. The map, which was completed after
careful surveys extending over ten years and was engraved in London in
1673, with a portrait of Herman attached, is still preserved in the
British Museum. For this important service the enterprising surveyor
received an estate on the Elk River, which by successive accretions
came to include more than 20,000 acres.[104] It is still called by
the name which Herman gave it, Bohemia Manor. There he grew immensely
rich by trade with the Indians along the very routes which Claiborne
had hoped to monopolize, and there in his great manor house, in spite
of matrimonial infelicities like those of Socrates and the elder Mr.
Weller, he lived to a good old age and dispensed a regal hospitality,
in which the items of rum and brandy, strong beer, sound wines, and
“best cider out of the orchard” were not forgotten. Herman’s tomb is
still to be seen hard by the vestiges of his house and his deer park.
Six of his descendants succeeded him as lords of Bohemia Manor, until
its legal existence came to an end in 1789. The fact is not without
interest that Margaret Shippen, wife of Benedict Arnold, counted among
her ancestors the sturdy Augustine Herman.
[Sidenote: The Labadists.]
A noteworthy episode in the history of Bohemia Manor is the settlement
of a small sect of Mystics, known as Labadists, from the name of their
French founder, Jean de Labadie. Their professed aim was to restore the
simplicity of life and doctrine attributed to the primitive Christians.
Their views of spiritual things were brightened by an inward light,
their drift of thought was toward antinomianism, they held all goods
in common, and their notions about marriage were such as to render
them liable to be molested on civil grounds. The persistent recurrence
of such little communities, age after age, each one ignorant of the
existence of its predecessors and supremely innocent of all knowledge
of the world, is one of the interesting freaks in religious history.
Even in the tolerant atmosphere of Holland these Labadists led an
uneasy life, and in 1679 two of their brethren, Sluyter and Dankers,
came over to New York, to make fresh converts and find a new home. One
of their first converts was Ephraim, the weak-minded son of Augustine
Herman, and it may have been through the son’s persuasion that the
father was induced to grant nearly 4,000 acres of his manor to the
community. A company settled there in 1683 and were joined by persons
from New York. As often happens in such communities the affair ended
in a despotism, in which the people were ruled with a rod of iron by
Brother Sluyter and his wife, who set themselves up as a kind of abbot
and abbess. On Sluyter’s death in 1722 the sect seems to have come to
an end, but to this day the land is known as “the Labadie tract.”
[Sidenote: The Duke of York takes possession of the Delaware
settlements.]
Long before Augustine Herman’s death, Lord Baltimore had granted him a
second estate, called the manor of St. Augustine, extending eastward
from Bohemia Manor to the shore of Delaware Bay; but to the greater
part of it the Herman family never succeeded in making good their
title, for the territory passed out of Lord Baltimore’s domain. Once
more the heedlessness and bad faith of the Stuart kings, in their
grants of American lands, was exhibited, and as Baltimore’s patent had
once encroached upon the Virginians, so now he was encroached upon by
the Duke of York and presently by William Penn. The province of New
Netherland, which Charles II. took from the Dutch in 1664 and bestowed
upon his brother as lord proprietor, extended from the upper waters
of the Hudson down to Cape May at the entrance to Delaware Bay, but
did not include a square foot of land on the west shore of the bay,
since all that was expressly included in the Maryland charter. It was
not to be expected that Swedes or Dutchmen would pay any heed to that
English charter; but it might have been supposed that Charles II. and
his brother James would have shown some respect for a contract made by
their father. Not so, however. The little Swedish and Dutch settlements
on the west shore were at once taken in charge by officers of the Duke
of York, as if they had belonged to his domain of New Netherland, while
the southern part of that domain was granted by him, under the name of
New Jersey, to his friends, Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret.
[Sidenote: Charter of Pennsylvania.]
Nothing more of consequence occurred for several years, in the course
of which interval, in 1675, Cecilius Calvert died and was succeeded
by his son Charles, third Lord Baltimore. Not long afterward William
Penn appeared on the scene, at first as trustee of certain Quaker
estates in New Jersey, but presently as ruler over a princely domain
of his own. The Quakers had been ill treated in many of the colonies;
why not found a colony in which they should be the leaders? The
suggestion offered to Charles II. an easy way of paying an old debt
of £16,000 owed by the crown to the estate of the late Admiral Penn,
and accordingly William was made lord proprietor of a spacious country
lying west of the Delaware River and between Maryland to the south and
the Five Nations to the north. His charter created a government very
similar to Lord Baltimore’s but far less independent, for laws passed
in Pennsylvania must be sent to England for the royal assent, and the
British government, which fifty years before had expressly renounced
the right to lay taxes upon Marylanders, now expressly asserted the
right to lay taxes upon Pennsylvanians. This change marks the growth
of the imperial and anti-feudal sentiment in England, the feeling that
privileges like those accorded to the Calverts were too extensive to be
enjoyed by subjects.
[Sidenote: Boundaries between Penn and Baltimore.]
According to Lord Baltimore’s charter his northern boundary was the
fortieth parallel of latitude, which runs a little north of the
site of Philadelphia. The latitude was marked by a fort erected on
the Susquehanna River, and when the crown lawyers consulted with
Baltimore’s attorneys, they were informed that all questions of
encroachment would be avoided if the line were to be run just north
of this fort, so as to leave it on the Maryland side.[105] Penn made
no objection to this, but when the charter was drawn up no allusion
was made to the Susquehanna fort. Penn’s southern boundary was made to
begin twelve miles north of Newcastle, thence to curve northwestward to
the fortieth parallel and follow that parallel. Measurement soon showed
that such a boundary would give Penn’s province inadequate access to
the sea. His position as a royal favourite enabled him to push the
whole line twenty miles to the south. Even then he was disappointed in
not gaining the head of Chesapeake Bay, and, being bent upon securing
somewhere a bit of seacoast, he persuaded the Duke of York to give
him the land on the west shore of Delaware Bay which the Dutch had
once taken from the Swedes. By further enlargement the area of this
grant became that of the present state of Delaware, the whole of which
was thus, in spite of vehement protest, carved out of the original
Maryland. In such matters there was not much profit in contending
against princes.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Old manors in Maryland.]
In the course of this narrative we have had occasion to mention the
grants of Bohemia and other manors. In order that we should understand
the course of Maryland history before and after the Revolution of 1689,
some description of the manorial system is desirable. One of the most
interesting features in the early history of English America is the way
in which different phases of English institutions were reproduced in
the different colonies. As the ancient English town meeting reached a
high development in New England, as the system of close vestries was
very thoroughly worked out in Virginia, so the old English manor was
best preserved in Maryland. In 1636 Lord Baltimore issued instructions
that every grant of 2,000 acres or more should be erected into a manor,
with court baron and court leet. “The manor was the land on which the
lord and his tenants lived, and bound up with the land were also the
rights of government which the lord possessed over the tenants, and
they over one another.”[106] Such manors were scattered all over
tidewater Maryland. Mr. Johnson, in his excellent essay on the subject,
cites at random the names of “George Evelin, lord of the manor of
Evelinton, in St. Mary’s county; Marmaduke Tilden, lord of Great Oak
Manor, and Major James Ringgold, lord of the manor on Eastern Neck,
both in Kent; Giles Brent, lord of Kent Fort, on Kent Island; George
Talbot, lord of Susquehanna Manor, in Cecil county,” and he mentions a
sale, in 1767, of “twenty-seven manors, embracing 100,000 acres.”
[Sidenote: Life in the manors.]
In the life upon these manors there was a kind of patriarchal
completeness; each was a little world in itself. There was the great
house with its generous dining-hall, its panelled wainscoat, and
its family portraits; there was the chapel, with the graves of the
lord’s family beneath its pavement and the graves of common folk out
in the churchyard; there were the smoke-houses, and the cabins of
negro slaves; and here and there one might come upon the dwellings of
white freehold tenants, with ample land about them held on leases of
one-and-twenty years. In establishing these manors, Lord Baltimore had
an eye to the military defence of his colony. It was enacted in 1641
that the grant of a manor should be the reward for every settler who
should bring with him from England twenty able-bodied men, each armed
with a musket, a sword and belt, a bandelier and flask, ten pounds of
powder, and forty pounds of bullets and shot.
[Sidenote: The court leet.]
These manors were little self-governing communities. The court leet was
like a town meeting. All freemen could take part in it. It enacted
by-laws, elected constables, bailiffs, and other local officers, set
up stocks and pillory, and sentenced offenders to stand there, for
judicial and legislative functions were united in this court leet. It
empanelled its jury, and with the steward of the manor presiding as
judge, it visited with fine or imprisonment the thief, the vagrant, the
poacher, the fraudulent dealer.
[Sidenote: The court baron.]
Side by side with the court leet was the court baron, an equally free
institution in which all the freehold tenants sat as judges determining
questions of law and of fact. This court decided all disputes between
the lord and his tenants concerning such matters as rents, or trespass,
or escheats. Here actions for debt were tried, and transfers of land
were made with the ancient formalities.
[Sidenote: Changes wrought by slavery.]
These admirable manorial institutions were brought to Maryland in
precisely the same shape in which they had long existed in England.
They were well adapted for preserving liberty and securing order in
rural communities before the days of denser population and more rapid
communication. In our progress away from those earlier times we have
gained vastly, but it is by no means sure that we have not also lost
something. In the decadence of the Maryland manors there was clearly an
element of loss, for that decadence was chiefly brought about by the
growth of negro slavery, which made it more profitable for the lord of
the manor to cultivate the whole of it himself, instead of leasing
the whole or parts of it to tenants. Slavery also affixed a stigma
upon free labour and drove it off the field, very much as a debased
currency invariably drives out a sound currency. From these causes the
class of freehold tenants gradually disappeared, “the feudal society
of the manor” was transformed into “the patriarchal society of the
plantation,”[107] and the arbitrary fiat of a master was substituted
for the argued judgments of the court leet.
[Sidenote: A fierce spirit of liberty.]
Among the people of Lord Baltimore’s colony, as among English-speaking
people in general, one might observe a fierce spirit of political
liberty coupled with engrained respect for law and a disposition to
achieve results by argument rather than by violence. Such a temper
leads to interminable parliamentary discussion, and in the reign of
Charles II. the tongues of the Maryland assembly were seldom quiet.
As compared with the stormy period before 1660, the later career of
Cecilius and that of his son Charles down to the Revolution of 1689
seem peaceful, and there are writers who would persuade us that when
the catastrophe arrived, it came quite unheralded, like lightning
from a cloudless sky. A perusal of the transactions in the Maryland
assembly, however, shows that the happy period was not so serene as we
have been told, but there were fleecy specks on the horizon, with now
and then a faint growl of distant thunder.
[Sidenote: Cecilius and Charles.]
That the proprietary government had many devoted friends is not
to be denied, and it is clear that some of the opposition to it
was merely factious. There is no doubt as to the lofty personal
qualities of the second Lord Baltimore, his courage and sagacity, his
disinterested public spirit, his devotion to the noble ideal which he
had inherited. As for Charles, the third lord, he seems to have been
a paler reflection of his father, like him for good intentions, but
far inferior in force. The period of eight-and-twenty years which we
are considering, from 1661 to 1689, is divided exactly in the middle
by the death of Cecilius in 1675. Before that date we have Charles
administering the affairs of Maryland subject to the approval of his
father in London; after that date Charles is supreme.
[Sidenote: Sources of discontent.]
[Sidenote: The family party]
Now the circumstances were such that father and son would have had
to be more than human to carry on the government without serious
opposition. In the first place, they were Catholics, ruling a
population in which about one twelfth part were Catholics, while
one sixth belonged to the Church of England, and three fourths were
dissenting Puritans. To most of the people the enforced toleration of
Papists must have seemed like keeping on terms of polite familiarity
with the devil. In the second place, the proprietor was apt to appoint
his own relatives and trusted friends to the highest offices, and such
persons were usually Catholics. As these high officers composed the
council, or upper house of the assembly, the proprietor had a permanent
and irreversible majority in that body. When we read the minutes of a
council composed of Governor Charles Calvert, his uncle Philip, his
cousin William, Mr. Baker Brooke, who had married cousin William’s
sister, Mr. William Talbot, who was another cousin, and Mr. Henry
Coursey, who was uncle Philip’s bosom friend, we seem to be assisting
at a pleasant little family party. Again, when the governor marries
a widow, and each of his five stepchildren marries, and we are told
that “every one who became related to the family soon obtained an
office,”[108] we begin to realize that there was coming to be quite a
clan to be supported from the revenues of a small province. Nepotism
may not be the blackest of crimes, but it is pretty certain to breed
trouble.
[Sidenote: Conflict in the assembly.]
The governing power opposed to this family party was the House of
Burgesses, or lower house of assembly. Those freeholding tenants
and small proprietors who had brought with them from England their
time-honoured habits of self-government in court leet and court baron,
represented the democratic element in the constitution of Maryland,
as the upper house represented the oligarchical element. The history
of the period we are considering is the history of a constitutional
struggle between the two houses. We have seen that it was not a part
of the proprietor’s original scheme that the assembly should take
an initiative in legislation, and that on this ground he refused
his assent to the first group of laws sent to him in 1635 for his
signature. Apparently it was his idea that his burgesses should simply
comment on acts passed by their betters, as on old Merovingian fields
of March the magnates legislated while the listening warriors clashed
their shields in token of approval. If such was the first notion of
Cecilius he promptly relinquished it and gracefully conceded the
claim of the assembly to take the initiative in legislation. But the
veto power, without any limitation of time, was a prerogative which
he would not give up. At any moment he could use this veto power to
repeal a law, and this was felt by the colonists to be a grievance.
On such constitutional matters, when we read of antagonism between
the proprietor and the assembly, it is the burgesses that we are to
understand as in opposition, since the council was almost sure to
uphold the proprietor.
[Sidenote: Rights of the burgesses.]
One point upon which the upper house always insisted was that the
burgesses were not a house of commons with inherent rights of
legislation, but that they owed their existence to the charter, with
powers that must be limited as strictly as possible. But this point the
burgesses would never concede. They were Englishmen, with the rights
and privileges of Englishmen, and it was an inherent right in English
representatives to make laws for their constituents; accordingly
they insisted that they were, to all intents and purposes, a house
of commons for Maryland.[109] On one occasion a clergyman, Charles
Nichollet, preached a sermon, in which he warned the burgesses not to
forget that they had no real liberty unless they could pass laws that
were agreeable to their conscience; as a house of commons they must
keep their hand upon the purse strings and consider if the taxes were
not too heavy. The family party of the upper house called such talk
seditious, and the parson was roundly fined for preaching politics.
[Sidenote: Cessation Act of 1668.]
But it would be grossly unfair to the proprietor to overlook the fact
that on some important occasions he took sides with the representatives
of the people against his own little family party. As an instance may
be cited the act of 1666 concerning the “Cessation of Tobacco.” As the
fees of public officials were paid in tobacco, a large crop was liable
to diminish their value, and accordingly the upper house wished to
contract the currency by an act stopping all planting of tobacco for
one year. The lower house objected to this, but after a long dispute
was induced to give consent, provided Virginia should pass a similar
act. The speaker, however, wrote to Cecilius urging him to veto the
act, and he did so.[110]
[Sidenote: Sheriffs.]
The occasions of difference between the two houses were many and
various. One concerned the relief of Quakers. In Rhode Island, New
Jersey, and Jamaica, they were allowed to make affirmations instead of
taking oaths. When the Quakers of Maryland petitioned for a similar
relief, the burgesses granted it, but the council refused to concur. A
more important matter was the appointment of sheriffs. In addition to
the ordinary functions of the sheriff, with which we are familiar in
more modern times, these officers collected all taxes, superintended
all elections, and made out the returns. These were formidable powers,
for a dishonest or intriguing sheriff might alter the composition of
the House of Burgesses. Sheriffs were appointed by the governor, and
were in no way responsible to the county courts. The burgesses tried to
establish a check upon them by enacting that the county court should
recommend three persons out of whom the governor should choose one, and
that the sheriff thus selected should serve for one year; but the upper
house declared that such an act infringed the proprietor’s prerogative.
No check upon the sheriffs, therefore, was left to the people except
the regulating of their fees, and upon this point the burgesses were
stiff.
[Sidenote: Restriction of suffrage, 1670.]
In 1669 the disputes between the houses were more stormy than usual,
and in the election of the next year the suffrage was restricted to
freemen owning plantations of fifty acres or more, or possessed of
personal property to the amount of £50 sterling. This restriction
was not accomplished by legislation; it must have been a sheer
assertion of prerogative, either by Cecilius or by Charles acting
on his own responsibility. All that is positively known is that the
sheriffs were instructed to that effect in their writs. It is worthy
of note that a similar restriction of suffrage had just occurred in
Virginia. Perhaps Charles Calvert was imprudently taking a lesson from
Berkeley. But still worse, in summoning to the assembly the members
who had been elected, he omitted a few names, presumably those of
persons whose opposition was likely to prove inconvenient. When the
burgesses demanded the reason for this omission, Charles made a
shuffling explanation which they saw fit to accept for the moment,
and thus a precedent was created of which he was not slow to avail
himself, and from which endless bickering ensued. For the present
a house of burgesses was obtained which was much to the governor’s
liking; accordingly, instead of allowing its term to expire at the
end of a year, he simply adjourned it, and thus kept it alive until
1676,--another lesson learned from Berkeley.
[Sidenote: Death of Cecilius, 1675.]
[Sidenote: Rebellion of Davis and Pate, 1676.]
[Sidenote: Execution of Davis and Pate.]
It was this comparatively submissive assembly that in 1671 passed
the act which for eleven years had been resisted, granting to the
proprietor a royalty of two shillings on every hogshead of tobacco
exported. In return for this grant, however, the lower house obtained
some concessions. With the death of Cecilius, in 1675, the situation
was certainly changed for the worse. Now for the first time the
people of Maryland had their lord proprietor dwelling among them and
not in England; but Charles was narrower and less public-spirited
than his father, his measures were more arbitrary, and the feeling
that the country was governed in the interests of a small coterie of
Papists rapidly increased. In 1676 Maryland seemed on the point of
following Virginia into rebellion. Lord Baltimore went to England in
the spring, and by midsummer it had become evident that Bacon had able
sympathizers in Maryland. A set of manuscript archives, recently
recovered from long oblivion,[111] make it probable that but for
Bacon’s sudden death in October and the collapse of the movement in
Virginia, there would have been bloodshed in the sister colony. In
August a seditious paper was circulated, alleging grievances similar
to those of Virginia, and threatening the proprietor’s government.
Two gentlemen named Davis and Pate, with others, gathered an armed
force in Calvert county with the design of intimidating the governor
and council, and extorting from them sundry concessions. When the
governor, Thomas Notley, ordered them to disband, promising that their
demands should be duly considered at the next assembly, they refused
on the ground that the assembly had been tampered with and no longer
represented the people. As Notley afterward wrote to Lord Baltimore,
never was there a people “more replete with malignancy and frenzy than
our people were about August last, and they wanted but a monstrous head
to their monstrous body.” But this incipient Davis and Pate rebellion
derived its strength from the Bacon rebellion, and the collapse of the
one extinguished the other. Davis and Pate were hanged, at which Notley
tells us the people were “terrified,” and so peace was preserved.
[Sidenote: George Talbot.]
An episode which occurred before the final catastrophe throws some
light upon the relations of parties at the time. An Irish kinsman of
Lord Baltimore’s, by name George Talbot, obtained in 1680 an extensive
grant of land on the Susquehanna River, where he lived in feudal
style, with a force of Irish retainers at his beck and call, hunting
venison, drinking strong waters, browbeating Indians, and picking
quarrels with William Penn’s newly arrived followers. In 1684 Lord
Baltimore went again to England, leaving his son, Benedict Calvert, in
the governorship; and as Benedict was a mere boy, there was a little
regency of which George Talbot was the head. Now the exemption of
Maryland from king’s taxes did not extend to custom-house duties. These
were collected by crown officers and paid into the royal treasury;
and the collectors were apt to behave themselves, as in all ages
and countries, like enemies of the human race. Between them and the
proprietary government there was deep-seated antipathy. They accused
Lord Baltimore of hindering them in their work, and this complaint
led the king to pounce upon him with a claim for £2,500 alleged to
have been lost to the revenue through his interferences. One of these
collectors, Christopher Rousby, was especially overbearing, and some
called him a rascal. Late in 1684 a small ship of the royal navy
was lying at St. Mary’s, and one day, while Rousby was in the cabin
drinking toddies with the captain, Talbot came on board, and a quarrel
ensued, in the course of which Talbot drew a dagger and plunged it into
Rousby’s heart. The captain refused to allow Talbot to go ashore to
be tried by a council of his relatives; he carried him to Virginia and
handed him over to the governor, Lord Howard of Effingham. Talbot was
imprisoned not far from the site where once had stood the red man’s
village, Werowocomoco, where he was in imminent danger of the gallows,
or perhaps of having to pay his whole fortune as a bribe to the greedy
Howard. But Talbot’s brave wife, with two trusty followers, sailed down
the whole length of Chesapeake Bay and up York River in a boat. On a
dark winter’s night they succeeded in freeing Talbot from his jail,
and returning as they came, carried him off exulting to Susquehanna
Manor. For the sake of appearances his friends in the Maryland council
thought it necessary to proclaim the hue and cry after him, and there
is a local tradition that he was for a while obliged to hide in a cave,
where a couple of his trained hawks kept him alive by fetching him
game--canvas-back ducks, perhaps, and terrapin--from the river! It is
not likely, however, that the search for him was zealous or thorough.
For some time he staid unmolested in his manor house, but presently
deemed it prudent to go and surrender himself. The council refused to
bring him to trial in any court held in the king’s name, until a royal
order came from England to send him over there for trial, but before
this was done Lord Baltimore interceded with James II. and secured a
pardon.
[Sidenote: A “Complaint from Heaven.”]
The general effect of this Talbot affair was to weaken the palatinate
government by making it appear lukewarm in its allegiance and remiss
in its duties to the crown. The custom-house became a subject of
hot discussion, and the charges of defrauding the royal revenue were
reiterated with effect. Some time before this, a remarkable pamphlet
had appeared with the title, “Complaint from Heaven with a Huy and Crye
and a petition out of Virginia and Maryland.” It was evidently written
by some Puritan friend of Fendall’s. After a bitter denunciation of the
palatinate administration some measures of relief were suggested, one
of which was that the king should assume the government of Maryland and
appoint the governors. The time was now at hand when this suggestion
was to bear fruit.
[Sidenote: The anti-Catholic panic.]
The forced abdication of James II. in 1688, with his flight to France,
was the occasion of an anti-Catholic panic throughout the greater part
of English America. It was as certain as anything future could be that
the antagonism between Louis XIV. and William of Orange would at once
break out in a great war, in which French armies from Canada would
invade the English colonies. There was a widespread fear that Papists
in these colonies would turn traitors and assist the enemy. It was in
this scare that Leisler’s rebellion in New York originated, although
there too a conflict between democracy and oligarchy was concerned,
somewhat as in Maryland. Everywhere the ordinary dread of Papists
became more acute. It was soon after this time that the clause of an
act depriving Roman Catholics of the franchise found its way into the
Rhode Island statutes, the only instance in which that commonwealth
ever allowed itself to depart from the noble principles of Roger
Williams.[112]
[Sidenote: Causes of the panic.]
While there were absurdities in this anti-Catholic panic, it contained
an element that was not unreasonable. Throughout the century the
Papist counter-reformation had made alarming progress. In France, the
strongest nation in the world, it had just scored a final victory in
the expulsion of the Huguenots. In Germany the Thirty Years’ War had
left Protestantism weaker than it had been at the death of Martin
Luther. England had barely escaped from having a Papist dynasty
settled upon her; nor was it yet sure that she had escaped. A caprice
of fortune might drive King William out as suddenly as he had come.
Ireland still held out for the Stuarts, and there in May, 1689,
James II. landed with French troops, in the hope of winning back his
crown. The officer who held Ireland for James was Richard Talbot,
Duke of Tyrconnel, a distant relative and intimate friend of Lord
Baltimore. Under these circumstances a panic was natural. There were
absurd rumours of a plot between Catholics and Indians to massacre
Protestants. More reasonable was the jealous eagerness with which men
watched the council to see what it would do about proclaiming William
and Mary. Lord Baltimore was prompt in sending from London directions
to the council to proclaim them; whatever his political leanings might
have been, he could in prudence hardly do less. But the messenger died
on the voyage, and a second messenger was too late.
[Sidenote: Coode’s _coup d’état_, 1689.]
[Sidenote: Overthrow of the palatinate, 1691.]
Meanwhile, in April, 1689, there was formed “An Association in arms for
the defense of the Protestant Religion, and for asserting the right of
King William and Queen Mary to the Province of Maryland and all the
English Dominions.” The president of this association was John Coode,
who had married a daughter of that Thomas Gerrard who took a part in
Fendall’s rebellion. Another leader, who had married another daughter
of Gerrard, was Nehemiah Blackiston, collector of customs, who had
been foremost in accusing the Calverts of obstructing his work. Others
were Kenelm Cheseldyn, speaker of the house, and Henry Jowles, colonel
of the militia. As the weeks passed by, and news of the proclaiming
of William and Mary by one colony after another arrived, and still
the council took no action in the matter, people grew impatient and
the association kept winning recruits. At last, toward the end of
July, Coode appeared before St. Mary’s at the head of 700 armed men.
No resistance was offered. The council fled to a fort on the Patuxent
River, where they were besieged and in a few days surrendered. Coode
detained all outward-bound ships until he had prepared an account of
these proceedings to send to King William in the name of the Protestant
inhabitants of Maryland. Like the insurrection in Boston, three months
earlier, which overthrew Sir Edmund Andros, this bold stroke wore the
aspect of a rising against the deposed king in favour of the king
actually reigning. William was asked to undertake the government of
Maryland, and the whole affair met with his approval. He issued a
_scire facias_ against the Baltimore charter, and before a decision had
been reached in the court of chancery he sent out Sir Lionel Copley in
1691, to be royal governor of Maryland. In such wise was the palatinate
overturned.
[Sidenote: Oppressive enactments.]
[Sidenote: Removal of the capital to Annapolis, 1694.]
If any party in Maryland expected the millennium to follow this
revolution, they were disappointed. Taxes were straightway levied
for the support of the Church of England, the further immigration
of Catholics was prohibited under heavy penalties, and the public
celebration of the mass was strictly forbidden within the limits of the
colony. When Governor Nicholson arrived upon the scene, in 1694, he
summoned his first assembly to meet at the Anne Arundel town formerly
known as Providence; and in the course of that session it was decided
to move the seat of government thither from St. Mary’s. The purpose
was to deal a blow at the old capital, the social and political centre
of Catholicism in Maryland. Bitter indignation was felt at St. Mary’s,
and a petition signed by the mayor and other municipal officers,
with a number of the freemen, was sent to the assembly, praying that
the change might be reconsidered. The House of Burgesses returned an
answer, brutal and vulgar in tone, which shows the wellnigh incredible
virulence of political passion in those days.[113] The blow was final,
so far as St. Mary’s was concerned. Her civic life had evidently
depended upon the presence of the government. At one time, with its
fifty or sixty houses, the little city founded by Leonard Calvert was
much larger than Jamestown; but after the removal it dwindled till
little was left save a memory. The name of the new capital on the
Severn was doubtless felt to be cumbrous, for it was presently changed
to Annapolis,[114] the first of a set of queer hybrid compounds with
which the map of the United States is besprinkled. Nicholson wished to
crown the work of founding a new capital by establishing a school or
college there, and accordingly in 1696 King William School was founded.
For many years the income for supporting this and other free schools
was derived from an export duty on furs.[115]
[Sidenote: Unpopularity of the establishment of the Episcopal church.]
[Sidenote: Episcopal parsons.]
The change of the capital was perhaps bewailed only by the Catholics
and others who were most strongly attached to the proprietary
government. But the change in ecclesiastical policy disgusted
everybody. Taxation for the support of the Episcopal church, of which
only a small part of the population were members, was as unpopular with
Puritans as with Papists. The Puritans, who had worked so zealously
to undermine the proprietary government, had not bargained for such a
result as this. The manner in which the church revenue was raised was
also extremely irritating. The rate was forty pounds of tobacco per
poll, so that rich and poor paid alike. A more inequitable and odious
measure could hardly have been devised. The statute, however, with the
dullness that usually characterizes the work of legislative bodies,
forgot to specify the quality of tobacco in which the rates should be
paid. Naturally, therefore, they were paid in the vilest unmarketable
stuff that could be found, and the Episcopal clergymen found it hard
to keep the wolf from the door. There was thus no inducement for
competent ministers to come to Maryland, and those that were sent from
England were of the poorest sort which the English Church in that
period of its degradation could provide. Dr. Thomas Chandler, of New
Jersey, who visited the eastern shore of Maryland in 1753, wrote to
the Bishop of London as follows: “The general character of the clergy
... is wretchedly bad.... It would really, my lord, make the ears of
a sober heathen tingle to hear the stories that were told me by many
serious persons of several clergymen in the neighbourhood of the parish
where I visited; but I still hope that some abatement may be fairly
made on account of the prejudices of those who related them.”[116] The
Swedish botanist, Peter Kalm, who visited Maryland about the same time,
tells us that it was a common trick with a parson, when performing
the marriage service for a poor couple, to halt midway and refuse to
go on till a good round fee had been handed over to him.[117] On such
occasions it may be presumed that the tobacco was of unimpeachable
quality.
[Sidenote: Exemption of Protestant Dissenters from civil disabilities.]
The last decade of the seventeenth century was a period of ceaseless
wrangling over church matters. Almost every year saw some new act
passed from which its opponents succeeded in causing the assent of
the crown to be withheld. The government of William III. was not
ill-disposed toward a policy of toleration, except toward Papists.
Accordingly, although the act of 1692 remained substantially in force
until the American Revolution, it was so qualified in 1702 as to exempt
Quakers and other Protestant Dissenters from civil disabilities, and to
allow them the free exercise of public worship in their own churches or
meeting-houses. They were not exempted, however, from the poll tax for
the maintenance of the Episcopal church.
[Sidenote: Seymour’s reprimand to the Catholic priests.]
For the Catholics there was neither exemption nor privilege; they were
shamefully insulted and vexed. In the autumn of 1704 two priests were
summoned before the council: the one, William Hunter, was accused
of consecrating a chapel, which he answered with a plea that was
in part denial and in part “confession and avoidance;” the other,
Robert Brooke, acknowledged the truth of the charge that he had said
mass at the chapel of St. Mary’s. The request of these gentlemen
for legal counsel was refused. As the complaint against them was a
first complaint, they were let off with a reprimand, which the newly
installed governor, John Seymour, thus politely administered: “It is
the unhappy temper of you and all your tribe to grow insolent upon
civility and never know how to use it, and yet of all people you have
the least reason for considering that, if the necessary laws that are
made were let loose, they are sufficient to crush you, and which (if
your arrogant principles have not blinded you) you must need to dread.
You might, methinks, be content to live quietly as you may, and let
the exercise of your superstitious vanities be confined to yourselves,
without proclaiming them at public times and in public places, unless
you expect by your gaudy shows and serpentine policy to amuse the
multitude and beguile the unthinking, ... an act of deceit well known
to be amongst you. But, gentlemen, be not deceived.... In plain and
few words, if you intend to live here, let me hear no more of these
things; for if I do, and they are made good against you, be assured
I’ll chastise you.... I’ll remove the evil by sending you where you may
be dealt with as you deserve.... Pray take notice that I am an English
Protestant gentleman, and can never equivocate.” After this fulmination
the governor ordered the sheriff of St. Mary’s county to lock up
the Catholic chapel and “keep the key thereof;” and for all these
proceedings the House of Burgesses declared themselves “cheerfully
thankful” to his excellency, whom they found “so generously bent to
protect her majesty’s Protestant subjects here against insolence and
growth of Popery.”[118]
[Sidenote: Cruel laws against Catholics.]
From 1704 to 1718 several ferocious acts were passed against Catholics.
A reward of £100 was offered to any informer who should “apprehend
and take” a priest and convict him of saying mass, or performing any
of a priest’s duties; and the penalty for the priest so convicted
was perpetual imprisonment. Any Catholic found guilty of keeping a
school, or taking youth to educate, was to spend the rest of his life
in prison. Any person sending his child abroad to be educated as a
Catholic was to be fined £100. No Catholic could become a purchaser of
real estate. Certain impossible test oaths were to be administered to
every Papist youth within six months after his attaining majority, and
if he should refuse to take them he was to be declared incapable of
inheriting land, and his nearest kin of Protestant faith could supplant
him. The children of a Protestant father might be forcibly taken away
from their widowed mother and placed in charge of Protestant guardians.
When extra taxes were levied for emergencies, Catholics were assessed
at double rates.[119]
[Sidenote: Crown requisitions.]
These atrocities of the statute book were a symptom of the
inflammatory effect wrought upon the English mind by the gigantic war
against Louis XIV., and immediately afterward by the wild attempt of
the so-called James III. to seize the crown of Great Britain. From the
accession of William and Mary to the end of the reign of Anne, war
against France was perpetual except for the breathing spell after the
Peace of Ryswick. This state of things brought a fresh burden upon
Maryland. War between France and Great Britain meant war between the
Algonquin tribes and the English colonies aided by the Five Nations.
The new situation was heralded in the Congress which met at New York
in 1690, at Leisler’s invitation, when Maryland was called upon to
contribute men and money toward the invasion of Canada. With the advent
of the royal government came royal requisitions for military purposes;
and although this new burden was due to the new continental situation
rather than to the change in the provincial government, it was one
thing the more to make Marylanders look back with regret to the days of
the proprietary rule.
[Sidenote: Benedict Calvert becomes a Protestant.]
[Sidenote: Revival of the palatinate, 1715.]
For four-and-twenty years after 1691 the third Lord Baltimore lived
in England in the full enjoyment of his private rights and revenues,
though deprived of his government. His son, Benedict Leonard Calvert,
was a prince who took secular views of public policy, like the great
Henry of Navarre. He preferred his palatinate to his church, and
abjured the Catholic faith, much to the wrath and disgust of his aged
father, who at once withdrew his annual allowance of £450. Benedict
was obliged to apply to the crown for a pension, which was granted
by Anne and continued by George I. until on February 20, 1715, the
situation was completely changed by the father’s death. On the petition
of Benedict, fourth Lord Baltimore, the proprietary government of
Maryland was revived in his behalf. But Benedict survived his father
only six weeks, and on April 5 his son Charles Calvert became fifth
Lord Baltimore. As Charles was a lad of sixteen, whose Romanist faith
had been forsworn with his father’s, he was forthwith proclaimed Lord
Proprietor of Maryland, and royal governors no more vexed that colony.
[Sidenote: Change in the political situation.]
Despite all troubles it had thriven under their administration. The
population had doubled within less than twenty years, and on Charles’s
accession it was reckoned at 40,700 whites and 9,500 negroes.[120]
Oppressive statutes had not prevented the Catholics from increasing
in numbers and the influence which ability and character always wield.
They were preëminently the picked men of the colony. Entire suppression
of their forms of worship had been recognized as impracticable. An act
of 1704 had allowed priests to perform religious services in Roman
Catholic families, though not in public. From this permission advantage
was taken to build chapels as part of private mansions, so that the
family with their guests might worship God after their manner, relying
upon the principle that an Englishman’s house is his castle. By some of
these people it was hoped that the restoration of the palatinate would
revive their political rights and privileges. But this renewal of the
palatinate was far from restoring the old state of things. The position
of the fifth Lord Baltimore was very different from that of the second
and third. They were Catholic princes, and were steadily supported by
two Catholic kings of England. The new proprietor was a Protestant,
dependent upon the favour of a Protestant king. The features of the old
palatinate government, therefore, which lend the chief interest to its
history, were never restored. Catholic citizens remained disfranchised,
and continued to be taxed for the support of a church which they
disapproved.
[Sidenote: Charles Carroll.]
An interesting project was entertained about this time, by Charles
Carroll and other Catholic gentlemen, of leading a migration to the
Mississippi valley, thus transferring their allegiance from Great
Britain to France. Mr. Carroll, a descendant of the famous Irish
sept of O’Carrolls, and one of the foremost citizens of Maryland, had
long been agent and receiver of rents for the third Lord Baltimore.
The scheme which he was now contemplating might have led to curious
results, but it was soon abandoned. A grant of territory by the
Arkansas River was sought from the French government,[121] but it
proved impossible to agree upon terms, and that region remained a
wilderness until several questions of world-wide importance had been
settled.
[Sidenote: Seeds of revolution.]
Though the accession of the fifth Lord Baltimore did not reinstate
the Catholics in their civil rights, it nevertheless did much to
mitigate the operation of the oppressive statutes against them. An
early symptom of Charles’s temper was shown by his reappointment of
Carroll as his agent. He went on to do such justice to Catholics as
was in his power, and under his mild and equitable rule the fierceness
of political passion was much abated. The proprietary government
retained its popularity until it came to an end with the Declaration
of Independence. But the interval of crown government from 1691 to
1715 had for the first time made the connection with Great Britain
seem oppressive, and had planted the seeds of future sympathy with the
revolutionary party in Massachusetts and Virginia. As the long struggle
with France increased in dimensions, the political questions at issue
in the several colonies became more and more continental in character.
All were more or less assimilated one to another, and thus the way
toward federation was prepared. Thus the discussions in Maryland came
more and more to deal with the rights of the colonial legislature
and British interference with them. At the same time Maryland had a
grievance of her own in the poll tax for maintaining a foreign and
hated church. In 1772 an assault upon that tax was the occasion of one
of the most remarkable legal controversies in American annals; and
the leader in that assault, Charles Carroll’s grandson and namesake,
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, soon afterward signed his name to the
Declaration of Independence.
[Sidenote: End of the palatinate.]
In 1751, after a tranquil reign, only two years of which were spent in
Maryland, Charles Calvert died in London, and was succeeded by his son
Frederick, sixth and last Lord Baltimore. After a series of Antonines,
at last came the Commodus. Frederick was a miserable debauchee,
unworthy scion of a noble race. For Maryland he cared nothing except
to spend its revenues in riotous living in London. One adventure of
his, for which he was tried and acquitted on a mere technicality, fills
one of the most loathsome chapters of the Newgate Calendar.[122] But
this villain was represented in Maryland by two excellent governors,
Horatio Sharpe from 1753 to 1768, and then Sir Robert Eden, who had
married Frederick’s younger sister. Eden remained in authority until
June 24, 1776, when he embarked for England with the good wishes of
the people. The wretched Frederick died in 1771, without legitimate
children, and the barony of Baltimore became extinct. By the will
of Charles, the fifth baron, the proprietorship of Maryland was now
vested in Frederick’s elder sister, Louisa, wife of John Browning. But
Frederick had also left a will, in which he devised the province to
an illegitimate son, called Henry Harford. This young man laid claim
to the proprietorship, but before the chancery suit was ended the
Palatinate of Maryland had become one of the thirteen United States.