England in America, 1580-1652 Part 10

[Footnote 44: Tyler, "Virginians Voting in the Colonial Period," in _William and Mary Quarterly_, VI., 9.]

[Footnote 45: "Education in Colonial Virginia," _William and Mary Quarterly_, V., 219-223, VI., 1-7, 71-86, 171-186, VII., 1-9, 65, 77.]

[Footnote 46: Neill, _Virginia Carolorum_, 112.]

[Footnote 47: "Eaton's Deed," in _William and Mary Quarterly_, XI, 19.]

CHAPTER VII

FOUNDING OF MARYLAND

(1632-1650)

The founding of Maryland was due chiefly to the personal force of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, son of Leonard Calvert. He was born near Kiplin, in Yorks.h.i.+re, about 1580, and graduated at Trinity College, Oxford, 1597. After making a tour of Europe he became the private secretary of Sir Robert Cecil, who rapidly advanced his fortunes. He served upon several missions to investigate the affairs of Ireland, was knighted in 1617, and in 1619 succeeded Sir Thomas Lake as princ.i.p.al secretary of state.

In this office he began to revolve plans of colonization in America, to which his attention was directed as a member of the Virginia Company since 1609. In 1620 he bought from Sir William Vaughan the southeastern peninsula of Newfoundland, known as Ferryland, and the next year sent some colonists thither. He supported the Spanish match; and when Charles changed his policy he obtained from the king in 1623 a charter for his province, which he called Avalon. In 1625 he resigned his secretarys.h.i.+p and openly avowed his adherence to the church of Rome; but the king, as a mark of favor, raised him to the Irish peerage, with the t.i.tle of Baron of Baltimore, after a small town of that name in Ireland.[1]

Baltimore returned to his plans of colonization, and in 1627 went to Newfoundland with his wife and children. But the country proved too cold for him and he determined to "s.h.i.+ft" to a warmer climate.

Accordingly, in August, 1629, he wrote to the king for a "grant of a precinct of land in Virginia," with the same privileges as those which King James gave him in Newfoundland.[2] Without waiting for a reply he left Avalon, and in October, 1629, arrived in Virginia, where the governor, Dr. John Pott, and his council received him politely but coldly. Neither his religion nor his past career as a court favorite, nor the design which he made known of establis.h.i.+ng an independent state within the confines of Virginia, commended him to the people of Jamestown.

Naturally, they wished to get rid of him, and the council tendered him the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, which, in the various instructions from the king, they were strictly enjoined to require of all new-comers. The oath of allegiance occasioned no difficulty, but the oath of supremacy, which required Baltimore to swear that he believed the king to be "the only supreme governor in his realm in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes," was repugnant to him as a Catholic, and he declined to take it, but offered to subscribe to a modified form. This was refused, and after several weeks' sojourn Lord Baltimore sailed away to England to press his suit in person before the king.[3]

So far as the law of England stood at that time, the effect of the dissolution of the London Company was to extinguish the debts of the corporation and vest all its property undisposed of in the crown. On the other hand, there were the repeated official pledges of Charles and his father not to disturb the interest of either planter or adventurer in any part of the territory formerly conveyed by the charter of 1609.[4] Nevertheless, the king preferred law to equity, and October 30, 1629, granted to Sir Robert Heath the province of Carolana in the southern part of Virginia, between thirty-one and thirty-six degrees.[5] But there was a clause in this charter excepting any land "actually granted or in possession of any of his majesty's subjects."

About the same time Cottington, the secretary of state, was directed to answer Lord Baltimore's letter written from Newfoundland and promise him "any part of Virginia not already granted." Lord Baltimore arrived in London soon after this letter was written, and in December, 1629, pet.i.tioned to be permitted to "choose for his part" a tract south of James River and north of Carolana. A charter was made out for him in February, 1631, and would have pa.s.sed the seals but for the intervention of William Claiborne, one of those Virginia councillors who had offered the oath to Baltimore.[6]

William Claiborne, the second son of Sir Edward Claiborne, of Westmoreland County, England, went over to Virginia with Governor Wyatt in 1621 as surveyor-general of the colony. Shortly afterwards he was made a councillor, and in 1625 secretary of state of the colony.

In the Indian war, which began with the ma.s.sacre in 1622, he was appointed general, and in 1629 received lands in the Pamunkey Neck for valuable military service. Active and fearless, he engaged with great success in the trade for furs in the bay, and was recognized as the foremost man in Virginia. Sent in May, 1630, by the Virginia council to watch the movements of Lord Baltimore, he co-operated in England with ex-Governor Francis West, of Virginia, Sir John Wolstenholme, and other gentlemen who wished the restoration of the London Company.

Aided by these friends, Claiborne defeated the proposed grant, but Baltimore persevered, and, in April, 1632, received from the crown a patent for a portion of the Virginia territory lying north of Point Comfort, and having for bounds the ocean, the fortieth parallel of north lat.i.tude, the meridian of the western fountain of the Potomac, the southern bank of the Potomac River, and a line drawn east from Watkins Point. In the grant the land was described as "hitherto unsettled and occupied only by barbarians ignorant of G.o.d." The king first proposed to call it Mariana, in honor of his wife, Henrietta Maria, but on Baltimore objecting that it was the name of a Spanish historian who had written against the doctrine of pa.s.sive obedience, Charles modified the appellation, and said, "Let it be called Terra Mariae--Maryland."[7]

April 15, 1632, George Calvert died, and the charter was made out in the name of his eldest son, Cecilius, and was signed by the king, June 20, 1632. Cecilius Calvert, named after Sir Robert Cecil, was born in 1605, and in 1621 entered Trinity College, Oxford University. He married Anne Arundel, daughter of Lord Thomas Arundel, of Wardour. As Cecilius, unlike his father, never held public positions in England, his character is best revealed by his conduct of his province in America, which shows him to have been a man of consummate prudence and tact.

Baltimore's grant called forth a strong remonstrance from members of the Virginia Company and all the leading planters in Virginia, including Claiborne. The matter was referred by the king to the Commissioners for Foreign Plantations, who heard the complaint, and July 3, 1633, decided to "leave Lord Baltimore to his patent" and "the other partie to the course of the law."[8] This certainly meant a decision against the wholesale claim of Virginia to the ancient limits, and was deemed by Lord Baltimore as authorizing him to go on with his settlement; and his patent authorized a form of government entirely different from anything yet tried in America.

The English colonies of Virginia and Ma.s.sachusetts were founded by joint-stock companies really or ostensibly for profit. After the suppression of the London Company in 1624, the powers of government in Virginia devolved upon the king, and the government was called a crown government. Had Charles been a Spanish or French king he would have appointed an absolute governor who would have tyrannized over the people. But Charles, as an English king, admitted the colonists into a share of the government by permitting them to elect one of the branches of the law-making body. This concession effectually secured the liberties of the people, for the House of Burgesses, possessing the sole right to originate laws, became in a short time the most influential factor of the government.

Baltimore's government for Maryland, on the other hand, was to be a palatinate similar to the bishopric of Durham, in England, which took its origin when border warfare with Scotland prevailed, and the king found it necessary to invest the bishop, as ruler of the county, with exceptionally high powers for the protection of the kingdom. Durham was the solitary surviving instance in England of the county palatinate, so called because the rulers had in their counties _jura regalia_ as fully as the king had in his palace. In Durham the bishop had the sole power of pardoning offences, appointing judges and other officers, coining money, and granting t.i.tles of honor and creating courts. In the other counties of England all writs ran in the king's name, but in Durham they ran in the bishop's. The county had no representation in the House of Commons, and were it not that the bishop was a member of the House of Lords, an officer of the church, paid taxes into the national treasury, and had to submit to appeals to the court of exchequer in London, in cases to which he was a party, he was, to all intents and purposes, a king, and his county an independent nation.

Baltimore by his charter was made even more independent of the king of England than the bishop, for neither he nor his province had any taxes to pay into the British treasury, and he held his territory in free and common socage by the delivery of two Indian arrows yearly at the palace of Windsor and a promise of the fifth part of all gold and silver mined. In legislation the bishop had decidedly the advantage, for his power to make law was practically uncontrolled, while the proprietor of Maryland could only legislate "with the advice, a.s.sent, and approbation of the freemen or the greater part of them or their representatives."[9]

One cardinal feature of Lord Baltimore's colony found no expression either in the government of Durham or in his own charter. On their liberality in the question of religion the fame of both George and Cecilius Calvert most securely rests. While neither realized the sacredness of the principle of religious freedom, there is no doubt that both father and son possessed a liberality of feeling which placed them ahead of their age. Had policy been solely their motive, they would never have identified themselves with a persecuted and powerless sect in England. In the charter of Maryland, Baltimore was given "the patronage and advowsons of all churches which, with the increasing wors.h.i.+p and religion of Christ within the said region, hereafter shall happen to be built, together with the license and faculty of erecting and founding churches, chapels, and places of wors.h.i.+p in convenient and suitable places within the premises, and of causing the same to be dedicated and consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of England." This clause was far from establis.h.i.+ng religious freedom; but while it permitted Baltimore to found Anglican churches, it did not compel him to do so or prohibit him from permitting the foundation of churches of a different stamp.

About the middle of October, 1633, Baltimore's two s.h.i.+ps got under way for America--the _Ark_, of three hundred tons, and the _Dove_, of sixty tons. The emigrants consisted of twenty gentlemen and about three hundred laborers; and, while most of the latter were Protestants, the governor, Leonard Calvert, brother of Lord Baltimore, was a Catholic, as were Thomas Cornwallis and Gabriel Harvey, the two councillors a.s.sociated with him in the government, and the other persons of influence on board. Among the latter were two Jesuit priests, to one of whom, Father Andrew White, we owe a charming account of the voyage. Baltimore, in his written instructions to his brother, manifested his policy of toleration, by directing him to allow no offence to be given to any Protestant on board, and to cause Roman Catholics to be silent "upon all occasions of discourse concerning matters of religion."[10]

The expedition did not get away from England without trouble. The attempt to divide the territory of Virginia was not popular, and Catholics were looked upon as dangerous persons. The effort of the emigrants to sail without subscribing the necessary oaths caused the s.h.i.+ps to be brought back by Admiral Pennington.[11] It was not until November 22, 1633, that they got off, and the s.h.i.+ps took the old route to Virginia--by way of the West Indies.

February 27, 1634, they reached Point Comfort, where the king's letter addressed to Sir John Harvey insured them a kind reception. Here they learned that the Indians of the Potomac were excited over a rumor that they were Spaniards coming to subdue the country. After a stay of eight or nine days for fresh provisions the emigrants set sail up Chesapeake Bay and soon entered the Potomac River, "in comparison with which the Thames seemed a rivulet." At its mouth they saw natives on sh.o.r.e in arms, and at night their watch-fires blazed throughout the country.

March 25 the settlers landed on St. Clement's Island and erected a cross. Then leaving the _Ark_ with most of the pa.s.sengers, Governor Calvert, with the _Dove_, and a pinnace bought at Point Comfort, explored the river and made friends with the Indians. He found that they all acknowledged the sovereignty of the "emperor of Piscataqua,"

who, relieved of his apprehensions, gave them permission to settle in the country. The final choice of a seating-place was due to Captain Henry Fleet, a well-known member of the Virginia colony, who guided them up St. George's River, about nine miles from its juncture with the Potomac; and there, on its north bank, March 27, 1634, Leonard Calvert laid out the city of St. Mary's.[12]

Though we have little record of the early social and economic conditions of the settlers, the colony appears to have been remarkably free from the sufferings and calamities that befell the Virginians.

This exemption was probably due to the following causes: there was no common stock, but the property was held in severalty; there was a proper proportion of gentlemen and laborers, few of one cla.s.s and many of the other; Virginia was near at hand and provisions and cattle could be easily secured; and they had immediate use of Indian-cleared fields, because when they arrived at St. Mary's, the Yaocomocos, hara.s.sed by the Susquehannas, were on the point of removing across the Potomac to Virginia, and were glad to sell what they had ceased to value. It seems, too, that Maryland was healthier than Virginia.

Hence, the very first year they had an excellent crop of corn, and sent a s.h.i.+p-load to New England to exchange for salt fish and other provisions.[13] Imitating the example of the Virginians, they began immediately to plant tobacco, which, as in Virginia, became the currency and leading product. Its cultivation caused the importation of a great number of servants, "divers of very good rank and quality,"[14] who, after a service of four or five years, became freemen. In the a.s.sembly of 1638 several of the servants in the first emigration took their seats as burgesses. As the demand for houses and casks for tobacco was great, a good many carpenters and coopers came out at their own expense and received shares of land by way of encouragement.

A state of society developed similar in many respects to that in Virginia. Baltimore, accustomed to the type of life in England, expected the settlements in Maryland to grow into towns and cities; and, under this impression, in January, 1638, he erected the population on the south side of St. George's River into a "hundred,"

and afterwards created other hundreds in other parts of the colony.

But the wealth of watercourses and the cultivation of tobacco caused the population to scatter, and made society from the first distinctly agricultural and rural. St. Mary's and St. George's Hundred, in Maryland, shared the fate of Jamestown and Bermuda Hundred, in Virginia, and no stimulus of legislation could make them grow.

The application of the powers of the palatinate intensified these conditions by creating an agricultural and landed aristocracy. There was a council like that in Durham, whose members, appointed by the lord proprietor, held all the great offices of state.

Outside of the council the most important officer was the sheriff, who, like the sheriff of Durham, executed the commands of the governor and the courts, of which there were (in addition to the council) the county court and the manorial courts, answering respectively to the court of quarter-sessions and the courts baron and leet in Durham. As for the manorial courts, feudal relicts transplanted to America, they sprang from Lord Baltimore's attempt to build up an aristocracy like that which attended upon the bishop in his palace in Durham. In his "Conditions for Plantations," August 8, 1636, after providing liberally for all who brought emigrants to the colony, he directed that every one thousand acres or greater quant.i.ty so given to any adventurer "should be erected into a manor with a court-baron and court-leet to be from time to time held within every such manor respectively."

There were many grants of one thousand acres or more, and Maryland "lords of the manor" became quite common. These "lords" were the official heads of numerous tenants and leaseholders who were settled on their large estates. Yet the manor, as a free-governing community, was a stronghold of liberty. At the courts baron and leet the tenants elected the minor officers, tried offences, and made by-laws for their own government. Later, when negroes subst.i.tuted white laborers, these feudal manors changed to plantations worked by slaves instead of free tenants.[15]

Even great office-holders and a landed aristocracy were insufficient to sustain the regal dignity to which Lord Baltimore aspired.

Apparently, his right of initiating legislation and dictating the make-up of the a.s.sembly ought to have been sufficient. But political and social equality sprang from the very conditions of life in the New World; and despite the veneering of royalty, Maryland came soon to be a government of the people. The struggle began in the a.s.sembly which met in February, 1635, but not much is known of the proceedings of this a.s.sembly beyond the fact that it a.s.sumed the initiative and drew up a code to which Lord Baltimore refused his a.s.sent.

Of subsequent a.s.semblies the record is copious enough. Lord Baltimore had the right under his charter to summon "all the freemen, or the greater part of them, or their representatives," and thus for a long time there was a curious jumble of anomalies, which rendered the a.s.sembly peculiarly sensitive to governmental influence. The second a.s.sembly met at St. Mary's, January 25, 1638, and consisted of the governor and council, freemen specially summoned, freemen present of their own volition, and proxies.[16] Governor Calvert submitted a code of laws sent from Lord Baltimore, and it was rejected by a vote of thirty-seven to fourteen; but twelve of the minority votes were in two hands, the governor and Secretary Lewger, an ill.u.s.tration of the danger of the proxy system.

Not long after, in a letter August 21, 1638, the proprietor yielded by authorizing Leonard in the future to consent to laws enacted by the freemen, which a.s.sent should temporarily make them valid until his own confirmation or rejection should be received. To the next a.s.sembly, held February 25, 1639, Leonard Calvert, instead of summoning all the freemen, issued writs to different hundreds for the election of representatives.

Among the laws which they enacted was one limiting seats in the a.s.sembly to councillors, persons specially summoned by the proprietor's writ, and burgesses elected by the people of the different hundreds. This law controlled the make-up of the next four a.s.semblies (October, 1640, August, 1641, March and July, 1642).

Nevertheless, in September, 1642, Baltimore reverted to the old practice.

In 1649 Baltimore made another and last attempt for his initiative. He sent over a learned and complicated code of sixteen laws which he asked the a.s.sembly to adopt; but they rejected his work and sent him a code of their own, begging him in their letter not to send them any more such "bodies of laws, which served to little end than to fill our heads with jealousies and suspicions of that which we verily understand not." The next year, 1650, a const.i.tutional system was perfected not very different from the plan adopted in the mother-country and Virginia. The a.s.sembly was divided into two chambers, the lower consisting exclusively of burgesses representing the different hundreds, and the upper of the councillors and those specially summoned by the governor.[17]

[Footnote 1: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, II., 841.]

[Footnote 2: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, pp. 83, 93, 100.]

[Footnote 3: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, p. 104; _Md.

Archives_, III., 17.]

[Footnote 4: _Md. Archives_, III., 19.]

[Footnote 5: Heath's grant, in _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1674, p. 70.]

[Footnote 6: Neill, _Founders of Maryland_, 46, 47.]

[Footnote 7: Neill, _Terra Mariae_, 53; Ogilby, _America_, 183.]