Maryland : the history of a palatinate

Front matter

AMERICAN COMMONWEALTHS

HORACE E. SCUDDER

PROVO, UTAH

Preface

The most interesting and least known period of Maryland’s history is that which preceded’ the War of Independence. The political and material development of a Province founded under peculiar circumstances and a unique form of government, were determined by causes in many respects unlike those which operated in the other colonies ; and, so far as the State has, in her later career, differed from her sisters, this difference may, in the main, be traced back to the original dissimilarity.

Though Maryland fought in the War of Independence, as the faithful ally of the United States, no military operations of any consequence took place on her soil ; while to write an account of the deeds of Maryland soldiers in the war would be to write the history of the war itself.

VI

PREFACE,

It has, therefore, seemed advisable to limit the present volume to a history of the Palatinate government.

This narrative has been written, almost entirely, from the original manuscript records and archives, now, by the liberal action of the General Assembly, made easy of access to every student.

MAETLAIfD:

THE HISTORY OF A PALATINATE.

Chapter I

With the plantation of Maryland begins the third stage of English colonisation in America. The first adventurers, the Spaniards, found organised kingdoms, an advanced civilisation, populous cities, and broad highways. They could march in a compact phalanx to the capitals of Mexico and Peru, and strike them at the very heart. When once the military strength of the natives was broken, their complete subjugation was easy. The conquerors also found abundant gold and silver, and poured what seemed an inexhaustible stream of the precious metals into the coffers of Spain. The results of Spanish conquest, however we may now regard them, were dazzling successes to the Europe of the sixteenth century ; and the first attempts of England to rival her ancient foe were imitations of the Spanish adventures.

The general plan of Ralegh, Gilbert, and Lane was to plant armed colonies in the midst of a conquered people, as a basis for working the gold mines and pearl fisheries to be afterwards discovered. It is just possible that these attempts might have succeeded in the miserable sense in which the Spanish conquest was a success, but that to the search for gold was added the search for a northwest passage to the Indies, by which English ships might turn the flank of Spain and Portugal, whose fleets held the key of the East after the Turks had closed the gate of Constantinople. This gave the English voyages of discovery a northern course, and landed the adventurers in regions where there was no gold, and among scattered savage tribes of hunters and fishers of whom no profitable conquest could be made. The first attempts at colonisation, therefore, resulted in failures more or less disastrous ; but they added to the knowledge of the country and its resources, and thus prepared the way for experiments on a more rational plan.

The second stage was that of chartered companies, who proposed to plant colonies and manage them on the joint-stock principle. These were chiefly promoted by merchants, and commercial ideas were predominant in their plans and administration. They were to be self-supporting trading outposts of England; they were to buy peltries, catch fish, or raise tobacco to be sent to England ; the direct profit to the stockholders being the first thing considered, and the indirect profit to English commerce, the second. The idea of a colony as a part of England beyond the ocean, whose interests were as well worth caring for as if it were ringed within the four seas, was as much beyond the horizon in the days of James as in those of George III.

The stories of these commercial colonies are no part of our subject. The radical faults of the system were : first, that they were administered for England’s benefit and not for their own ; second, that most of the stock was held by persons whose interest in the colony was limited to the receipt of dividends ; third, that between the companies’ councils and the provincial Assemblies the administration was divided and inconsistent.

From these and other causes, Virginia, after a career of disasters checkered with gleams of prosperity, had fallen into such a state of embroilment that the legal advisers of the crown declared the charter a failure, and recommended that the King should take the government into his own hands. On the 24th of July, 1624, the company’s patent was formally revoked by a judicial decision, and all the rights conveyed by it reverted to the crown.

The next plan tried was that of a proprietary government. An individual received a grant of land with necessary legislative and executive powers, and he undertook to settle and administer a colony as his private estate, under the sovereignty of the crown. His own fortune was dependent upon the prosperity of his colony, which thus was an end in itself, and not merely the means toward an end. One of the earliest of the proprietaries. Sir George Calvert, brought to his task patience, constancy, and a clear practical view of the needs and risks of colonisation in America ; and though his first attempt was a failure, that failure showed him how to lay the foundation of the first English colony that was successful from the start.

Calvert was born in 1582, his father, Leonard Calvert, being a Yorkshire gentleman of Flemish descent, and his mother, Alicia Crossland ; and it may be that to this tempering of Flemish constancy with Yorkshire shrewdness, the family partly owed their success in life. After receiving a liberal education at Oxford, he travelled on the Continent, and on his return married Alice Wynne, granddaughter of Sir Thomas Wroth, Queen Elizabeth’s commissioner to Ireland — an office which Calvert af-

TEE HISTORY OF A PALATINATE.

terwards held — and cousin of Sir Robert Wroth, the friend of Ben Jonson. Soon after his return, Calvert was employed in public service, where his abilities attracted the attention of Sir Robert Cecil, who rapidly advanced his fortunes. In 1617 he was knighted, and about a year afterwards appointed principal Secretary of State to James I., who gave him a large grant of land in Ireland.

He seems at an early date to have taken interest in the plans for American colonisation, for, besides being one of the councillors of the New England Company, in 1609 he was a member of the Virginia Company, and so continued until the revocation of its charter, when he was appointed one of the Provisional Council for the government of that colony. It is not unlikely that his knowledge of the defects in the administration of Virginia, with the insight he thus acquired into American affairs, disposed him to make a venture at colonisation on a different plan.

In 1620 he bought from Sir William Vaughan, who had a patent for part of Newfoundland, his rights over the southeastern peninsula of that island ; and the next year sent over a body of colonists with a large sum of money, in two ships, one of which, the Ark, afterwards carried the first settlers to Maryland.

In his choice of a site he was probably influenced by the stories of Captain Richard Whitbourne, who had often visited the country, and whose “ Relation of the New-found-land ” Calvert helped to circulate for the encouragement of colonists. If he built his expectations on the glowing accounts of Whitbourne, his disappointment must have been sharp. Whitbourne pictures the island as almost an earthly paradise : the land produced fruits in abundance without the aid of man ; the waters swarmed with fish ; the woods were vocal with song-birds, “ filladies, nightingales, and such like, that sing most pleasantly ; ” even the beasts of prey were milder-mannered and more benevolent in character that those of less gentle climes. As to the cold of winter, it was a mere trifle; the winters in England were often colder. The old lures, gold mines and the northwest passage, are again thrown out in a careless fashion ; and he even holds out a prospect of mermaids, though whether these were to be reckoned among the commercial or picturesque attractions of the island is not precisely expressed. The author writes with a bluff old-sailor-like frankness befitting the hardy Devonshire skipper who had commanded his own ship in fighting the Spanish Armada.

For some time nothing occurred to undeceive

Calvert ; the reports sent from his colony were encouraging, and he was liberal in his supplies of money. He applied for a patent, and in December, 1623, all Newfoundland was granted to him. Either this was more than he. wanted, or there was some mistake about the grant, for in the following March a re-grant was issued, conveying to him the southeastern peninsula before mentioned, to which, in commemoration of the spot to which a pious tradition assigned the first preaching of Christianity in Britain, he gave the name of Avalon.

The charter of Avalon differed but slightly from that of Maryland, for which it evidently served as a model. It sets out with a declaration of the zeal of the grantee for the extension of the Christian religion, as well as the enlargement of the King’s dominions. This was the usual phrase of charters, a religious being put before a worldly motive, as the Cornish miners, when they begin to bore, declare that it is “for the grace of God, and what they there may find.” The pioneer of the New World held out as parallel advantages a route for devotion to the Holy Sepulchre, and for commerce to Cathay, no doubt enlarging chiefly on the former motive to Isabela the Catholic, and on the latter to Ferdinand the Prudent.

English goods might be exported to Avalon duty-free, and goods arriving from Avalon at English ports were free of duty for ten years. Avalon, moreover, was to be held in cajnte by knight’s service, probably the latest instance of that tenure on record.

In the same year, 1623, the negotiations for the Spanish marriage of Prince Charles were broken off, and Calvert, who had strongly favored that policy, found himself on the unpopular side. Instead of veering, as did some of his colleagues, with the changed policy of the Duke of Buckingham and the court, he took a step which barred the way to future political advancement, declaring that he had become a convert to the faith of Rome, and at the same time resigning his office of Secretary of State.

James could not reasonably be offended with a declaration so obviously conscientious, and he tried to induce Calvert to retain his office. Failing in this, he kept him in his place in the Privy Council, and raised him to the Irish peerage as Baron Baltimore, of Baltimore, in the county of Longford.

On the death of James, in 1625, Lord Baltimore retired from the Council, much against the wishes of Charles, who even offered to dispense with the oath of supremacy in his case.

In 1627 Baltimore visited his young col-

THE HISTORY OF A PALATINATE.

ony from necessity, it seems, rather than from choice ; for we find him writing to Sir Thomas Wentworth, just before he sailed : “ I must either go and settle it in better order, or else give it over, and lose all the charges I have been at hitherto, for other men to build their fortunes upon. And I had rather be esteemed a fool by some, for the hazard of one month’s journey, than to prove myself one certainly for six years by-past, if the business be now lost for the want of a little pains and care.” It, however, may well be that the weary statesman, in broken health, looked to find in the New World a peaceful haven from the storms that were gathering in England.

In the following year he removed to Avalon with his wife and family, except his eldest son Cecilius, and about forty more, raising his little colony to about a hundred souls. Here he soon found that he had troubles before him that he had not bargained for. In August, he writes to the Duke of Buckingham, “ I came to build, and settle, and sow, and I am fallen to fighting Frenchmen.”

The facts of the affair, as he gives them in letters to the King and Duke, were these : The French Admiral De la Rade, with three ships and about four hundred men, sailed into the harbor within a league of Baltimore’s house.

surprised the fishermen, and took two English vessels that were loading there. Baltimore sent out two ships of his own to attack them, on which the French put to sea, and being the swifter sailers, escaped, leaving behind their prizes, plunder, and sixty-seven men on land who were taken prisoners. A few days later the Frenchman made a descent upon Conception Bay, and did more mischief ; whereupon Baltimore again sent out his ships, which missed the Admiral, but took six French vessels in Trepasse Harbor, and these were sent as prizes to England, Baltimore’s ships acting as convoy to the whole merchant fleet. In the same letter he asks for two men-of-war to protect the colony ; and this request was further urged by his son Leonard, who returned to England. In December, the Sainte Claude, one of the prizes, was lent to Baltimore for a year.

But the Proprietary had foes within his colony, as well as foes without. A Puritan divine, Stourton by name, went from Avalon to England and reported to the mayor of Plymouth that Lord Baltimore had brought Popish priests into the colony who celebrated mass every Sunday ; a piece of news which so horrified the magistrates that they sent the informer to tell his tale to the Privy Council, beyond which we hear no more of it.

The colony’s worst foe, however, was neither the plundering Frenchman nor the delating Puritan, but the inhospitable climate. The reports which had been sent him had been, like Whitbourne’s yarns, too highly colored. Isothermal lines were not known at that time, and Baltimore could hardly have imagined that a country might have the latitude of Poitou and the climate of northern Norway. In a letter to the King he admits that he has been deceived, and, except as a fishing-station, his colony is a failure. Land and sea are frozen hard from mid-October to mid-May, in a cold so great as hardly to be endured. Half his colonists have been sick, besides himself, nine or ten dying, and his house has been a hospital all the winter. With all this his zeal for colonisation has not abated, and he solicits of the King some tract of land in Virginia. The King, in reply, assures him of his friendly regard and sympathy, but advises him to give up the idea of founding a colony, and come back to England.

The rest of the story of Avalon may as well be told here. Calvert’s fortune was not only seriously impaired, — he had spent over <£30,000, an immense sum in those days, on his colony, — but his health had been fatally undermined. After his death, his son Cecilius sent out Captain Hill as governor, and the fishery seems to have been carried on with some success. In November, 1637, Sir David Kirke, upon a representation that Baltimore had entirely abandoned his plantation, obtained a grant of the whole island of Newfoundland. At a later date the charge was brought that this grant had been “ surreptitiously ” obtained ; and it looks as if there had been some underhand doings about it, as in the preceding May the King had strictly charged the commissioners for plantations, councillors, keepers of the seals, and other officers of the crown, to allow no patent, commission, or warrant to pass which might in any way infringe Baltimore’s rights in Avalon and Maryland, and engaging his royal word never to permit any quo warranto or other proceedings for infringing or overthrowing either of those patents.

Kirke, however, took possession, thinking perhaps that the King was too much occupied just then with Hampden, Prynne, and the Court of High Commission to heed what was going on in that corner of the world. He seems to have carried matters with a high hand, as complaints were sent home, from time to time, of his tyrannous and unlawful doings. The evil which he did seems to have lived after him, for in 1668 a writer, reporting the state of the island, ascribes the depravity of the fishermen in great part to the fact that Sir David Kirke had “introduced taverns and tipplinghouses to his own advantage, which debauched the seamen.”

In 1655, Kirke made over part of his interest in the island to John Claypole, Cromwell’s sonin-law, and others ; and, in 1660, Lewis Kirke tried to get his brother’s grant confirmed. Baltimore protested, and the matter was heard before commissioners, who reported in Baltimore’s favor, upon which the King ordered the Kirkes to surrender Avalon. ' The order was disobeyed, nor was any compensation made to Baltimore for the unlawful detention of his property for so many years ; so upon David Kirke’s coming into England, Baltimore brought suit against him, and obtained a judgment, failing to satisfy which, Kirke was cast into prison, where he died. The brothers, however, still retained their grip of Avalon until 1663, when the King ordered that the province should be delivered to Swanley, Baltimore’s lieutenant or governor. Swanley seems to have governed the province fairly well ; at least a report on Newfoundland, in 1668, which represents the island as in confusion, and without government, expressly excepts the province of Avalon.

From this date we lose sight of Avalon as a distinct government, though it had its full share

MARYLAND.

of the French troubles in the following century. The Proprietaries, occupied with the interests of Maryland, apparently neglected it. In 1754, Frederick, sixth and last Lord Baltimore, revived his claim, and tried to have it confirmed ; but this was denied, on the ground that the proprietary rights had lapsed from long disuse ; and Avalon, as a province, ceased to exist, though the peninsula still retains its ancient name.

Chapter II

We now revert to Lord Baltimore. Before the King’s letter advising him to return to England had been written, he was already on his way to Virginia with his wife and family and some forty of his colonists, and arrived at Jamestown, October 1, 1629. Some intimation of his designs had preceded him, and the Virginians gave him a reception by no means cordial. On his landing he was met by Governor Pott and his Council, — among the rest, William Claiborne, of whom we shall hear more, — who tendered him the oaths of supremacy and allegiance. This was rather a cool proposition to one who had so recently held high office under the King, and been a member of the Provisional Council for the government of Virginia after the revocation of the charter ; but they cared less for courtesy than for forcing Calvert away. The oath of allegiance he might have taken, but the oath of supremacy, requiring the party to swear that he believed the King to be “ the only supreme governor in his realm and dominions, in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes,” was an invention of Elizabeth’s time, intended as a safeguard of the sovereign against such persons as were suspected of treasonable designs, and was to be administered only by officers specially designated. Of course Baltimore, believing the Pope to be the spiritual head of the Church, neither could nor would take this oath. He might very well have challenged their right to offer it, since while it is true that the President and Council of the Virginia Company had been empowered to administer this oath, no such power was given to Pott, or any authority in the province after the company’s dissolution, and in offering it they incurred the penalties of a high contempt.

Calvert, however, unwilling to provoke animosity, offered to take a modified form of the oath, but this they would not accept. He was even insulted and threatened with personal violence by some of the baser sort, and it was evident that he must seek a site for his colony elsewhere, if it was to have a peaceful beginning. After some examination of the coast, he returned to England, and asked the King for a grant of territory south of the James River. The charter was made out, when he again met with opposition from Virginia ; Claiborne, and others, having gone to England to obstruct the grant. To avoid all difficulty, Baltimore again changed his plans, and asked for a part of the unsettled region north of the Potomac. This was granted him, and a charter, modelled on that of Avalon, was drawn, the new colonyreceiving the name of Maryland, or Terra Mariae, at the King’s request, in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria, though Calvert, it is said, had intended to call it Crescentia, possibly in honor of the bold consul who, in the tenth century, threw ofE the Saxon yoke, and set Rome free ; but more probably as a name of good omen for its growth and prosperity.

Before the charter had passed the Great Seal, Baltimore, whose health, long weak, seems to have been quite broken by the rigors of the Newfoundland climate, died, on April 15, 1632.

He had risen from obscurity to places of high honor and trust, and to hereditary rank ; he had enjoyed, without abusing, the confidence and friendship of kings ; he had adhered to his ^ political and altered his religious opinions, when his constancy and his change were alike fatal to his advancement, and he died leaving a name without reproach from friend or enemy, and which, if evil tongues of a later day have attempted in vain to sully, it is because detraction, no less than death, loves a shining mark.

The grant of Maryland was now made out to 2

Calvert’s eldest son, Cecilius, named in honor of his early patron and friend, and bore the date of June 20, 1632.

The boundaries of Maryland, unlike those of the other colonies, were precisely defined. Its limits were : on the north, the fortieth parallel of north latitude ; on the west and southwest, a line running south from this parallel to the farthest source of the Potomac, and thence by the farther or western bank of that river to Chesapeake Bay ; on the south by a line running across the bay and peninsula to the Atlantic; and on the east by the ocean and the Delaware Bay and Kiver. It included, therefore, all the present State of Delaware, a large tract of land now forming part of Pennsylvania, and another now occupied and claimed by West Virginia.

The charter of Maryland contained the most ample rights and privileges ever conferred by a sovereign of England. It erected Maryland into a palatinate, equivalent to a principality, reserving only the feudal supremacy of the crown. The Proprietary was made absolute lord of the land and water within his boundaries, could erect towns, cities, and ports, make war or peace, call the whole fighting population to arms, and declare martial law, levy tolls and duties, establish courts of justice, appoint judges, magistrates, and other civil officers, execute the laws, and pardon offenders. He could erect manors with courts-baron and courts-leet, and confer titles and dignities, so that they differed from those of England. He could make laws with the assent of the freemen of the province, and, in cases of emergency, ordinances not impairing life, limb, or property, without their assent. He could found churches and chapels, have them consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of England, and appoint the incumbents. All this territory, with these royal rights, '•'‘jura regaliaj'’ was to be held of the crown in free socage,^ by the delivery of two Indian arrows yearly at the palace of Windsor, and the fifth of all gold or silver mined.

The colonists and their descendants were to remain English subjects, free to visit or leave England without hindrance or tax, to hold, acquire, or transfer landed or other property in

1 The tenure of free socage differed from a tenure byknight’s service, in that military service -was not a condition of the grant, and from a tenure in capite, that a fixed payment was substituted for services of uncertain amount. In Baltimore’s case, the payment of the two arrows was all that was required. His tenants in Maryland held their lands of him as mesne lord, also in free socage, being discharged of all services by a yearly payment, thence called a quit-rent, and this, with allegiance to the King as lord paramount and fealty to the Proprietary, were the only conditions imposed.

England, and to trade freely to England or other foreign ports. They could have, of course, no representation in Parliament, since Parliament had no power to make laws for them ; but they could accept or reject the laws proposed by the Proprietary, which laws were to be agreeable to the laws and statutes of England, “ as far as conveniently might be.” The King furthermore bound himself and his successors to lay no taxes, customs, subsidies, or contributions whatever upon the people of the province, and in case of any such demand being made, the charter expressly declared that this clause might be pleaded as a discharge in full.

This charter, by which Maryland was virtually an independent and self-governed community, placed the destinies of the colonists in their own hands. The powers granted the Proprietary might have been oppressive in the hands of a man less wise, just, and humane than Cecilius Calvert, who knew when to yield and when to stand firm. Though often attacked, and at times held in abeyance, the charter was never revoked, and was only cast off when the arbitrary power of England had violated its pledges, and the people of Maryland, having outgrown their minority, were ready to take the sovereignty into their own - hands.

This charter was, of course, bitterly resented by the Virginians. Part of the members of the old company, who still hoped to regain their lost franchise, protested against it on the grounds that it was an invasion of their chartered rights, and that Maryland might prove a dangerous neighbor. As their chartered rights had now no existence, and as it was scarcely to be expected that the crown would be willing to fence off each colony by a neutral unsettled zone, it is probable that the protest was merely formal. So the Privy Council seems to have considered it, for after summoning the parties before them, and hearing them fully on both sides they decided that Baltimore must be left to his patent, and any wrongs done any of them could be redressed by ordinary process of law.

Calvert in the mean time steadily pressed forward his preparations. He fitted out two vessels, the Ark, of three hundred and fifty tons, which had already carried his father’s first colonists to Avalon, and the Dove, of about fifty tons, and loaded them with supplies and implements, — bearing himself most of the cost, about £40,000, of the first emigration. The company colonists consisted of about twenty gentlemen and between two and three hundred laboring men and handicraftsmen in their employment. Considerable ingenuity has been spent in attempts to determine the proportions of Roman Catholics and Protestants among them, which are nowhere recorded, and it seems probable that most of the “ gentlemen adventurers,” as they were called, were Catholics, and most of the laborers and servants Protestants.i Baltimore did not go out himself with his colonists, his presence in England being necessary for the defense of his charter, which was attacked both openly and covertly ; but he placed the expedition under the command of his brother Leonard, his younger brother, George, also going out in the company.

The Ark had already left Gravesend, on the 18th of October, when some vigilant person reported to the Star Chamber that the crew had not yet taken the oath of allegiance. As all sorts of alarming rumors had already been buzzed about touching the purpose of the voyage, and among the rest that it was to carry nuns and soldiers to Spain, the Lords seem to have thought it a case for prompt action, and

1 Watkins, the London “ searcher,” reports that he went on board the Ark and Dove, lying off Tilbury, and administered the oath of allegiance to one hundred and twenty-eight emigrants. If these were all the Protestants, and the rest who embarked at the Isle of Wight were all Catholics, it would make the Catholics the more numerous, but the inference is very uncertain.

Secretary Coke hurried off an order to Admiral Pennington, then guarding the Straits, to stay the ships. The original dispatch is indorsed with the word “ haste ” ten times repeated, with the additions of ‘‘ post-haste ” and “ all speed,” and is noted on the back as having reached Bishopsgate at twelve, Dartford at four p. M., Rochester at six at night, and Sandwich at three in the morning, being forwarded, apparently, by relays of couriers.

After further delays the vessels were allowed to proceed, and on their outward passage they stopped at the Isle of Wight, where they took on board two Jesuit fathers, Andrew White and John Altham, and a number of other colonists. They finally sailed for America on November 20, 1633. An interesting narrative of the voyage, in Father White’s quaint ecclesiastical Latin, is still preserved.