Lyon Gardiner Tyler - England in America, 1580 to 1652

L >> Lyon Gardiner Tyler >> England in America, 1580 to 1652

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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 massacre 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 latitude, 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 God." 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 passive 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 Massachusetts 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 titles 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, assent,
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 worship 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
worship 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 establishing
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 ships 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 associated 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
ships to be brought back by Admiral Pennington.[11] It was not until
November 22, 1633, that they got off, and the ships 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
shore 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 passengers, 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 class 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,
harassed 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 ship-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 assembly 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 quantity 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 substituted 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 assembly 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 assembly which
met in February, 1635, but not much is known of the proceedings of
this assembly beyond the fact that it assumed the initiative and drew
up a code to which Lord Baltimore refused his assent.

Of subsequent assemblies 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
assembly peculiarly sensitive to governmental influence. The second
assembly 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 illustration 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 assent should temporarily make them valid until his own
confirmation or rejection should be received. To the next assembly,
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
assembly 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
assemblies (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 assembly 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 constitutional system was
perfected not very different from the plan adopted in the
mother-country and Virginia. The assembly 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.]

[Footnote 8: _Md. Archives_, III., 21.]

[Footnote 9: Fiske, _Old Virginia and Her Neighbors_; Bassett,
_Constitutional Beginnings of North Carolina_; Lapsley, _County
Palatinate of Durham_.]

[Footnote 10: _Calvert Papers_ (Md. Hist. Soc., _Fund Publications_,
No. 28), p. 132.]

[Footnote 11: _Md. Archives_, III., 23.]

[Footnote 12: White, _Relation_ (Force, _Tracts_, IV., No. xii.);
letter of Leonard Calvert, _Calvert Papers_ (Md. Hist. Soc., _Fund
Publications_, No. 35), pp. 32-35; Baltimore, _Relation_ (London,
1635).]

[Footnote 13: Winthrop, _New England_, I., 166.]

[Footnote 14: Neill, _Founders of Maryland_, 80.]

[Footnote 15: Johnson, _Old Maryland Manors (Johns Hopkins University
Studies_, I., No. iii.).]

[Footnote 16: _Md. Archives_, I., 1-24.]

[Footnote 17: _Md. Archives_, I., 32, 74, 243, 272.]

[Illustration: MARYLAND IN 1652]

CHAPTER VIII

CONTENTIONS IN MARYLAND

(1633-1652)

The delay in the constitutional adjustment of Maryland, while mainly
attributable to the proprietors, was partially due to the prolonged
struggle with Virginia, which for years absorbed nearly all the
energies of the infant community. The decision of the Commissioners
for Foreign Plantations in July, 1633, disallowing the Virginia claim
to unoccupied lands, was construed by the Virginians to mean that the
king at any rate intended to respect actual possession. Now, prior to
the Maryland charter, colonization in Virginia was stretching
northward. In 1630, Chiskiack, on the York River, was settled; and in
August, 1631, Claiborne planted a hundred men on Kent Island, one
hundred and fifty miles from Jamestown.[1]

Though established under a license from the king for trade, Kent
Island had all the appearance of a permanent settlement. Its
inhabitants were never at any time as badly off as the settlers in the
early days at Jamestown and Plymouth, and the island itself was
stocked with cattle and had orchards and gardens, fields of tobacco,
windmills for grinding corn, and women resident upon it. Had it,
however, been only a trading-post, the extension over it of the laws
of Virginia made the settlement a legal occupation. And we are told of
Kent that warrants from Jamestown were directed there. "One man was
brought down and tried in Virginia for felony, and many were arrested
for debt and returned to appeare at James City."[2] In February, 1632,
Kent Island and Chiskiack were represented at Jamestown by a common
delegate, Captain Nicholas Martian.[3] The political existence of the
whole Virginia colony, and its right to take up and settle lands, the
king expressly recognized.

Accordingly, when Leonard Calvert, on his arrival at Point Comfort in
February, 1634, called upon Claiborne to recognize Baltimore's
paramount sovereignty over Kent Island, because of its lying within
the limits of his charter, the council of Virginia, at the request of
Claiborne, considered the claim, and declared that the colony had as
much right to Kent Island as to "any other part of the country given
by his majesty's patent" in 1609.[4] After this, acquiescence in
Baltimore's wishes would have been treason, and Claiborne declined to
acknowledge Lord Baltimore's authority in Kent Island, and continued
to trade in the bay as freely as formerly.

Calvert's instructions[5] had been, in case of such a refusal, not to
molest Claiborne for at least a year. But Captain Fleet, Claiborne's
rival in the fur trade, started a story that Claiborne was the
originator of the rumor which so greatly alarmed the Indians at the
time of the arrival of the emigrants at St. Mary's. Though Claiborne
promptly repelled the calumny, Baltimore, in September, 1634, sent an
order to his brother Leonard to seize Kent Island, arrest Claiborne,
and hold him prisoner.[6] As this mandate was contrary to the order in
July, 1633, of the lords commissioners, which enjoined the parties to
preserve "good correspondence one with another," Claiborne's partners
petitioned the king against it.

Thereupon the king, by an order[7] dated October 8, 1634, peremptorily
warned Lord Baltimore, or his agents, "not to interrupt the people of
Kent Island in their fur trade or plantation." Nevertheless, April 5,
1635, Thomas Cornwallis, one of the Maryland councillors, confiscated
a pinnace of Claiborne's for illegal trading, and this act brought on
a miniature war in which several persons on both sides were killed.[8]
Great excitement prevailed in both colonies, and in Virginia the
people arrested Harvey, their governor, who upheld Cornwallis's
conduct, and shipped him off to England; while two of the councillors
were sent to Maryland to protest against the violent proceedings
affecting Claiborne.[9]

These measures induced a truce, and for nearly three years there were
no further hostilities in the bay. Claiborne brought his case before
the king, who referred it to the Lords Commissioners for Plantations;
then, as his partners feared to take further risk, he carried on the
trade in the bay almost solely with his own servants and resources. In
December, 1636, these partners, becoming dissatisfied at their loss of
profit, made the capital mistake of sending, as their agent to Kent
Island, George Evelin, who pretended at first to be an ardent
supporter of Claiborne, but presently, under a power of attorney,
claimed control over all the partnership stock.

Claiborne, naturally indignant and not suspecting any danger, sailed
for England in May, 1637, to settle accounts with his partners, having
just previously established another settlement on Palmer's Island at
the mouth of the Susquehanna River, believed by him to be north of the
Maryland patent. After he was gone, Evelin tried to persuade the
inhabitants to disown Claiborne and submit to Lord Baltimore; and when
they declined he urged Governor Calvert to attempt the reduction of
the island by force. After some hesitation the latter consented, and
while the assembly was sitting at St. Mary's, in February, 1638,
Calvert made a landing at night with thirty men, and, taking the
inhabitants by surprise, succeeded in reducing the island to
submission.[10]

Calvert's after-conduct reflects little credit upon his reputation for
leniency. In March, 1638, he caused Claiborne to be attainted by the
assembly as a rebel and his property confiscated, and Thomas Smith,
who commanded one of Claiborne's pinnaces in the battles three years
before, was tried and hanged for murder and piracy.[11] In England, in
the mean time, Claiborne and Baltimore were contending zealously for
the favor of the king. Both had powerful interests behind them, but
Baltimore's were the stronger. At last the Commissioners for Foreign
Plantations rendered a report (April 4, 1638), giving Kent Island and
the right of trade in the bay wholly to Lord Baltimore, leaving all
personal wrongs to be redressed by the courts.

The question of title at least seemed settled, and in October, 1638,
Sir John Harvey, now restored as governor of Virginia, issued a
proclamation recognizing the validity of the decision. Claiborne
submitted, and, being left to "the course of the law," empowered
George Scovell to recover, if possible, some of the confiscated
property in Maryland; but Scovell was told that the law-courts of
Maryland were closed against such a rebel as Claiborne.[12] The
justice of the English decision depends on the impartiality of the
board which made it, and of any board with Bishop Laud at the head
only partisanship could be expected.

While these turbulent proceedings were going on, the Jesuit priests
introduced into the colony by Lord Baltimore were performing a work of
peace and love. They visited the Indian tribes and made many Christian
converts. Tayac, chief of the Piscataquas, received baptism, and his
example was followed by the chiefs and inhabitants of Port Tobacco.
The main trouble came from the Nanticokes on the eastern shore, and
the fierce Susquehannas to the north of the settlements, and at
different times armed expeditions were sent out against them; but
there was nothing like a war.

For sixteen years the only clergy in the colony were priests, who were
so zealous in their propaganda that nearly all the Protestants who
came in 1638 were converted to Catholicism and many later conversions
were made.[13] Nevertheless, the Catholic governor and council acted
up to the spirit of the instructions given by Baltimore to his brother
on the sailing of the first emigrants from the port of London, and
would permit no language tending to insult or breach of peace. Not
long after the arrival at St. Mary's a proclamation to this end was
issued, of which only two violations appear in the records; in both
cases the offenders were Roman Catholics, and they were arrested and
promptly punished.[14]

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