CHAPTER XX.

1632-1635.

Charles the First appoints Council of Superintendence for Virginia—Acts of Assembly—William Clayborne authorized by the Crown to make Discoveries and Trade—George Lord Baltimore dies—The Patent of Territory granted is confirmed to his Son Cecilius, Lord Baltimore—Virginia remonstrates against the grant to Baltimore—Lord Baltimore employs his Brother, Leonard Calvert, to found the Colony of Maryland—St. Mary's Settled—Harvey visits Calvert—Clayborne's Opposition to the New Colony—Character of Baltimore's Patent—Contest between Clayborne and the Marylanders—He is convicted of High Crimes—Escapes to Virginia—Goes to England for trial of the Case.

In the year 1632 King Charles issued a commission appointing a Council of Superintendence over Virginia, empowering them to ascertain the state and condition of the colony. The commissioners were Edward, Earl of Dorset, Henry, Earl of Derby, Dudley, Viscount Dorchester, Sir John Coke, Sir John Davers, Sir Robert Killegrew, Sir Thomas Rowe, Sir Robert Heath, Sir Kineage Tench, Sir Dudley Diggs, Sir John Holstenholm, Sir Francis Wyat, Sir John Brooks, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir John Tench, John Banks, Esq., Thomas Gibbs, Esq., Samuel Rott, Esq., George Sands, Esq., John Wolstenholm, Esq., Nicholas Ferrar, Esq., Gabriel Barber, and John Ferrar, Esquires.[187:A]

Elaborate acts passed by the Colonial Legislature at this period, for improving the staple of tobacco and regulating the trade in it, evince the increasing importance of that crop. Tithes were imposed of tobacco and corn; and the twentieth "calfe, kidd of goates and pigge" granted unto the minister. During the year 1633 every fortieth man in the neck of land between the James River and the York, (then called the Charles,) was directed to repair to the plantation of Dr. John Pott, to be employed in building of houses and securing that tract of land lying between Queen's Creek, emptying into Charles River, and Archer's Hope Creek, emptying into James River. This was Middle Plantation, (now Williamsburg,) so called as being midway between the James River and the York. Each person settling there was entitled to fifty acres of land and exemption from general taxes. All new-comers were ordered to pay sixty-four pounds of tobacco toward the maintenance of the fort at Point Comfort.[188:A] Thus far, under Harvey's administration, the Assembly had met regularly, and several judicious and wholesome acts had been passed.

The Chesapeake Bay is supposed to have been discovered by the Spaniards as early as the year 1566 or before, being called by them the Bay of Santa Maria.[188:B] It was discovered by the English in 1585, when Ralph Lane was Governor of the first Colony of Virginia. In 1620 John Pory made a voyage of discovery in the Chesapeake Bay, and found one hundred English happily settled on its borders, (in what particular place is not known,) animated with the hope of a very good trade in furs.[188:C] During the years 1627, 1628, and 1629 the governors of Virginia gave authority to William Clayborne, "Secretary of State of this Kingdom," as the Ancient Dominion was then styled, to discover the source of the bay, or any part of that government from the thirty-fourth to the forty-first degree of north latitude.[188:D] In May, 1631, Charles the First granted a license to "our trusty and well-beloved William Clayborne," one of the council and Secretary of State for the colony, authorizing him to make discoveries, and to trade. This license was, by the royal instructions, confirmed by Governor Harvey; and Clayborne shortly afterwards established a trading post on Kent Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, not far from the present capital of Maryland, Annapolis; and subsequently another at the mouth of the Susquehanna River. In the year 1632 a burgess was returned from the Isle of Kent to the Assembly at Jamestown.[189:A] In 1633 a warehouse was established in Southampton River for the inhabitants of Mary's Mount, Elizabeth City, Accomac, and the Isle of Kent.

In the mean time, George, the elder Lord Baltimore, dying on the fifteenth of April, 1632, aged fifty, at London, before his patent was issued, it was confirmed June twentieth of this year, to his son Cecilius, Baron of Baltimore. The new province was named Maryland in honor of Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort of Charles the First of England, and daughter of Henry the Fourth of France. For eighteen months from the signing of the Maryland charter, the expedition to the new colony was delayed by the strenuous opposition made to the proceeding. The Virginians felt no little aggrieved at this infraction of their chartered territory; and they remonstrated to the king in council in 1633, against the grant to Lord Baltimore, alleging that "it will be a general disheartening to them, if they shall be divided into several governments." Future events were about to strengthen their sense of the justice of their cause. In July of this year the case was decided in the Star Chamber, the privy council, influenced by Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Earl of Strafford, deeming it fit to leave Lord Baltimore to his patent and the complainants to the course of law "according to their desire," recommending, at the same time, a spirit of amity and good correspondence between the planters of the two colonies. So futile a decision could not terminate the contest, and Clayborne continued to claim Kent Island, and to abnegate the authority of the proprietary of Maryland.

At length, Lord Baltimore having engaged the services of his brother, Leonard Calvert, for founding the colony, he with two others, one of them probably being another brother, were appointed commissioners. The expedition consisted of some twenty gentlemen of fortune, and two or three hundred of the laboring class, nearly all of them Roman Catholics. Imploring the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, St. Ignatius, and all the guardian angels of Maryland, they set sail from Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, in November, 1633, St. Cecilia's day. The canonized founder of the order of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, was the patron saint of the infant Maryland. February twenty-seventh, 1634, they reached Point Comfort, filled with apprehensions of the hostility of the Virginians to their colonial enterprise. Letters from King Charles and the chancellor of the exchequer conciliated Governor Harvey, who hoped, by his kindness to the Maryland colonists, to insure the recovery of a large sum of money due him from the royal treasury. The Virginians were at this time all under arms expecting the approach of a hostile Spanish fleet. Calvert, after a hospitable entertainment, embarked on the third of March for Maryland. Clayborne, who had accompanied Harvey to Point Comfort to see the strangers, did not fail to intimidate them by accounts of the hostile spirit which they would have to encounter in the Indians of that part of the country to which they were destined. Calvert, on arriving in Maryland, was accompanied in his explorations of the country by Captain Henry Fleet, an early Virginia pioneer, who was familiar with the settlements and language of the savages, and in much favor with them; and it was under his guidance and direction that the site of St. Mary's, the ancient capital of Maryland, was selected.[190:A] White, a Jesuit missionary, says of Fleet: "At the first he was very friendly to us; afterwards, seduced by the evil counsels of a certain Clayborne, who entertained the most hostile disposition, he stirred up the minds of the natives against us."[190:B] White mentions that the Island of Monserrat, in the West Indies, where they touched, was inhabited by Irishmen who had been expelled by the English of Virginia "on account of their profession of the Catholic faith."

In a short time after the landing of Leonard Calvert in Maryland, Sir John Harvey, Governor of Virginia, visited him at St. Mary's. His arrival attracted to the same place the Indian chief of Patuxent, who said: "When I heard that a great werowance of the English was come to Yoacomoco, I had a great desire to see him; but when I heard the werowance of Pasbie-haye was come thither also to see him, I presently start up, and without further counsel came to see them both."[191:A]

In March, 1634, at a meeting of the governor and council, Clayborne inquired of them how he should demean himself toward Lord Baltimore and his deputies in Maryland, who claimed jurisdiction over the colony at Kent Isle. The governor and council replied that the right of his lordship's patent being yet undetermined in England, they were bound in duty and by their oaths to maintain the rights and privileges of the colony of Virginia. Nevertheless, in all humble submission to his majesty's pleasure, they resolved to keep and observe all good correspondence with the Maryland new-comers.[191:B]

The Maryland patent conferred upon Lord Baltimore, a popish recusant, the entire government of the colony, including the patronage and advowson of all churches, the same to be dedicated and consecrated according to the ecclesiastical law. This charter was illegal, inasmuch as it granted powers which the king himself did not possess; the grantee being a papist could not conform to the ecclesiastical laws of England; and, therefore, the provisions of this extraordinary instrument could not be, and were not designed to be, executed according to the plain and obvious meaning. Such was the character of the instrument by which King Charles the First despoiled Virginia of so large a portion of her territory. It is true, indeed, that the Virginia charter had been annulled, but this was done upon the condition explicitly and repeatedly declared by the royal government, that vested rights should receive no prejudice thereby.[192:A]

Clayborne, rejecting the authority of the new plantation, Lord Baltimore gave orders to seize him if he should not submit himself to the proprietary government of Maryland. The Indians beginning to exhibit some indications of hostility toward the settlers, they attributed it to the machinations of Clayborne, alleging that it was he who stirred up the jealousy of the savages, persuading them that the new-comers were Spaniards and enemies to the Virginians, and that he had also infused his own spirit of insubordination into the inhabitants of Kent Island. A trading vessel called the Longtail, employed by Clayborne in the Indian trade in the Chesapeake Bay, was captured by the Marylanders. He thereupon fitted out an armed pinnace with a crew of fourteen men under one of his adherents, Lieutenant Warren, to rescue the vessel. Two armed pinnaces were sent out by Calvert under Captain Cornwallis; and in an engagement that ensued in the Potomac, or, as some accounts have it, the Pocomoke River, one of the Marylanders fell, and three of the Virginians, including Lieutenant Warren. The rest were carried prisoners to St. Mary's. Clayborne was indicted although not arrested, and convicted of murder and piracy, constructive crimes inferred from his opposition. The chief of Patuxent was interrogated as to Clayborne's intrigues among the Indians.[192:B]

Harvey, either from fear of the popular indignation, or from some better motive, refused to surrender the fugitive Clayborne to the Maryland commissioners, and according to one authority[192:C] sent him to England, accompanied by the witnesses. Chalmers, good authority on the subject, makes no allusion to the circumstance, and it appears more probable that Clayborne having appealed to the king, went voluntarily to England.[192:D] It is certain that he was not brought to trial there.

FOOTNOTES:

[187:A] 2 Burk's Hist. of Va., 35.

[188:A] 1 Hening, 188, 190, 199, 208, 222. The pay of the officers at Point Comfort was at this time:—

Lbs.
Tobacco.		 Bbls.
Corn.
To the captain of the fort200010
To the gunner10006
To the drummer and porter10006
For four other men, each of them 500 pounds of tobacco, 4 bbls. corn200016
Total600038

[188:B] Early Voyages to America, 483.

[188:C] Chalmers' Polit. Annals, 206.

[188:D] Chalmers' Annals, 227.

[189:A] 1 Hening, 154.

[190:A] White's Relation, 4; Force's Hist. Tracts.

[190:B] White's Relation of the Colony of the Lord Baron of Baltimore in Maryland, near Virginia, and a Narrative of the Voyage to Maryland, was copied from the archives of the Jesuit's College at Rome, by Rev. William McSherry, of Georgetown College, and translated from the Latin. An abstract of it may be found in chapter first of History of Maryland, by James McSherry. The first part of the Relation is a description of the country, and appears to have been written at London previous to the departure of Calvert; the remainder details the incidents of the voyage and the first settlement of the colony, especially of the proceedings of the Jesuit missionaries down to the year 1677.

[191:A] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, ii. 120, referring to "Relation of the successful beginnings of the Lord Baltimore's Plantation, in Maryland," signed by Captain Wintour, and others, adventurers in the expedition, and published in 1634.

[191:B] Chalmers' Annals. Chalmers is the more full and satisfactory in his account of Maryland, because he had resided there for many years.

[192:A] Force's Hist. Tracts, ii.; Virginia and Maryland, 7 et seq.; and Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, ii. 113.

[192:B] McSherry's Maryland, 40; Chalmers' Annals, 211, 232; Force's Historical Tracts, ii. 13.

[192:C] Burk's Hist. of Va., ii. 41, referring to "Ancient Records" of the London Company.

[192:D] Force's Hist. Tracts, ii.; Maryland and Virginia, 22.