Theoretically, he was not inferior in rights and privileges to the king himself. He could make laws with the advice of the freemen, and withhold his assent from such as he did not approve. He claimed, and sometimes practiced, the right to dispense with the laws, in accordance with the principles and occasional practice of King James. He was authorized to create manorial lordships; to bestow titles upon the meritorious of his subjects; to summon, by writs, any freemen he chose, to take a seat in a legislative Assembly without election; to make ordinances of equal force with the laws without the confirmation of the Assembly; to declare martial law at his pleasure—for he had absolute control of the military and naval force of the colony—and to present ministers to the parishes. Such were the extensive powers which the charter of Maryland conferred upon the proprietor; yet the absolute authority of the "Baron of Baltimore" was conceded rather with reference to the crown than the colonists, for the charter contained concessions and grants to the people sufficient to guarantee them against oppression. The privileges, liberties, and franchises of liege subjects of England, born within the realm, were secured to them; they were protected against the operation of all laws repugnant to the statutes and customs of England; and they were forever exempted, by an express covenant in the charter, from all "impositions, customs, or other taxations, quotas, or contributions whatever," to be levied by the king or his successors. The sovereign did not reserve to himself even the right of superintendence of the affairs of the colony, or the power to interfere, in any way, with its laws. In fact, the province of Maryland was, by its royal charter, made independent of the crown from the beginning; it was what the proprietor termed it, "a separate monarchy." The dependence was acknowledged only by the provision of the charter which obliged the proprietor to acknowledge fealty by paying a tribute to the king of two Indian arrows yearly, and a fifth of all gold or silver ore which might be found.
The true glory of the first Maryland charter consists in the religious freedom which it recognizes; a freedom reasserted and enforced by an act of the Assembly in 1649, seventeen years after the charter passed the seals, when the whole realm of England was in commotion on account of the execution of the king and establishment of the commonwealth under Cromwell. To Lord Baltimore belongs the honor of being the first lawgiver in Christendom who made freedom of conscience the basis of a state constitution. There seems to be something paradoxical in the fact that an absolutist in political affairs should have been so democratic in matters of religion. But Baltimore was a latitudinarian; sagacious, farsighted, and awake to the best temporal interests of himself and his successors. He clearly perceived that the growth of his colony depended greatly upon the extent of religious freedom which might be guaranteed to emigrants. Persecution was overturning many peaceful
Baltimore's Toleration.—First Settlers.—Leonard Calvert.—Settlement at St. Mary's.
homes in Great Britain; and, to wherever the light of toleration was seen, thousands of the oppressed made their way. He was exceedingly tolerant himself, or he never would have retained the friendship of James; and therefore his feelings and interests were coincident. His Catholic brethren were more or less persecuted in England; while the Puritans, who were peopling the coasts of Massachusetts Bay, had also been "harried out of the land" by the hierarchy. Maryland was made the asylum for the persecuted; not for Roman Catholics alone, but for the English Puritans, and the equally harassed reformers of Virginia, under the administration of the bigoted Berkeley.
The first two hundred settlers, who came with Leonard Calvert (a) brother of Cecil, and first governor of the province, were principally Roman Catholics, but in a few a 1633 years Protestants became almost as numerous as they. These settled upon the unoccupied territory north of the Patuxent, and formed a new county which they called Severn, or Anne Arundel, extending nearly to the present site of Baltimore. "All the world outside of these portals [St. Michael's and St. Joseph's, as the first emigrants denominated the two headlands at the mouth of the Potomac, now Point Lookout, and Smith's Point] was intolerant, proscriptive, vengeful against the children of a dissenting faith. Only in Maryland, throughout this wide world of Christendom, was there an altar erected, and truly dedicated to the freedom of Christian worship." * Yet it must not be forgotten that, fifteen months before the charter of Maryland was executed, Roger Williams had sounded the trumpet of intellectual freedom in New England, and "it became his glory to found a state upon that principle, and to stamp himself upon its rising institutions, in characters so deep that the impress has remained to this day. **
It is not within the scope of my design to notice in detail the progress of the Maryland colony. The first settlement was made by Leonard Calvert, who, in February, 1634, arrived at Point Comfort, in Virginia, with about two hundred Roman Catholics. The Virginians had remonstrated against the grant to Baltimore, but, by express commands of the king, Harvey, then governor, received Calvert with courtesy. Early in March he sailed up the Potomac, and, casting anchor under an island which he called St. Clement, he fired his first cannon, erected a cross, and took possession "in the name of the Savior of the world and the King of Great Britain." *** He then proceeded up the Potomac to the mouth of the Piscataqua Creek, opposite Mount Vernon, and near the site of the present Fort Washington, fifteen miles south of Washington City. The chief of the Indian village at that place was friendly; but Calvert, deeming it unsafe to settle so high up the river, returned, and entered the stream now called St. Mary's. He purchased a village of the Indians, and commenced a settlement. (b) Founded upon religious toleration and the practice of b April. 1634 justice, **** the colony rapidly increased in population and resources; and peace, except
* Kennedy's Discourse on the Life and Character of George Calvert, before the Maryland Historical Society, 1845, page 43.
** Bancroft, i., 375.
*** Belknap.