Yet, with all these characteristics, no one will hesitate to believe that Calvert was a bold and resolute person, when it is recollected that he visited the wilderness of the New World in the seventeenth century, and projected therein the formation of a British Province.
But, in truth, our materials for his biography are extremely scant. He died at the very moment when America's chief interest in him began. He belonged to the Court Party, as distinguished from the Country Party. He is known to have been a zealous supporter of the "supremacy of authority." He held, that "America, having been acquired by conquest, was subject, exclusively, to the control of royal prerogative." He was the defender of the Court in its diplomacy; and, ultra as James was in his monarchical doctrines, there can be little doubt that he would have dismissed Calvert from office, had there not been concord between the crown and its servant, as to the policy, if not the justice, of the toryism they both professed. But let us not judge that century by the standards of this. That would be writing history from a false point. Let us not condemn rulers who seem to be despotic in historic periods of transition—in periods of mutual intolerance and distrust—in periods when men know nothing, from practical experience, of the capacity of mankind for self government.[8]
The charter which Sir George Calvert framed, and the successor of James granted, was precisely the one we might justly suppose such a subject, and such a sovereign would prepare and sign. It invested the Lord Proprietary with all the royal rights, enjoyed by the Bishop of Durham, within the County Palatine of Durham. He was the source of justice. He was the fountain of honor, and allowed to decorate meritorious provincials with whatever titles and dignities he should appoint. He had the power to establish feudalism and all its incidents. He was not merely the founder and filler of office, but he was also the sole executive. He might erect towns, boroughs and cities;—he might pardon offences and command the forces. As ecclesiastical head of the Province, he had the right to found churches, and was entitled to their advowsons.[9] In certain cases he had the dangerous privilege of issuing ordinances, which were to have the force of sovereign decrees. In fact, allegiance to England, was alone preserved, and the Lord Proprietary became an autocrat, with but two limitations: 1st, the laws were to be enacted by the Proprietary, with the advice and approbation of the free men, or free-holders or their deputies,—the "liberi homines" and "liberi tenentes," spoken of in the charter;—and 2nd, "no interpretation" of the charter was "to be made whereby God's Holy Rights and the true Christian Religion, or the allegiance due to us," (the King of England,) "our heirs and successors, may, in any wise, suffer by change, prejudice or diminution." Christianity and the King—I blush to unite such discordant names—were protected in equal co-partnership.[10]
The first of these reserved privileges of the people, the Lord Proprietary Cecilius understood, to mean, that he had the exclusive privilege of proposing laws, and that the free-men, or free-holders of his province, could only accept or reject his propositions. These laws of the province were not to be submitted to the King for his approval, nor had he the important right of taxation, which was expressly relinquished. In the early legislation of Maryland, this supposed exclusive right of proposing laws by the Proprietary, was soon tested by mutual rejections, both by the legislative Assembly and by Cecilius, of the Acts, which each had separately passed or prepared.
But the other clause, touching "God's Holy Rights and the true Christian Religion," was one, in regard to the practical interpretation of which, I apprehend, there was never a moment's doubt in the mind either of the people or of the Proprietary. It is a radiant gem in the antique setting of the charter. It is the glory of Calvert. It is the utter obliteration of prejudice among all who professed Christianity. Toleration was unknown in the old World; but this was more than toleration, for it declared freedom at least to Christians,—yet it was not perfect freedom, for it excluded that patient and suffering race—that chosen people—who, to the disgrace even of republican Maryland, within my recollection, were bowed down by political disabilities.
I am aware that many historians consider the religious freedom of Maryland as originating in subsequent legislation, and claim the act of 1649 as the statute of toleration. I do not agree with them. Sir George Calvert had been a Protestant;—he became a Catholic. As a Catholic, he came to Virginia, and in the colony where he sought to settle, he found himself assailed, for the first time in his life, by Protestant virulence and incapacitation. He was now, himself, about to become a Lord Proprietor. The sovereign who granted his charter was a Protestant, and moreover, the king of a country whose established religion was Protestant. The Protestant monarch, of course, could not grant anything which would compromise him with his Protestant subjects; yet the Catholic nobleman, who was to take the beneficiary charter, could not receive, from his Protestant master, a grant which would assail the conscience of co-religionists over whom he was, in fact, to be a sovereign. In England, the King had no right to interfere with the Church of England; but in America, which was a vacant, royal domain, his paramount authority permitted him to abolish invidious ecclesiastical distinctions. Calvert, the Catholic, must have been less than a man, if he forgot his fellow sufferers and their disabilities when he drew his charter. His Protestant recollections taught him the vexations of Catholic trials, while his Catholic observation informed him sharply of Protestant persecution. Sectarianism was already rampant across the Atlantic.[11] The two British lodgments, in Virginia and New England, were obstinately sectarian. Virginia was Episcopalian; New England was Puritan;—should Maryland be founded as an exclusively Protestant province, or an exclusively Catholic settlement? It is evident that either would be impossible:—the latter, because it would have been both impolitic and probably illegal; and the former because it would have been a ridiculous anomaly to force a converted Catholic, to govern a colony wherein his own creed was not tolerated by a fundamental and unalterable law. It is impossible to conceive that the faith of Calvert and the legal religion of Charles, did not enter into their deliberations, when they discussed the Charter; and, doubtless, both subject and sovereign justly decided to make "The Land of Mary," which the Protestant Charles baptised in honor of his Catholic Queen, a free soil for Christianity. It was Calvert's duly and interest to make Charles tolerant of Catholic Christianity; nor could he deny to others the immunity he demanded for himself and his religious brethren. The language of the charter, therefore, seems explicit and incapable of any other meaning. There were multitudes of Catholics in England, who would be glad to take refuge in a region where they were to be free from disabilities, and could assert their manhood. The king, moreover, secured for his Catholic subjects a quiet, but chartered banishment, which still preserved their allegiance. At the court there was much leaning towards the church of Rome. It was rather fashionable to believe one way, and conform another. The Queen was zealous in her ancestral faith; and her influence over the king, colored more than one of his acts. Had Calvert gone to the market place, and openly proclaimed, that a Protestant king, by a just charter of neutrality, had established an American sanctuary for Catholics, and invited them thither under the banner of the cross, one of his chief objects, must have been at once defeated; for intolerance would have rallied its parties against the project, and the dream of benevolence would have been destroyed for ever. If by the term, "God's Holy Rights and the true Christian religion," the charter meant, the church of England, then, ex vi termini, Catholicity could never have been tolerated in Maryland; and yet it is unquestionable that the original settlement was made under Catholic auspices—blessed by Catholic clergymen—and acquiesced in by Protestant followers. Was it not wise, therefore, to shield conscience in Maryland, under the indefinite but unsectarian phraseology of "God's Holy Rights and the true Christian Religion?"[12]
So far, then, for the basis of the charter, and for the action of Sir George Calvert. After his death, the planting of the colony took place under the administration of Cecilius, who, remaining in Europe, dispatched his brother Leonard to America to carry out his projects.
If the personal history of the Calverts is scant, the history of the early days of Maryland is scarcely less so; but the industry of antiquarians, and the researches of a learned Catholic clergyman, have brought to light two documents which disclose much of the religious and business character of the settlement. The work entitled:—"A Relation of Maryland," which was published in London in 1635, and gave the first account of the planting of the province, is a minute, mercantile, statistical, geographical and descriptive narrative of the landing and locating of the adventurers who set sail in 1633, and of their genial intercourse with the aborigines. If I had time, it would be pleasing to sum up the facts of this historical treasure, which was evidently prepared under the direction of Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, if not actually written by him. It is full of the spirit of careful, honest enterprise; and exhibits, I think, conclusively, the fact that the design of Calvert, in establishing this colony, was mainly the creation of a great estate, manorial and agricultural, whose ample revenues should, at all times, supply the needs of his ten children and their descendants.
The other document to which I refer, is a manuscript discovered some years ago, by the Rev. Mr. McSherry, in the archives of the college of the Propaganda, at Rome, and exhibits the zeal with which the worthy Jesuits, whom Lord Baltimore sent forth with the first settlers, applied themselves to the christianization of the savages. It presents some beautiful pictures of the simple life of these devotees. It shows that, in Maryland, the first step was not made in crime; and that the earliest duty of the Governor, was not only to conciliate the Indian proprietors, but to purchase the land they were willing to resign. Nor was this all; there was provident care for the soul as well as the soil of the savage. There is something rare in the watchful forethought which looks not only to the present gain or future prospects of our fellow men, which takes heed not only of the personal rights and material comforts of the race it is displacing, but guards the untutored savage, and consigns him to the vigilance of instructed piety. This "Narrative of Father White," and the Jesuits' letters, preserved in the college at Georgetown, portray the zeal with which the missionaries, in their frail barks, thridded the rivers, coves and inlets of our Chesapeake and Patapsco;—how they raised the cross, under the shadow of which the first landing was effected;—how they set up their altars in the wigwams of the Indians, and sought, by simplicity, kindness and reason, to reach and save the Indian. In Maryland, persecution was dead at the founding;—prejudice, even, was forbidden. The cruelties of Spanish planting were unknown in our milder clime. No violence was used, to convert or to appropriate, and thus, the symbol of salvation, was properly raised on the green Isle of St. Clement, as an emblem of the peace and good will, which the Proprietary desired should sanctify his enterprise.[13]