%26. Treatment of Catholics.%—The deed for Maryland had not been issued when Lord Baltimore died. It was therefore made out in the name of his son, Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, who, like the first, was a Roman Catholic, and was influenced in his attempts at colonization by a desire to found a refuge for people of his own faith. At that time in England no Roman Catholic was permitted to educate his children in a foreign land, or to employ a schoolmaster of his religious belief; or keep a weapon; or have Catholic books in his house; or sit in Parliament; or when he died be buried in a parish churchyard. If he did not attend the parish church, he was fined £20 a month. But it is needless to mention the ways in which he suffered for his religion. It is enough to know that the persecution was bitter, and that the purpose of Lord Baltimore was to make Maryland a Roman Catholic colony. Yet he set a noble example to other founders of colonies by freely granting to all sects full freedom of conscience. As long as the Catholics remained in control, toleration worked well. But in the year 1691 Lord Baltimore was deprived of his colony because he had supported King James II., and in 1692 sharp laws were made in Maryland against Catholics by the Protestants. In 1716 the colony was restored to the proprietor.
The first settlement was made in 1634 at St. Marys. Annapolis was founded about 1683; and Baltimore in 1729.[1]
[Footnote 1: Read Scharf's History of Maryland; Doyle's Virginia;
Lodge's English Colonies; Eggleston's Beginners of a Nation,.]
%27. The Dutch on the Hudson.%—Meantime great things had been happening to the northward. In 1609 Henry Hudson, an English sailor in the service of Holland, was sent to find a northwest passage to India. He reached our coast not far from Portland, Maine, and abandoning all idea of finding a passage, he sailed alongshore to the southward as far as Cape Cod. Here he put to sea, and when he again sighted land was off Delaware Bay. In attempting to sail up it, his ship, the Half-Moon, grounded, and Hudson turned about. Running along the Jersey coast, he entered New York Bay, and sailed up the river which the Dutch called the North River, but which we know as the Hudson. Hudson's voyage gave the Dutch a claim to all the country drained by the Delaware or South River and the Hudson River, and some Dutch traders at once sent out vessels, and were soon trading actively with the Indians. By 1614 a rude fort had been erected near the site of Albany, and some trading huts had been put up on Manhattan Island. These ventures proved so profitable that numbers of merchants began to engage in the trade, whereupon those already in it, in order to shut out others, organized a company, and in 1615 obtained a trading charter for three years from the States General of Holland, and carried on their operations from Albany to the Delaware River.
[Illustration: View of New Amsterdam in 1656]
%28. Dutch West India Company.%—On the expiration of the charter (in 1618) it was not renewed, but a new corporation, the Dutch West India Company (1621), was created with almost absolute political and commercial power over all the Dutch domains in North America, which were called New Netherland. In 1623 the company began to send out settlers. Some went to Albany, or, as they called it, Fort Orange. Others were sent to the South or Delaware River, where a trading post, Fort Nassau, was built on the site of Gloucester in New Jersey. A few went to the Connecticut River; some settled on Long Island; and others on Manhattan Island, where they founded New Amsterdam, now called New York city.
All these little settlements were merely fur-trading posts. Nobody was engaged as yet in farming. To encourage this, the company (in 1629) took another step, and offered a great tract of land, on any navigable river or bay, to anybody who would establish a colony of fifty persons above the age of fifteen. If on a river, the domain was to be sixteen miles along one bank or eight miles along each bank, and run back into the country as far "as the situation of the occupiers will admit." The proprietor of the land was to be called a "patroon," [1] and was absolute ruler of whatever colonies he might plant, for he was at once owner, ruler, and judge. It may well be supposed that such a tempting offer did not go a-begging, and a number of patroons were soon settled along the Hudson and on the banks of the Delaware (1631), where they founded a town near Lewes. The settlements on the Delaware River were short-lived. The settlers quarreled with the Indians, who in revenge massacred them and drove off the garrison at Fort Nassau; whereupon the patroons sold their rights to the Dutch West India Company.[2]
[Footnote 1: The patroon bound himself to (1) transport the fifty settlers to New Netherland at his own expense; (2) provide each of them with a farm stocked with horses, cattle, and farming implements, and charge a low rent; (3) employ a schoolmaster and a minister of the Gospel. In return for this the emigrant bound himself (1) to stay and cultivate the land of the patroon for ten years; (2) to bring his grain to the patroon's mill and pay for grinding; (3) to use no cloth not made in Holland; (4) to sell no grain or produce till the patroon had been given a chance to buy it.]
[Footnote 2: Lodge's English Colonies, pp. 295-311; Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, Vol. III., pp. 385-411; Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. I., pp. 501-508.]
%29. The Struggle for the Delaware; the Swedes on the Delaware.%—And now began a bitter contest for the ownership of the country bordering the Delaware. A few leading officials of the Dutch Company, disgusted at the way its affairs were managed, formed a new company under the lead of William Usselinx. As they could not get a charter from Holland, for she would not create a rival to the Dutch Company, they sought and obtained one from Sweden as the South Company, and (1638) sent out a colony to settle on the Delaware River.[1] The spot chosen was on the site of Wilmington. The country was named New Sweden, though it belonged to Maryland. The Dutch West India Company protested and rebuilt Fort Nassau. The Swedes, in retaliation, went farther up the river and fortified an island near the mouth of the Schuylkill. Had they stopped here, all would have gone well. But, made bold by the inaction of the Dutch, they began to annoy the New Netherlanders, till (1655) Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of New Netherland, unable to stand it any longer, came over from New Amsterdam with a few hundred men, overawed the Swedes, and annexed their territory west of the Delaware. New Sweden then became part of New Netherland.[2]