To return to William the Conqueror: in an age when the organization of society was so imperfect, and action at a distance so slow and difficult, the possession of quasi-regal powers by the rulers of the palatine counties made it much easier for them to summon quickly their feudal forces in case of sudden invasion. In view of the frequency of quarrels and raids on the border, the quasi-regal authority was liable at any moment to be needed to prevent war from breaking out, and the proper administration of justice demanded a short shrift and a sharp doom for evil-doers. The powers granted by William to the palatine counties resembled those wielded by the French dukedoms of the same period, but with admirable forethought he appointed to rule them priests who could not marry and found feudal families. Durham and for a time Chester were ruled by their bishops, and over Kent as a secular jurisdiction William placed his own brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. In course of time many changes occurred. Kent soon lost its palatine privileges, while those of Chester were exercised by its earls until the reign of Henry III., when the earldom lapsed to the crown. After the conquest of Wales the county of Pembroke on its southwestern coast was made a palatinate, but its privileges were withdrawn by Henry VIII. For a time such privileges were enjoyed by Hexhamshire, between Durham and Northumberland, but under Elizabeth that little county was absorbed in Northumberland. One other northern shire, the duchy of Lancaster, was made a palatinate by Edward III., but that came to an end in 1399, when the Duke of Lancaster ascended the throne of England as Henry IV. Traces of its old palatinate jurisdiction, however, still survive. Until the Judicature Act of 1873 Lancaster and Durham had each its own distinct and independent court of common pleas, and the duchy of Lancaster has still its own chancellor and chancery court outside of the jurisdiction of the lord chancellor. As for the palatine authority of the bishops of Durham, it was vested in the crown in the year preceding the accession of Victoria.
The bishopric of Durham.
Avalon and Durham.
From this survey it appears that by the end of the sixteenth century the bishopric of Durham was left as the only complete instance of a palatinate, or kingdom within the kingdom. In the northern marches the need for such a buffer was longer felt than elsewhere, and the old political structure remained very much as it had been created by William I., with the mitred bishop at its head. The great Norman cathedral, in its position of unequalled grandeur,
"Half house of God,
Half castle 'gainst the Scot,"
still rears its towers in the blue sky to remind us of the stern days when tartan-clad thousands came swarming across the Tweed, to fall in heaps before the longbow at Halidon Hill and Neville's Cross and on many another field of blood. When the king of Scots came to be king of England, this principality of Durham afforded an instance of a dominion thoroughly English yet semi-independent, unimpeachable for loyalty but distinct in its administration. It was not strange, therefore, that it should have served as a pattern for colonial governments to be set up in the New World. For such governments virtual independence combined with hearty allegiance was the chief desideratum, a fact which in later days George III. unfortunately forgot. From the merely military point of view a colony in the American wilderness stood in at least as much need of palatine authority as any frontier district in the Old World. Accordingly, when it was decided to entrust the work of founding an American colony to a nobleman with his clientage of followers, an example of the needful organization was already furnished by the great northern bishopric. Calvert's province in Newfoundland, which received the name of Avalon,[123] was to be modelled after the palatinate of Durham, and the powers granted to its lord proprietor were perhaps the most extensive ever bestowed by the English crown upon any subject.
Baltimore's colony in Newfoundland.
A party of colonists went at once to Newfoundland in 1623, but various affairs detained Lord Baltimore at home until 1627, when he came with his wife and children to dwell in this New World paradise of Avalon. The trail of the serpent was already there. A French fleet came to attack the colony, meditating revenge for Argall's treatment of the French at Mount Desert and Port Royal, but Baltimore's ships were heavily armed and well handled, and the Frenchmen got the worst of it. Then a party of Puritans came to Avalon, and these unbidden guests were horrified at what they saw. The Rev. Erasmus Stourton returned to England with a shocking story of how Lord Baltimore not only had the mass performed every Sunday, but had even allowed a Presbyterian child to be baptized by a Romish priest. Then the climate of Avalon proved to be anything but what had been expected. One Captain Richard Whitbourne had published an enthusiastic book in which he recorded his memories of June days in Newfoundland, with their delicious wild strawberries and cherries, the soft air redolent with the fragrance of red and white roses, the woods vocal with thrushes and other songsters that rivalled the nightingale; of wild beasts there were none that were harmful, and "in St. John's harbour he once saw a mermaid."[124] Lord Baltimore learned that it was not always June in Avalon. He wrote to Charles I. in August, 1629, as follows: "I have met with difficulties and encumbrances here which in this place are no longer to be resisted, but enforce me presently to quit my residence and to shift to some other warmer climate of this New World, where the winters be shorter and less rigorous. For here your Majesty may please to understand that I have found by too dear-bought experience, which other men for their private interests always concealed from me, that from the middle of October to the middle of May there is a sad fare of winter upon all this land; both sea and land so frozen for the greater part of the time as they are not penetrable, no plant or vegetable thing appearing out of the earth until the beginning of May, nor fish in the sea; beside the air so intolerable cold as it is hardly to be endured. By means whereof, and of much salt meat, my house hath been an hospital all this winter; of a hundred persons fifty sick at a time, myself being one, and nine or ten of them died. Hereupon I have had strong temptations to leave all proceedings in plantations, and being much decayed in my strength, to retire myself to my former quiet; but my inclination carrying me naturally to these kind of works, and not knowing how better to employ the poor remainder of my days than ... to further, the best I may, the enlarging your Majesty's empire in this part of the world, I am determined to commit this place to fishermen that are able to encounter storms and hard weather, and to remove myself with some forty persons to your Majesty's dominion Virginia; where, if your Majesty will please to grant me a precinct of land, with such privileges as the king your father ... was pleased to grant me here, I shall endeavour to the utmost of my power, to deserve it."[125]