Rebellion of Davis and Pate, 1676.
Execution of Davis and Pate.
It was this comparatively submissive assembly that in 1671 passed the act which for eleven years had been resisted, granting to the proprietor a royalty of two shillings on every hogshead of tobacco exported. In return for this grant, however, the lower house obtained some concessions. With the death of Cecilius, in 1675, the situation was certainly changed for the worse. Now for the first time the people of Maryland had their lord proprietor dwelling among them and not in England; but Charles was narrower and less public-spirited than his father, his measures were more arbitrary, and the feeling that the country was governed in the interests of a small coterie of Papists rapidly increased. In 1676 Maryland seemed on the point of following Virginia into rebellion. Lord Baltimore went to England in the spring, and by midsummer it had become evident that Bacon had able sympathizers in Maryland. A set of manuscript archives, recently recovered from long oblivion,[111] make it probable that but for Bacon’s sudden death in October and the collapse of the movement in Virginia, there would have been bloodshed in the sister colony. In August a seditious paper was circulated, alleging grievances similar to those of Virginia, and threatening the proprietor’s government. Two gentlemen named Davis and Pate, with others, gathered an armed force in Calvert county with the design of intimidating the governor and council, and extorting from them sundry concessions. When the governor, Thomas Notley, ordered them to disband, promising that their demands should be duly considered at the next assembly, they refused on the ground that the assembly had been tampered with and no longer represented the people. As Notley afterward wrote to Lord Baltimore, never was there a people “more replete with malignancy and frenzy than our people were about August last, and they wanted but a monstrous head to their monstrous body.” But this incipient Davis and Pate rebellion derived its strength from the Bacon rebellion, and the collapse of the one extinguished the other. Davis and Pate were hanged, at which Notley tells us the people were “terrified,” and so peace was preserved.
George Talbot.
An episode which occurred before the final catastrophe throws some light upon the relations of parties at the time. An Irish kinsman of Lord Baltimore’s, by name George Talbot, obtained in 1680 an extensive grant of land on the Susquehanna River, where he lived in feudal style, with a force of Irish retainers at his beck and call, hunting venison, drinking strong waters, browbeating Indians, and picking quarrels with William Penn’s newly arrived followers. In 1684 Lord Baltimore went again to England, leaving his son, Benedict Calvert, in the governorship; and as Benedict was a mere boy, there was a little regency of which George Talbot was the head. Now the exemption of Maryland from king’s taxes did not extend to custom-house duties. These were collected by crown officers and paid into the royal treasury; and the collectors were apt to behave themselves, as in all ages and countries, like enemies of the human race. Between them and the proprietary government there was deep-seated antipathy. They accused Lord Baltimore of hindering them in their work, and this complaint led the king to pounce upon him with a claim for £2,500 alleged to have been lost to the revenue through his interferences. One of these collectors, Christopher Rousby, was especially overbearing, and some called him a rascal. Late in 1684 a small ship of the royal navy was lying at St. Mary’s, and one day, while Rousby was in the cabin drinking toddies with the captain, Talbot came on board, and a quarrel ensued, in the course of which Talbot drew a dagger and plunged it into Rousby’s heart. The captain refused to allow Talbot to go ashore to be tried by a council of his relatives; he carried him to Virginia and handed him over to the governor, Lord Howard of Effingham. Talbot was imprisoned not far from the site where once had stood the red man’s village, Werowocomoco, where he was in imminent danger of the gallows, or perhaps of having to pay his whole fortune as a bribe to the greedy Howard. But Talbot’s brave wife, with two trusty followers, sailed down the whole length of Chesapeake Bay and up York River in a boat. On a dark winter’s night they succeeded in freeing Talbot from his jail, and returning as they came, carried him off exulting to Susquehanna Manor. For the sake of appearances his friends in the Maryland council thought it necessary to proclaim the hue and cry after him, and there is a local tradition that he was for a while obliged to hide in a cave, where a couple of his trained hawks kept him alive by fetching him game—canvas-back ducks, perhaps, and terrapin—from the river! It is not likely, however, that the search for him was zealous or thorough. For some time he staid unmolested in his manor house, but presently deemed it prudent to go and surrender himself. The council refused to bring him to trial in any court held in the king’s name, until a royal order came from England to send him over there for trial, but before this was done Lord Baltimore interceded with James II. and secured a pardon.
A “Complaint from Heaven.”
The general effect of this Talbot affair was to weaken the palatinate government by making it appear lukewarm in its allegiance and remiss in its duties to the crown. The custom-house became a subject of hot discussion, and the charges of defrauding the royal revenue were reiterated with effect. Some time before this, a remarkable pamphlet had appeared with the title, “Complaint from Heaven with a Huy and Crye and a petition out of Virginia and Maryland.” It was evidently written by some Puritan friend of Fendall’s. After a bitter denunciation of the palatinate administration some measures of relief were suggested, one of which was that the king should assume the government of Maryland and appoint the governors. The time was now at hand when this suggestion was to bear fruit.
The anti-Catholic panic.
The forced abdication of James II. in 1688, with his flight to France, was the occasion of an anti-Catholic panic throughout the greater part of English America. It was as certain as anything future could be that the antagonism between Louis XIV. and William of Orange would at once break out in a great war, in which French armies from Canada would invade the English colonies. There was a widespread fear that Papists in these colonies would turn traitors and assist the enemy. It was in this scare that Leisler’s rebellion in New York originated, although there too a conflict between democracy and oligarchy was concerned, somewhat as in Maryland. Everywhere the ordinary dread of Papists became more acute. It was soon after this time that the clause of an act depriving Roman Catholics of the franchise found its way into the Rhode Island statutes, the only instance in which that commonwealth ever allowed itself to depart from the noble principles of Roger Williams.[112]
Causes of the panic.