For four-and-twenty years after 1691 the third Lord Baltimore lived in England in the full enjoyment of his private rights and revenues, though deprived of his government. His son, Benedict Leonard Calvert, was a prince who took secular views of public policy, like the great Henry of Navarre. He preferred his palatinate to his church, and abjured the Catholic faith, much to the wrath and disgust of his aged father, who at once withdrew his annual allowance of £450. Benedict was obliged to apply to the crown for a pension, which was granted by Anne and continued by George I. until on February 20, 1715, the situation was completely changed by the father’s death. On the petition of Benedict, fourth Lord Baltimore, the proprietary government of Maryland was revived in his behalf. But Benedict survived his father only six weeks, and on April 5 his son Charles Calvert became fifth Lord Baltimore. As Charles was a lad of sixteen, whose Romanist faith had been forsworn with his father’s, he was forthwith proclaimed Lord Proprietor of Maryland, and royal governors no more vexed that colony.
Change in the political situation.
Despite all troubles it had thriven under their administration. The population had doubled within less than twenty years, and on Charles’s accession it was reckoned at 40,700 whites and 9,500 negroes.[120] Oppressive statutes had not prevented the Catholics from increasing in numbers and the influence which ability and character always wield. They were preëminently the picked men of the colony. Entire suppression of their forms of worship had been recognized as impracticable. An act of 1704 had allowed priests to perform religious services in Roman Catholic families, though not in public. From this permission advantage was taken to build chapels as part of private mansions, so that the family with their guests might worship God after their manner, relying upon the principle that an Englishman’s house is his castle. By some of these people it was hoped that the restoration of the palatinate would revive their political rights and privileges. But this renewal of the palatinate was far from restoring the old state of things. The position of the fifth Lord Baltimore was very different from that of the second and third. They were Catholic princes, and were steadily supported by two Catholic kings of England. The new proprietor was a Protestant, dependent upon the favour of a Protestant king. The features of the old palatinate government, therefore, which lend the chief interest to its history, were never restored. Catholic citizens remained disfranchised, and continued to be taxed for the support of a church which they disapproved.
Charles Carroll.
An interesting project was entertained about this time, by Charles Carroll and other Catholic gentlemen, of leading a migration to the Mississippi valley, thus transferring their allegiance from Great Britain to France. Mr. Carroll, a descendant of the famous Irish sept of O’Carrolls, and one of the foremost citizens of Maryland, had long been agent and receiver of rents for the third Lord Baltimore. The scheme which he was now contemplating might have led to curious results, but it was soon abandoned. A grant of territory by the Arkansas River was sought from the French government,[121] but it proved impossible to agree upon terms, and that region remained a wilderness until several questions of world-wide importance had been settled.
Seeds of revolution.
Though the accession of the fifth Lord Baltimore did not reinstate the Catholics in their civil rights, it nevertheless did much to mitigate the operation of the oppressive statutes against them. An early symptom of Charles’s temper was shown by his reappointment of Carroll as his agent. He went on to do such justice to Catholics as was in his power, and under his mild and equitable rule the fierceness of political passion was much abated. The proprietary government retained its popularity until it came to an end with the Declaration of Independence. But the interval of crown government from 1691 to 1715 had for the first time made the connection with Great Britain seem oppressive, and had planted the seeds of future sympathy with the revolutionary party in Massachusetts and Virginia. As the long struggle with France increased in dimensions, the political questions at issue in the several colonies became more and more continental in character. All were more or less assimilated one to another, and thus the way toward federation was prepared. Thus the discussions in Maryland came more and more to deal with the rights of the colonial legislature and British interference with them. At the same time Maryland had a grievance of her own in the poll tax for maintaining a foreign and hated church. In 1772 an assault upon that tax was the occasion of one of the most remarkable legal controversies in American annals; and the leader in that assault, Charles Carroll’s grandson and namesake, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, soon afterward signed his name to the Declaration of Independence.
End of the palatinate.
In 1751, after a tranquil reign, only two years of which were spent in Maryland, Charles Calvert died in London, and was succeeded by his son Frederick, sixth and last Lord Baltimore. After a series of Antonines, at last came the Commodus. Frederick was a miserable debauchee, unworthy scion of a noble race. For Maryland he cared nothing except to spend its revenues in riotous living in London. One adventure of his, for which he was tried and acquitted on a mere technicality, fills one of the most loathsome chapters of the Newgate Calendar.[122] But this villain was represented in Maryland by two excellent governors, Horatio Sharpe from 1753 to 1768, and then Sir Robert Eden, who had married Frederick’s younger sister. Eden remained in authority until June 24, 1776, when he embarked for England with the good wishes of the people. The wretched Frederick died in 1771, without legitimate children, and the barony of Baltimore became extinct. By the will of Charles, the fifth baron, the proprietorship of Maryland was now vested in Frederick’s elder sister, Louisa, wife of John Browning. But Frederick had also left a will, in which he devised the province to an illegitimate son, called Henry Harford. This young man laid claim to the proprietorship, but before the chancery suit was ended the Palatinate of Maryland had become one of the thirteen United States.