Lord Baltimore, who even while secretary-of-state was a member of the Virginia company and a powerful advocate of American colonisation, had obtained in his own name a patent for colonising the southern promontory of Newfoundland, hoping there to establish a refuge for the persecuted Catholics of his native country. This settlement, which was called Avalon, on which he expended a large amount of his own private property, and which he visited twice in person, was finally abandoned, owing to the many difficulties against which it had to contend, partly from the severity of the climate and the sterility of the soil, and partly from the hostile attacks of the French, who were possessed of the surrounding country.
Lord Baltimore now turned his thoughts to Virginia, where the climate was mild, the land fertile, and the country beyond the Potomac as yet unoccupied. In 1632, therefore, on the dissolution of the London company, and the royal resumption of prerogative, it was not difficult for him, a favourite with the monarch, to obtain a charter for domains in that colony, which was no doubt all the more readily granted, as the Dutch, the Swedes, and the French were prepared to occupy the country.
This charter, according to internal evidence and concurrent opinion, was drawn up by Lord Baltimore himself, but owing to his death before it received the royal assent, was ultimately made out in the name of his son Cecil. The territory thus granted was comprised between the ocean and the 40th degree of latitude. The meridian of the western fountains of the Potomac, the river itself from its source to its mouth, and a line drawn due east from Watkin’s Point to the ocean, were the boundaries of this grant, which was erected into a separate province, under the name of Maryland, from Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. The country thus bestowed on Lord Baltimore, his heirs and assigns, as absolute lord and proprietary, was to be held by the tenure of fealty only, paying a yearly rent of two Indian arrows and a fifth of all gold and silver which it might yield; and the charter, unlike any which had hitherto obtained the royal assent, secured to the colonists equality in religious and civil rights, and an independent share in the legislation of the province. The laws of the colony were to be established with the advice and approval of a majority of the freemen or their deputies; nor could the authority of the absolute proprietary extend to the life, freehold, or estate of any emigrant. “These,” says Bancroft, “were the features which endeared the proprietary government to the people of Maryland;” and he adds, “it is a singular fact, that the only proprietary charters productive of considerable emolument to their owners were those which conceded popular liberty. Lord Baltimore was a Roman Catholic; yet, far from guarding his territory against any but those of his own persuasion, as he had taken from himself and his successors all arbitrary power by establishing the legislative franchises of the people, so he took from them the means of being intolerant in religion, inasmuch as, while Christianity was made the law of the land, no preference whatever should be given to sect or party.”
To avoid dispute on the subject of the fisheries, all claim to these was expressly renounced by the charter; Maryland was also carefully separated from Virginia, the necessity of which Lord Baltimore had clearly foreseen from his former visit to Virginia, when the oaths of supremacy and allegiance were tendered to him in a form which he, as a Catholic, could not subscribe; now, therefore, when about to establish his colony within the jurisdiction of Virginia, he provided against every possible cause of contention with the neighbour state. He also provided, as far as was in his power, against any future aggressions of the English monarch, who covenanted in the charter, by an express stipulation, “that neither he, nor his heirs, nor successors, should ever set any imposition, custom, or tax whatever, upon the inhabitants of the province.” Maryland was by this means exempted from English taxation for ever.
“Calvert, Lord Baltimore,” says the historian, “deserves to be ranked among the most wise and benevolent lawgivers of all ages. He was the first in the history of the Christian world to seek for religious security and peace by the practice of justice and not by the exercise of power; to plan the establishment of popular institutions with the enjoyment of liberty of conscience; to advance the career of civilisation by recognising the rightful equality of all Christian sects. The asylum of Papists was the spot where, in a remote quarter of the world, on the banks of rivers which as yet had hardly been explored, the mild forbearance of a proprietary adopted religious freedom as the basis of the state.”
Lord Baltimore having died, as we have said, before the charter had passed the royal seal, his son Cecil Calvert, who succeeded not only to his father’s title and honours, but to his liberal views and enlightened opinions, soon succeeded in enlisting a sufficient number of emigrants for the commencement of the colony, and these were soon joined by gentlemen of fortune and enterprise. The second Lord Baltimore, however, having, for reasons which are now unknown, abandoned his original intention of going out in person with the emigrants, appointed his brother, Leonard Calvert, as his lieutenant.
On Friday, the 22nd of November, in the year 1633, Leonard Calvert set sail with about 200 persons, mostly Roman Catholic gentlemen and their servants, in a ship of large burden called the Ark and the Dove, together with a pinnace. They sailed by way of the West Indies, and in the early spring arrived at Point Comfort in Virginia, where, by the express orders of King Charles, they were courteously received by Harvey, the governor. There also they were met by Clayborne, who had already done all in his power, through persons of influence in England, to prevent the granting of the charter, foreseeing that it might interfere with his settlements on Kent Island and elsewhere. He now presented himself as a prophet of evil, foretelling the hostility of the natives, which he had already secretly fomented.
Disregarding all evil augury, the Ark and Dove, attended by the pinnace, ascended the Potomac. Landing on an island, Calvert planted a cross, claiming the country for Christ and England, and having proceeded about 150 miles, arrived at an Indian village on the eastern bank of the river, called Piscataqua, the chief of which would neither bid him go nor stay, but told him he might do as he liked. Calvert, however, decided to establish his first settlement lower down the Potomac, which he descended, and entering a river now called St. Mary’s, above ten miles from its junction with the Potomac, purchased the little Indian town of Yoacomoco from the natives, who having suffered from the superior tribe of Susquehannahs were now about to desert it. Calvert considered this a good situation for a settlement, and by presents of cloth, axes, hose, and knives, secured the confidence and friendship of the natives, with whom a treaty was entered into, by which the English immediately obtained possession of one-half of the town, the whole of which was surrendered to them after the getting in of harvest. Good faith was maintained on both sides. On the 27th of March, the Catholics came into peaceful possession; and now, at the humble village of St. Mary, religious liberty found its first real home, its only safe home in the whole world.
The Ark and Dove, fit emblems of their mission, anchored in the harbour. The native chiefs came down to see the new emigrants and to establish leagues of amity with them; all was peace and security. The Indian women taught the wives of the English strangers to make bread of maize corn, and the warriors of the tribes instructed the men in the mysteries of the chase. Corn-fields and gardens were ready for cultivation; no sufferings had to be endured, no want was apprehended; it seemed as if the colony of Maryland was founded on a blessing. Within six months it had increased greatly both in wealth and population.
Memorable as was the commencement of Maryland, still more so was the spirit of her institutions. She was the first asserter of religious toleration in the New World, and whilst religious persecution had even been carried across the seas to their places of refuge by the Puritans, the very men who had fled thither to escape from it in their native country, Maryland bound her governor, by his oath of office, “neither by himself nor by any other, directly or indirectly, to molest any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ for or in respect of religion.” Under these mild institutions and the liberal expenditure of Lord Baltimore, who in the first two years of the settlement expended no less a sum than £40,000 in advancing its interests, the colony prospered wonderfully. Roman Catholics, oppressed by the laws of England, fled hither as to their natural asylum, and hither also came suffering Protestants, fleeing from the intolerance of their Protestant brethren.