For some time harmony, peace, and prosperity prevailed. The mild and wise institutions of the proprietary were conducive to the interests of the colonists, and won in return their attachment and gratitude. Every heart, excepting Clayborne’s, was satisfied, and desired that things should remain as they were. Clayborne from the first had rejected the claim of Lord Baltimore, and refused to submit to it. Accordingly, in the sitting of the first Legislative Assembly of Maryland, in February, 1635, at St. Mary’s, the jurisdiction of the state was vindicated, in opposition to the claims of Clayborne. Nothing, however, daunted by this measure, he determined to make good his claims by force of arms. A bloody skirmish took place on one of the rivers of Maryland; several lives were lost; Clayborne’s men were defeated and taken prisoners, and he himself fled to Virginia, whence, to escape being given up to the governor of Maryland, he was sent by Harvey, the governor of Virginia, to England for trial.
The colony was well rid of this troublesome member, at least for a while; he was declared by the Assembly guilty of treason, not only by endeavouring to overthrow the government of the proprietary, but by exciting the jealousies of the Indians against the settlers; and his property on Kent Island was confiscated. In England he won at first a favourable hearing from the king, Charles I.; but on the merits of the case being more thoroughly investigated, it was decided that the charter of Lord Baltimore superseded all earlier licences of traffic. Clayborne was again defeated, and the claims of Lord Baltimore fully confirmed.
Men of strong intellect, ardent champions of popular liberty, were, as we have seen, the founders of the early American states, hence we universally find them not more jealous for the possession and maintenance of territory, than for the establishment of principles of democratic liberty. In 1639, therefore, the third annual General Assembly was convened for the purpose of establishing “a more convenient form of representative government,” and the people were allowed to send as many delegates to the General Assembly as they should deem proper. A declaration of rights was also drawn up; allegiance was declared to the English sovereign, Lord Baltimore’s prerogatives as proprietary were defined, and the liberties of Englishmen confirmed to the inhabitants of Maryland. “There was as yet,” says our historian, “no jealousy of power, no strife for place. Yet,” adds he, “while these laws prepared a frame of government for future generations, we are reminded of the feebleness and poverty of the state, when the whole people were at that very period obliged to contribute to the setting up of a water-mill.”
In the year 1642, the inhabitants of Maryland, from a grateful sense of Lord Baltimore’s “great charge and solicitude in maintaining the government, and protecting them in their persons, rights, and liberties, freely granted such a subsidy as the young and poor estate could bear.” This was a subsidy of fifteen pounds weight of tobacco for every person above twelve years of age.
In the same year the peace and prosperity of the colony was again interrupted; firstly, by the bordering Indian tribes, who, alarmed at the rapid spread of the colonists, and embittered towards them by the suspicions with which the artful Clayborne had poisoned their minds, made divers warlike incursions, causing the death of some and the alarm of all. A fort was built on the Patuxent as a defence against the Susquehannahs, and peace at length re-established on the usual terms of Indian submission. A more formidable and annoying enemy in the meantime made his appearance, this being no other than the contumacious Clayborne. Clayborne, on the breaking out of civil war in England, had allied himself with the popular party, and now, in the absence of Calvert, the governor, who was then in England, and in connexion with one Ingle, already convicted of treason in the colony, took the opportunity of re-asserting his claims and exciting insubordination among the disaffected. It may appear strange, that, under a form of government so wise and liberal as that of Lord Baltimore, disaffection should exist; but it must be borne in mind that the religious contentions of England had been transported to America, and not even in the Old World did papacy and puritanism come to closer quarters than on the soil of Maryland. Whilst England herself was convulsed with the birth of liberty, and whilst the popular will was standing in stout array against the power of the monarch, it was not to be expected that the men of America, who had fled from their native land in the very spirit of this conflict, would abate one jot of it here. Besides this, the demand of puritanism was fierce dogmatism, which not even the noble toleration of Lord Baltimore’s government could appease, nay, which it was even a virtue to oppose.
England had too much to do at home to care at this time about its colonies beyond the Atlantic, and New England and Virginia legislated for themselves almost without reference to the mother-country; and with the Puritans the same independent spirit had entered Maryland. Whilst England defied her king, Maryland began to question what were the rights of any human proprietary, who was in fact but a sort of petty sovereign; and this question once admitted into the heart of the colony, served as the leaven of disaffection.
Not even the virtues of Lord Baltimore could insure his authority and his rights against Puritanism and the spirit of democratic liberty. Clayborne and Ingle appeared in arms, and gained possession of the Isle of Kent, which was then held by Giles Brent, in whose hands the administration had been placed by Calvert on his departure. For twelve months anarchy prevailed throughout the colony, and the records, being seized by Clayborne and Ingle, were destroyed. At length Calvert returned, and by means of an armed force from Virginia subdued the insurgents, though not without considerable loss. Peace and order were re-established, and by a wise clemency of the government, an act of amnesty was passed, which, by cancelling offences, allayed the irritation of rebellion.
The power of the proprietary was once more confirmed, whilst in the mother-country monarchy was overthrown and Puritanism was predominant. At this crisis the Roman Catholic government of Maryland, with that sagacious spirit of Christian moderation which marked all its proceedings, resolved to meet any approaching danger by still further strengthening the law of toleration. A second act for religious freedom was placed on their statute-books in the following words: “And whereas the enforcing of the conscience in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequences in those commonwealths where it has been practised, and for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and amity among the inhabitants, no person within this province professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall be in any way troubled, molested, or discountenanced for his or her religion, or in the free exercise thereof.” Noble words, noble spirit of religious liberty, worthy to be spoken by the genius of the New World!
Years afterwards, when on some occasion it was necessary to defend the measures of Lord Baltimore, it was declared that no person in Maryland had ever been persecuted for religion, and that the colonists ever enjoyed freedom of conscience no less than freedom of person and estate. The persecuted both of Massachusetts and Virginia were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and equal political rights in the Catholic province of Maryland.
In 1650 the legislative body was divided into an upper and lower house, the former consisting of the governor and council, the latter of representatives chosen by the people. The strength of the proprietary, it was declared in the General Assembly, reposed “in the affections of his people,” and all taxes were forbidden, unless granted by vote of the deputies of the freemen of the province.