The Kingdom is cared for not less than the Church in Virginia. Any and all persons coming into the colony by land and by sea shall have administered to them the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance. "Which if any shall refuse to take," the commander of the fort at Point Comfort shall "committ him or them to prison." Foreigners in birth and tongue, foreigners in thought, must have found the place and time narrow indeed.
On the eve of civil war there arose on the part of some in England a project to revive and restore the old Virginia Company by procuring from Charles, now deep in troubles of his own, a renewal of the old letters patent and the transference of the direct government of the colony into the hands of a reorganized and vast corporation. Virginia, which a score of years before had defended the Company, now protested vigorously, and, with regard to the long view of things, it may be thought wisely. The project died a natural death. The petition sent from Virginia shows plainly enough the pen of Berkeley. There are a multitude of reasons why Virginia should not pass from King to Company, among which these are worthy of note: "We may not admit of so unnatural a distance as a Company will interpose between his sacred majesty and us his subjects from whose immediate protection we have received so many royal favours and gracious blessings. For, by such admissions, we shall degenerate from the condition of our birth, being naturalized under a monarchical government and not a popular and tumultuary government depending upon the greatest number of votes of persons of several humours and dispositions."
When this paper reached England, it came to a country at civil war. The Long Parliament was in session. Stafford had been beheaded, the Star Chamber swept away, the Grand Remonstrance presented. On Edgehill bloomed flowers that would soon be trampled by Rupert's cavalry. In Virginia the Assembly took notice of these "unkind differences now in England," and provided by tithing for the Governor's pension and allowance, which were for the present suspended and endangered by the troubles at home. That the forces banded against the Lord's anointed would prove victorious must at this time have appeared preposterously unlikely to the fiery Governor and the ultra-loyal Virginia whom he led. The Puritans and Independents in Virginia—estimated a little earlier at "a thousand strong" and now, for all the acts against them, probably stronger yet—were to be found chiefly in the parishes of Isle of Wight and Nansemond, but had representatives from the Falls to the Eastern Shore. What these Virginians thought of the "unkind differences" does not appear in the record, but probably there was thought enough and secret hopes.
In 1644, the year of Marston Moor, Virginia, too, saw battle and sudden and bloody death. That Opechancanough who had succeeded Powhatan was now one hundred years old, hardly able to walk or to see, dwelling harmlessly in a village upon the upper Pamunkey. All the Indians were broken and dispersed; serious danger was not to be thought of. Then, of a sudden, the flame leaped again. There fell from the blue sky a massacre directed against the outlying plantations. Three hundred men, women, and children were killed by the Indians. With fury the white men attacked in return. They sent bodies of horse into the untouched western forests. They chased and slew without mercy. In 1646 Opechancanough, brought a prisoner to Jamestown, ended his long tale of years by a shot from one of his keepers. The Indians were beaten, and, lacking such another leader, made no more organized and general attacks. But for long years a kind of border warfare still went on.
Even Maryland, tolerant and just as was the Calvert policy, did not altogether escape Indian troubles. She had to contend with no such able chief as Opechancanough, and she suffered no sweeping massacres. But after the first idyllic year or so there set in a small, constant friction. So fast did the Maryland colonists arrive that soon there was pressure of population beyond those first purchased bounds. The more thoughtful among the Indians may well have taken alarm lest their villages and hunting-grounds might not endure these inroads. Ere long the English in Maryland were placing "centinells" over fields where men worked, and providing penalties for those who sold the savages firearms. But at no time did young Maryland suffer the Indian woes that had vexed young Virginia.
Nor did Maryland escape the clash of interests which beset the beginnings of representative assemblies in all proprietary provinces. The second, like the first, Lord Baltimore, was a believer in kings and aristocracies, in a natural division of human society into masters and men. His effort was to plant intact in Maryland a feudal order. He would be Palatine, the King his suzerain. In Maryland the great planters, in effect his barons, should live upon estates, manorial in size and with manorial rights. The laboring men—the impecunious adventurers whom these greater adventurers brought out—would form a tenantry, the Lord Proprietary's men's men. It is true that, according to charter, provision was made for an Assembly. Here were to sit "freemen of the province," that is to say, all white males who were not in the position of indentured servants. But with the Proprietary, and not with the Assembly, would rest primarily the lawmaking power. The Lord Proprietary would propose legislation, and the freemen of the country would debate, in a measure advise, represent, act as consultants, and finally confirm. Baltimore was prepared to be a benevolent lord, wise, fatherly.
In 1635 met the first Assembly, Leonard Calvert and his Council sitting with the burgesses, and this gathering of freemen proceeded to inaugurate legislation. There was passed a string of enactments which presumably dealt with immediate wants at St. Mary's, and which, the Assembly recognized, must have the Lord Proprietary's assent. A copy was therefore sent by the first ship to leave. So long were the voyages and so slow the procedure in England that it was 1637 before Baltimore's veto upon the Assembly's laws reached Maryland. It would seem that he did not disapprove so much of the laws themselves as of the bold initiative of the Assembly, for he at once sent over twelve bills of his own drafting. Leonard Calvert was instructed to bring all freemen together in Assembly and present for their acceptance the substituted legislation.
Early in 1638 this Maryland Assembly met. The Governor put before it for adoption the Proprietary's laws. The vote was taken. Governor and some others were for, the remainder of the Assembly unanimously against, the proposed legislation. There followed a year or two of struggle over this question, but in the end the Proprietary in effect acknowledged defeat. The colonists, through their Assembly, might thereafter propose laws to meet their exigencies, and Governor Calvert, acting for his brother, should approve or veto according to need.
When civil war between King and Parliament broke out in England, sentiment in Maryland as in Virginia inclined toward the King. But that Puritan, Non-conformist, and republican element that was in both colonies might be expected to gain if, at home in England, the Parliamentary party gained. A Royal Governor or a Lord Proprietary's Governor might alike be perplexed by the political turmoil in the mother country. Leonard Calvert felt the need of first-hand consultation with his brother. Leaving Giles Brent in his place, he sailed for England, talked there with Baltimore himself, perplexed and filled with foreboding, and returned to Maryland not greatly wiser than when he went.
Maryland was soon convulsed by disorders which in many ways reflected the unsettled conditions in England. A London ship, commanded by Richard Ingle, a Puritan and a staunch upholder of the cause of Parliament, arrived before St. Mary's, where he gave great offense by his blatant remarks about the King and Rupert, "that Prince Rogue." Though he was promptly arrested on the charge of treason, he managed to escape and soon left the loyal colony far astern.