The Virginians did actually have something of a legal brake that they could apply on royal or noble license. They had their House of Burgesses, which had been sitting since 1619 as the first popular legislative assembly in America. Even after the king took over the colony from the company the colonists had been successful in retaining their little parliament. Somehow, with this bulwark of democracy, it was easier to face up to the crown or to court favorites like Lord Baltimore when impossible demands were in the making. And that is exactly what happened, for the House of Burgesses backed the merchants in every move they made to thwart the great lord’s plans, both in Virginia and in England after he returned there.
Meanwhile, Captain Claiborne himself went to London where he obtained additional backing for his project through the merchant adventurer, William Cloberry. This wealthy man, together with Maurice Thompson and other merchants, subscribed for the major share of the joint-stock in the trading adventure. All agreed enthusiastically that through Claiborne’s plantation it would be possible to drain off much of the fur trade of the French in Canada. Cloberry well knew the potentialities of the “backside of Virginia,” as he had formerly adventured with the Kirkes in Canada.
Just to make sure that if Lord Baltimore later obtained his grant he did not molest Claiborne, the partners in the trading adventure obtained a commission under His Majesty’s signet of Scotland authorizing trade in all territory “neere or about these partes of America for which there is not allready a patent granted to others for the sole trade.” It was drawn up by Sir William Alexander, the Secretary for Scotland, who was entertained by Cloberry with bait in the form of a proposition for interchange of trade between Virginia and Nova Scotia. Sir William, making desperate efforts at the time to extract a profit from his grant in America, saw in the Claiborne venture a source of corn for his plantation at Port Royal.
In any event, the commission was confirmed by the King himself at Greenwich, and when the Secretary of Virginia sailed back across the ocean in May of 1631 to establish his plantation and launch his trading adventure he went with the royal blessing.
In his ship, the Africa, cargoed with colonists and supplies, Claiborne touched first at Kecoughtan and Accomac to attract additional volunteers, and then late in August he planted his colony on Kent Island, some hundred and twenty-five miles up the bay. Kent Island, which lies against the Eastern Shore opposite present-day Annapolis, was ideally situated for his purposes. He built a palisaded fort and stocked his plantation with cattle, swine and poultry. With the arrival of more farmers and traders from the lower settlements it was not long before the colony had a church, a windmill, warehouses, and a shipyard busily constructing shallops, wherries and pinnaces for the Indian trade.
Despite a devastating fire that once destroyed all the buildings, death from marauding savages, and sickness, as well as many other hardships, the plantation flourished. In the spring its fields were green with tobacco and corn, and its wharves were busy with trading boats and bundles of furs. During the summer the season’s pelts were stretched and leathered on rows of wooden hide racks inside the palisades before being packed in great hogsheads for shipment to England. Then in the autumn, after the harvesting, the sweet scent of tobacco wafted into the fort from the drying sheds where the leaves hung curing on poles.
In the spring of 1632 Captain Nicholas Martiau, an ancestor of George Washington, represented Kent Hundred in the House of Burgesses at Jamestown, and the first English settlement within the present bounds of the State of Maryland was recognized as a political unit of Virginia, established within the assigned territorial limits of that royal colony.
In the meantime, on the other side of the ocean, George Calvert died before ever getting a charter to establish a palatinate of his own in the Chesapeake. However, his efforts finally bore fruit. On June 30, 1632, two months after his death, a grant passed through the seals. “Maryland” was to be a slice of Virginia extending from the Potomac River northward to the 40th parallel which crosses the Delaware at present-day Philadelphia. It was a feudal seigniory to be passed on to the baron’s heirs, just as he had planned, and already it had made its first descent, to his oldest son, Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore.
Although Kent Island was obviously within the limits of the grant to Baltimore, neither William Claiborne nor the Council at Jamestown doubted the legality of Virginia’s claim upon the island. The Maryland charter expressly limited Baltimore’s rights to land “hactenus inculta,” that is, hitherto uncultivated. Kent of course was cultivated and had been for some time.
Two years later, however, when Cecilius’ younger brother, the twenty-eight-year-old Leonard, brought the first colonists over to plant on the Potomac River he promptly let it be known that Captain Claiborne must submit to his government. Kent Hundred, he said, came under the jurisdiction of the Lord Proprietor of Maryland. Furthermore, licenses from Lord Baltimore were to be required of anyone trading within the precincts of Maryland. Not only was Kent Island to be delivered up to his government at St. Mary’s on the Potomac, but the trading post in the Susquehanna River on mountainous little Palmer’s Island, which Claiborne had planted in 1633, was to be given over. The Marylanders, it appeared, planned to build their own ships for the Indian fur trade and to set up magazines in their colony that they might “make thereby a very great gayne.”