Historic Events of Colonial Days

by Rupert Sargent Holland

George Talbot, Irish by birth, was a prominent man in the province that belonged to Lord Baltimore. He was a kinsman of Sir William Talbot, who was Chief Secretary of Maryland. George had obtained a large grant of land on the Susquehanna River, when Lord Baltimore was anxious to have the northern part of his province settled. Three years after he staked out his plantation on the Susquehanna he was made surveyor-general of the province. That was in 1683. The next year Lord Baltimore went to England, leaving his son, a boy, as nominal governor. A commission of leading men was chosen to take charge of the actual work of the governorship, and George Talbot was at the head of the commission. In much of that sparsely-settled country he ruled like the chieftain of a Scottish clan. He built a fort near the head of Chesapeake Bay; garrisoned it with Irish followers, and sometimes set out from it with his troop to check Indian raids; sometimes rode into the land that was in dispute between Lord Baltimore and William Penn, and lectured or bullied or drove away some of Penn's settlers. He ruled with a high hand, both at his fort and on his plantation, with the usual result that he was tremendously admired by his retainers, among whom was Fergus Rowan, the father of Talbot's young squire Michael.

Next day the adventurous Talbot and the faithful Michael set out south. They rode through a country almost as untouched by men as it was before the first white explorers landed on its coast. Then there had been Indians to hunt game in its woods and marshes; to fish its streams and bay, to plant their crops in its open arable fields. But the Indians were like the birds and beasts, essentially migratory; they built few permanent homes, they wasted little labor on bridges or mills, clearings or farm-stockades. When the hunting or the crops grew poor in one place they packed their tents on their ponies or in their canoes and set out for a new, untouched country. The white men were very different; they wanted to own, to fence off, to build, to make travel and commerce easier. But in 1684 there were so few of them that one might ride all day and see no sign of a human habitation. Talbot and Michael had to hunt the streams for fording-places, had to push through underbrush that threatened to hide the trails, and to rely on the provisions they carried in their saddle-bags to furnish them food and drink.

Every now and then the riders caught sight of the blue waters of Chesapeake Bay to the east. Whenever they reached a farmhouse in the wilderness they stopped and chatted with the settlers, giving them any news from the north. They spent one night at a hunter's log cabin; another at a miller's house built on the bank of a river. Many times they had to go far out of the route as the crow flies in order to cross wide estuaries and streams. But they were in no particular haste, and rested their horses often. It took them the better part of a week to reach the Patuxent River and cross into St. Mary's County.

Many small fishing-hamlets were to be found along this southern shore of Chesapeake Bay, and Talbot stopped at each one, announced who he was, and questioned the fishermen for news. The chief complaint of the settlers was against the tyrannical manners and methods of the revenue-collectors, or excisemen, who levied taxes for the king of England on all goods coming into the province or going out of it. Men who collect such taxes have almost always been unpopular; in Maryland they were pretty generally hated. To judge from what Talbot was told by the fishermen some of the collectors had acted as if they were Lord Baltimore himself. They took horses, servants, boats, as they pleased, and dared the owners to complain of them to the king. The most unpopular of the race of collectors appeared to be Christopher Rousby, who lived at the town of St. Mary's, and made trips up and down St. Mary's River and along the shores of the bay to collect taxes from unwilling settlers and threaten them with dire punishments if they dared refuse obedience to his orders.

"The knave ought to be whipped!" Talbot declared to Michael, as they left one of the hamlets. "I know him, an arrogant, conceited fool! It's fortunate I'm not one of these folk here, or I might run him through some dark night."

Down to St. Mary's they rode, where Talbot took lodgings for himself and Michael. The lodgings were at a tavern known as "The Bell and Anchor," where a great anchor lay on the lawn before the tavern door and a bell hung over the porch, used by the wife of the tavern-keeper to inform her guests when their meals were ready for them. The inn faced St. Mary's River, which was wide here, and the beach in front of it was a gathering-place for sailors and fishermen and longshoremen, whose boats were pulled up on the sand or anchored in the small harbor to the south of the town. Talbot and Michael went among the men, the chieftain hobnobbing with the simple folk, as he was fond of doing, though he never allowed them to forget his dignity.

There were ships lying in St. Mary's River, one of them a ketch belonging to His Majesty's navy. Men on the beach told Talbot and Michael that the captain of the ketch was very friendly with Christopher Rousby, the tax-collector, and the other excisemen. They also told Talbot that neither the captain of the ketch nor Rousby nor his mates paid any attention to Lord Baltimore's officers in St. Mary's. The former treated the latter as if they were stable-boys, made to be ordered about, the longshoremen told Talbot.

At first Talbot only listened and swore under his breath. Then he began to swear openly, and to look angry and shake his fist at the royal ship out in the bay. "These dogs of sea-captains and tax-collectors think they own the whole province!" he muttered to Michael. "I'd like nothing better than to teach them a lesson!"

The man and boy happened to be standing near the door of "The Bell and Anchor" when a long-boat landed passengers from the ketch, and the captain and Christopher Rousby and two other men came up to the tavern door. All four men glanced at Talbot, whose bearing and dress made him a conspicuous figure. He gave them a curt nod. The captain and one of the other men acknowledged his greeting, but Rousby strode past him with a shrug of the shoulders and a sneer on his lips.

George Talbot was not used to such treatment; when he gave a man a nod he expected at least a bow in return. Hot blood flushed his cheeks, and his fingers gripped the hilt of the hunting-knife he wore at his belt. Michael could not hear what he murmured, but he could guess at what he meant. Michael grew angry too; he expected people to treat his master with as much deference as they would show the king.