King William on Feb. 1, 1690, in pursuance of the recommendation of the committee of the Council for Trade and Plantations, wrote to those in the administration of Maryland, acknowledging the receipt of their addresses and approving their motives for taking up arms. He authorized them to continue in the administration, and in the mean time to preserve the public peace. Lord Baltimore struggled hard to retain his province, although his chance of obtaining justice was desperate. He presented to the King and Council various affidavits and narratives showing the falsity of the charges against his government. In January, 1690, he petitioned the Board of Trade to grant a hearing to such inhabitants and merchants as had lived in and dealt with Maryland for upwards of twenty-five years, at the same time forwarding a list of their names. A few days later he requested the Board to hear his account of the disturbances, to the end that the government might be restored to him. In August, however, the Council directed the attorney-general to proceed by scire facias against Baltimore’s charter. Chief-Justice Holt had previously given an opinion that the King could appoint a governor of Maryland whose authority would be legal; and the attorney-general and solicitor-general were directed to draft a commission of governor.
On the 12th of March, 1691, Queen Mary wrote to the Grand Committee of Maryland that the Province was taken under the King’s immediate superintendence, that Copley would be governor, and, until his arrival, they were to administer the government in the names of their Majesties. In the following August Sir Lionel Copley was commissioned by the king and queen. He reached Maryland early in 1692, and the Province became a royal colony for a quarter of a century. The Proprietary was still allowed to receive his quit-rents and export duty, but all his other prerogatives were at an end.
[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]
THE earliest publication relating to Maryland was a pamphlet which appeared in London in 1634. It is entitled A Relation of the Successful Beginnings of the Lord Baltemore’s Plantation in Maryland: being an extract of certaine Letters written from thence by some of the Adventurers to their friends in England.[876] The similarity of the language of this relation with Father White’s Relatio Itineris would seem to show that he was its author. The relation describes the first settlement and the products of the soil, and narrates the naïve wonder of the Indians at the big ships and the thunder of the guns. It is dated “From Saint Marie’s in Maryland, 27 May, 1634.”
The next publication was, A Relation of Maryland, London, Sept. 8, 1635,—a work of great value to the student. It was evidently prepared under the direction of Lord Baltimore, and is an extensive colonizing programme. It recounts the planting of the colony and their intercourse with the Indians, and describes the commodities which the country naturally afforded and those that might be procured by industry. It also contains the “conditions propounded by the Lord Baltemore to such as shall goe or adventure into Maryland,” and gives elaborate instructions as to what the adventurers should take with them, together with an estimate of the cost of transporting servants and providing them with necessaries.[877]
A very full account of the voyage of the “Ark and Dove” to Maryland is contained in a letter written by Father Andrew White, S. J., to the General of the Order. The originals of this letter, as well as of different letters from the Jesuit missionaries in Maryland from 1635 to 1677, were discovered, about fifty years ago, by the Rev. W. M. Sherry, who was afterwards Provincial of the Jesuits in Maryland, in the archives of the Society in Rome. The copy he then made of these manuscripts is now in the possession of Loyola College, Baltimore. In 1874 and 1877 the Maryland Historical Society published this Relatio Itineris, and extracts from the annual letters, in the original Mediæval Latin, with a translation by Mr. Josiah Holmes Converse. This publication also contains an account of the colony in which the character of the country and its numerous sources of wealth are set forth in the glowing colors of anticipation. The original of this Declaratio Coloniæ was also found at Rome. It was probably written by Lord Baltimore soon after the grant of his patent, and sent to the General of the Society at the time of his request that priests might be sent out to the colony. These publications are enriched with the notes of the late Rev. E. A. Dalrymple, S. T. D.[878] then Corresponding Secretary of the Maryland Historical Society. The letters, which have been frequently used in the preceding narrative, throw much light upon the early days of the Province, and give a vivid picture of the activity of the missionaries.[879]
The reduction of Maryland at the time of the Commonwealth caused several pamphlets upon its affairs to be published in London. The first of these was The Lord Baltemore’s case concerning the Province of Maryland, adjoyning to Virginia in America with full and clear answers to all material objections touching his Rights, jurisdiction, and Proceedings there, etc. London, 1653. This tract was probably called forth by the report of the committee of the Navy on Maryland affairs in December, 1652. Although written by Lord Baltimore, or under his direction, it is a temperate and reliable statement. It contains his reasons of state why it would be more advantageous for the Commonwealth to keep Maryland and Virginia separate.
An answer to this pamphlet was published in London in 1655, entitled, Virginia and Maryland, or The Lord Baltemore’s printed case uncased and answered, etc.[880] This work is of value in giving a full statement of the Puritan side of the controversy down to 1655. It has the proceedings in Parliament in 1652 relating to Maryland, copies of the instructions of the commissioners for the reduction, and other documents.
There are four pamphlets bearing upon the battle of Providence in March, 1655. The first is called, An additional brief narrative of a late Bloody design against The Protestants in Ann Arundel County and Severn in Maryland in the County of Virginia.... Set forth by Roger Heaman, Commander of the Ship Golden Lyon, an eye-witness there. London, July 24, 1655. The author gives a detailed but unfair account of the fight, and of his connection with it, and of the previous proceedings of Governor Stone. Heamans was answered by John Hammond, “a sufferer in these calamities,” in a tract, called Hammond vs. Heamans; Or, an answer to an audacious pamphlet published by an impudent and ridiculous fellow named Roger Heamans, etc. The author was the person despatched by Stone, early in 1655, to remove the records from Patuxent. He declares that he “went unarmed amongst these sons of Thunder, and myself alone seized and carried away the records in defiance.” In the same year were published both Babylon’s Fall in Maryland, etc., by Leonard Strong, and John Langford’s Refutation of Babylon’s Fall, etc. Strong, the author of the former pamphlet, was one of the leading Puritans of Providence, and afterwards their agent in London, where he wrote the tract. It is a party work, containing a garbled statement of the facts. Langford’s Refutation has a letter from Governor Stone’s wife to Lord Baltimore describing the conduct of the Puritans and their treatment of her husband. Langford was rewarded for this work by Lord Baltimore with a gift of fifteen hundred acres of land in Maryland.[881]