Mr. Ridgely's foray, however, into this domain of dust and darkness has happily rescued much useful matter to aid the future chronicler in supplying the deficiency of past attempts to trace the path of our modest annals through these silent intervals. Incidentally the Librarian's work has assisted my story; for, although the recovered folios did not touch the exact year of my search, the pursuit of them led me to what I may claim as a discovery of my own. I found what I could not say was wholly lost, but what, until Mr. Ridgely's exploration drew attention to the records, might have been said to have shrunk from all notice of the present generation, and to be fast falling a prey to the tooth of time and the visit of the worm. A few years more of neglect and the ill usage of careless custodians, and it would have passed to that depository of things lost upon the earth, which fable has placed in the moon. It was my good fortune, in this upturning of relics of the past, to lay my hand upon a sadly tattered and decayed MS. volume,--unbound, without beginning and without end, coated with the dust which had been gathering upon it ever since Chalmers and Bozman had done their work of deciphering its quaint old text. It lay in the state of rubbish, in an old case, where many documents of the same kind had been consigned to the same oblivion, and with it had been sleeping for as many years, perhaps, as the Beauty in the fairy tale,--happily destined, at last, to be awakened, as she was, by one who by his perseverance had won a title to herself.
This manuscript was now, in this day of revival, brought out from its hiding- place, and, upon inspection, proved to be a Journal of the Council for some few years including the very date of the death of the Collector on the Patuxent.
The record was complete, neatly written in the peculiar manuscript character of that age, so difficult for a modern reader to decipher. Its queer old- fashioned spelling suggested the idea that our ancestors considered both consonants and vowels too weak to stand alone, and that therefore they doubled them as often as they could; and there was such an actual identification of its antiquity in its exterior aspect as well as in its forms of speech, that, when I have sat poring over it alone at midnight in my study, as I have often done, I have turned my eye over my shoulder, expecting to see the apparition of Master John Llewellin--who subscribes his name with a very energetic nourish as Clerk of the Council--standing behind me in grave-colored doublet and trunk-hose, with a starched ruff, a wide-awake hat drawn over his brow, and a short black feather falling amongst the locks of his dark hair towards his back.
This Journal lets in a blaze of light upon the old tradition of Talbot's Cave. The narrative of what it discloses it is now my purpose to make as brief as is compatible with common justice to my subject.
CHAPTER V.
A FRAGMENT OF HISTORY.
Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, the son of Cecilius, was, according to the testimony of all our annalists, a worthy gentleman and an upright ruler. He was governor of Maryland, by the appointment of his father, from 1662 to 1675, and after that became the Lord Proprietary by inheritance, and administered the public affairs in person. His prudence and judgment won him the esteem of the best portion of his people, and the Province prospered in his hands.
All our histories tell of the troubles that beset the closing years of his residence in Maryland. They arose partly out of his religion, and in part out of the jealousy of the crown concerning the privileges of his charter.
He was a Roman Catholic; but, like his father, liberal and tolerant in opinion, and free from sectarian bias in the administration of his government. Apart from the influence of his father's example, the training of his education, his real attachment to the interests of the Province, and his own natural inclination,--all of which pointed out to him the duty as well as the advantage of affording the utmost security to the freedom of religious opinion,--the conditions under which he held his proprietary rights rendered a departure from this policy the most improbable accusation that could be made against him. The public mind of England at that period was fevered to a state of madness by the domestic quarrel that raged within the kingdom against the Catholics. The people were distracted with constant alarms of Popish plots for the overthrow of the government. The King, a heartless profligate, absorbed in frivolous pleasures, scarcely entertained any grave question of state affairs that had not some connection with his hatreds and his fears of Catholics and Dissenters. Then, also, the Province itself was composed, in far the greater part, of a Protestant population,--computed by some contemporary writers at the proportion of thirty to one,--a population who were guarantied freedom of conscience by the Charter, and who possessed all necessary power both legal and physical to enforce it.
Under such circumstances as these, how is it possible to impute designs against the old established toleration, which had marked the history of Maryland from its first settlement to that day, to so prudent and careful a ruler as Charles Calvert, without imputing to him, at the same time, a folly so absurd as to belie every opinion that has ever been uttered to his advantage?