He knelt, and named his Saviour's name.
Softly she glided from the place:
He never looked upon her face;
Low bent to earth his suppliant head,
“O Lord! make me a child,” he said.
Relatio Itineris In Marylandiam.
Narrative of a Voyage to Maryland. 1633.
By F. Andrew White, S.J.
The most beautiful chapter in the colonial history of North America is that setting forth the colonization of fair Maryland, Terra Mariæ, or, as she was pre-eminently called, the Land of the Sanctuary. And yet this is, strange to say, one of the least read and least known of the chapters of our early history. Every American knows all about the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers, and the Mayflower, and Plymouth Rock, and all the facts and fictions concerning the settlement of New England. Most Americans devoutly believe, upon the authority of New England orators and historians, that the Pilgrim Fathers aforesaid were the founders of the civil and religious liberty now organized in this great republic, mistaking a strife for sectarian ascendency and domination for a contest for the great principles of religious liberty. In point of fact, the Puritan Pilgrims held in intense horror the very principles now so generously assigned to them. They wanted, not equality, but supremacy. It was only in Catholic Maryland that religious equality was truly established, both by the design of the Catholic proprietary, Lord Baltimore, and by the legislative enactments of the freemen of the province, who cordially invited all persons persecuted for their religious belief to find not only a refuge in Maryland, but all the rights and privileges, civil and religious, enjoyed by themselves, the founders of the colony.