But there is another view, clearly sustained by an important and certain chain of facts, which has never occurred to the historical writers on Maryland toleration, at least in this connection, though they give the facts upon which the view is based, and which wholly destroys the theory of Mr. Gladstone and his authorities. The latter may dispute in regard to the merits and motives of the statute of 1649, but they do not touch the real question. It is an incontestable fact that the religious toleration which historians have so much extolled in the Catholic colonists and founders of Maryland did not originate with, or derive its existence from, that law of 1649, but, on the contrary, it existed long anterior to, and independent of, it. This great feature in the Catholic government of Maryland had been established by the Catholic lord-proprietary, his lieutenant-governor, agents, and colonists, and faithfully practised for fifteen years prior to the Toleration Act of 1649. From 1634 to 1649 it had been enforced with unwavering firmness and protected with exalted benevolence. This important fact is utterly ignored by Mr. Gladstone and his authors, the Rev. Ethan Allen and the Rev. Edward D. Neill, but the facts related by Bancroft, and indeed by all historians, prove it beyond a question. Bancroft records that the very “foundations” of the colony were laid upon the “basis” of religious toleration, and throughout the eulogiums pronounced by him on the religious toleration of Maryland, which we have quoted above, refers entirely to the period of the fifteen years preceding the passage of the act of 1649. The Toleration Act was nothing else than the declaration of the existing state of things and of the long and cherished policy and practice of the colony—a formal sanction and statutory enactment of the existing common law of the province.
Before proceeding to demonstrate this fact, we will briefly examine how far Mr. Bancroft sustains the theory or views of Mr. Gladstone in regard to the act itself. After extolling the motives and conduct of the Catholics of Maryland in establishing religious toleration, as we have remarked above, during the fifteen years preceding the passage of the act, Mr. Bancroft refers to that statute in terms of highest praise. He barely hints at the possibility that a foresight, on the part of the colonists, of impending dangers to themselves from threatened or apprehended Protestant ascendency and persecution, might have entered among the motives which induced them to pass that act; but he nowhere asserts the fact, nor does he allege anything beyond conjecture for the possibility of the motive. Indeed, his mode of expressing himself indicates that, though he thought it possible, his own impression was that such motive did not suggest in part even the passage of the act; for he writes: “As if, with a foresight of impending danger and an earnest desire to stay its approach, the Roman Catholics of Maryland, with the earnest concurrence of their governor and of the proprietary, determined to place upon their statute-book an act for the religious freedom which had ever been sacred on their soil.” Compare this with the language of Mr. Gladstone, who excludes every motive but that of self-interest, and refers to Bancroft in support of his view, but does not quote his language. Mr. Bancroft, on the other hand, after quoting from the statute, exclaims, such was “its sublime tenor.”
Mr. Griffith does not agree with the suggestion that a sense of fear or apprehension entered into the motives of the Maryland lawgivers, and says: “That this liberty did not proceed from fear of others, on the one hand, or licentious dispositions in the government, on the other, is sufficiently evident from the penalties prescribed against blasphemy, swearing, drunkenness, and Sabbath-breaking, by the preceding sections of the act, and proviso, at the end, that such exercise of religion did not molest or conspire against the proprietary or his government.”[106]
Let us now proceed to examine still further whether Maryland was a Catholic colony, whether it was by Catholics that religious toleration was established there, and whether it had its origin in the act of 1649 or in the long previous practice and persistent generosity and mercy of the Catholic rulers of the province. It is true that while the territory afterwards granted to Lord Baltimore was subject to the Virginia charter, a settlement of Episcopalians was made on Kent Island; but they were very few in numbers, always adhered to Virginia rather than to Maryland in their sympathies, were so turbulent and disloyal that Governor Calvert had to reduce them by force of arms, and no one has ever pretended that they founded a State. We will show what relation they had in point of numbers and political influence to the colony, and that they did not form even the slightest element of power in the founding of the province.
Maryland was founded alone by the Catholic Lord Baltimore and his colonists. Such is the voice of history. It is rather disingenuous in the reverend authors of the pamphlets mentioned by Mr. Gladstone that upon so flimsy a circumstance they assert that Maryland was not settled first by Catholics. Their voices are drowned by the concurrent voice of tradition and of history. It is only the reassertion of the pretensions of these zealous sectarians by so respectable a person as Mr. Gladstone, and that, too, in one of the most remarkable controversies of the age, that renders a recurrence to the historical authorities and their results at all desirable or necessary.
The colony of Maryland was conceived in the spirit of liberty. It was the flight of English Catholics from Protestant persecution in their native country. The state of the penal laws in England against Catholics at this period is too well known. The zealous Protestant Bozman writes that they “contained severities enough to keep them [the Catholics] in all due subjection.”
It was at this hour of their extremest suffering that the Catholics of England found a friend and leader in Sir George Calvert, who held important trusts under the governments of James and Charles, and enjoyed the confidence of his sovereigns and of his country. “In an age when religious controversy still continued to be active, when increasing divisions among Protestants were spreading a general alarm, his mind sought relief from controversy in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, and, preferring the avowal of his opinions to the emoluments of office, he resigned his place and openly professed his conversion.”[107] Even after this he was advanced to the peerage under the title of Lord Baltimore—an Irish title—and was appointed one of the principal secretaries under James I. His positions in the government gave him not only an acquaintance with American colonization, but an official connection with it. Of these he now availed himself to provide an asylum abroad for his fellow-Catholics from the relentless persecution they were suffering at home. His first effort was to found a Catholic colony on the shores of Newfoundland. A settlement was begun. Avalon was the name it received, and twice did Lord Baltimore cross the ocean to visit his cherished cradle of liberty. Baffled by political difficulties, the severity of the climate, and an ungenerous soil, he abandoned the endeavor. That his motive all along was to found a place of refuge for Catholics from persecution is certain from the time and circumstances under which the enterprise was undertaken, as well as from the testimony of historians. Oldmixon says: “This gentleman [Lord Baltimore], being of the Romish religion, was uneasy at home, and had the same reason to leave the kingdom as those gentlemen had who went to New England, to enjoy the liberty of his conscience.”[108] Bozman writes that “by their [the Puritans’] clamors for a vigorous execution of the laws against Papists, it became now necessary for them [the Catholics] also to look about for a place of refuge.”[109] The same writer also refers to a MS. in the British Museum, written by Lord Baltimore himself, in which this motive is mentioned. Driven from Avalon by the hardness of the climate, he visited Virginia with the same view; but hence again he was driven by religious bigotry and the presentation of an anti-popery oath from a colony “from which the careful exclusion of Roman Catholics had been originally avowed as a special object.” His mind, filled with the thought of founding a place of refuge for Catholics, next turned to the country beyond the Potomac, which had been embraced originally in the Virginia charter, but which, upon the cancellation of that charter, had reverted to the crown. He obtained a grant and charter from the king, so liberal in its terms that, Griffith says, it became the model for future grants. The name was changed from Crescentia to that of Maryland, in honor of the Catholic queen of Charles; but the devout Catholics of the expedition, in their piety, extended the term Terra Mariæ, the Land of Mary, into an act of devotion and honor to Mary, the Queen of Heaven.
The first Lord Baltimore did not live to see his project carried into effect; he died on the 25th of April, 1632, was succeeded by his son Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, who, as Bancroft says, was the heir of his intentions no less than of his fortunes; to him was issued the charter negotiated by his father, bearing date the 15th of June, 1632.
Founded by a Catholic, designed as an asylum for persecuted Catholics, is it to be supposed that Lord Baltimore and his brother, Governor Leonard Calvert, who organized and led forth the pilgrims, would be so inconsistent at this moment of their success as to lose sight of the main object of the movement, and carry Protestant colonists with whom to found a Catholic colony? If, as Rev. Edward D. Neill, author of Maryland not a Catholic Colony, says, there were only twenty Catholic gentlemen in the ship, and three hundred servants, mostly Protestants, would it have been deemed necessary to carry two Catholic priests and their assistants along to administer to the souls of so small a number? In point of fact, the Protestants were so few that they brought no minister with them, and it was several years before their entire numbers justified their having either a minister or a place of worship. The voyage on the Ark and Dove was more like a Catholic pilgrimage than a secular expedition. The principal parts of the ship (the Ark), says Father White in his Narrative, were committed to the protection of God especially, and to his Most Holy Mother, and S. Ignatius, and all the guardian angels of Maryland. The vessel was a floating chapel, an ocean shrine of Catholic faith and devotion, consecrated by the unbloody sacrifice, and resounding with Latin litanies; its safety from many a threatened disaster was attributed to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, whose mediation was propitiated by votive offerings promised and promptly rendered after their safe arrival at St. Mary’s. The festivals of the saints were faithfully observed throughout the voyage, the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin was selected for landing, and the solemn act of taking possession was according to the Catholic form. Father White thus describes the scene:
“On the day of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Virgin Mary (March 25), in the year 1634, we celebrated the Mass for the first time on this island [St. Clement’s]. This had never been done before in this part of the world. After we had completed the sacrifice, we took upon our shoulders a great cross which we had hewn out of a tree, and advancing in order to the appointed place, with the assistance of the governor and his associates, and the other Catholics, we erected a trophy to Christ the Saviour, humbly reciting on our bended knees the Litanies of the Sacred Cross with great emotion.”[110]