USA > Maryland > Old manors in the colony of Maryland : first-second series > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
OLD MANORS IN THE COLONY OF MARYLAND ON THE POTOMIC
SIOUSSAT
FIRST SERIES
Gc 975.2 Si730 no.1, ser.1 1355784
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02243 7542
4-26-66
Manors
in the Colony of Maryland
H
FATTI
FEMINE'
PAROLE
- MASCHII
LILI
BUSHWOOD.ON THE WICOMICO. A PART OF ST. CLEMENT'S MANOR
Through the Courtesy of Mrs. Edmund Plowden Jenkins
OLD MANORS
IN THE
COLONY OF MARYLAND BY
ANNIE LEAKIN SIOUSSAT
FIRST SERIES
ON THE POTOMAC
.
COPYRIGHT, 1911 BY ANNIE LEAKIN SIOUSSAT
Che Lord Baltimore (Press BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A.
51085
1355784
To DR. WILLIAM HAND BROWNE, Emeritus Professor in the Johns Hopkins University, whose fine work as editor of the Maryland Archives has made historic research a pleasure to the student.
5
L" Patlımar/ Serryters
6
GEORGE CALVERT, KNIGHT, BARON BALTIMORE OF BALTIMORE IN IRELAND.
FOREWORD
It has been thought well to put into booklet shape an illustrated lecture on the Early Manors of Maryland. This little sketch was given for the first time about seven years ago, in a course connected with " Field Days in History," carried on at the Woman's College (now Goucher) through the patriotic energies of Dr. and Mrs. Bibbins; while at the Jamestown Exposition color-photographs of the manors formed part of the fine exhibit made by Mrs. William Reed for the Maryland Society of the Colonial Dames of America. It was last given in May, a year ago, under the auspices of the Maryland Society of the Colonial Dames of America, with the kind co-operation of Mrs. William H. Whitridge and Mrs. Charles Ellet Rieman, to assist toward equipping a room in the Hospital for the Women of Maryland, as a memorial to Margaret Brent-one of the foremost women in the early colony. To this memorial it has been a sincere pleasure to con- tribute in ever so slight a degree by these views, which have afforded many happy days in the making, have been the occasion of many friend- ships in the dear Southern Maryland region, where so much hospitality has been shown, and, it is hoped, may fulfil yet another mission in familiarizing the women of Maryland with their birthright and heri- tage.
ANNIE LEAKIN SIOUSSAT, Chairman of Committee on Historic Research, Maryland Society of the Colonial Dames of America.
7
These sketches are to appear in three series, which may be bound together if desired.
The Manors on the Potomac and its Tributaries.
The Manors on the Patuxent and its Tributaries.
The Manors on the Patapsco and its Tributaries.
8
Abra: Blading Sculp
SEgics Illustrgsime
Dir Cecity Colbert,
Burenis BALTEMORE
Provinciarum Terra-
+ (ORtet Proprietari. Marie etelvaloriz “
CECILIUS CALVERT 2nd LORD BALTIMORE
ANNE ARUNDELL, WIFE OF CECILIUS CALVERT, AND OF THE NOBLE FAMILY OF ARUNDELLS OF WARDOUR.
Photograph presented to the author by the Dowager Lady Arundell
. CVCCU CCOL
OLD MANORS IN THE COLONY OF MARYLAND FIRST SERIES
ON THE POTOMAC
In the family of Sir George Calvert, Knight, created by James I. Baron Baltimore, of Baltimore in Ireland, and in the group of friends and relations intimately associated with him and with his son, appear the dramatis persona of early Maryland, the individuals who link the history of the colony to that of the England which was its mother. Similarly, in the manors of Maryland, the princely grants of land which these relatives and friends of the Lord Proprietary received at his hand, we find the reappearance of one of the oldest of English social institutions. To tell something of the distribution, the situation and the history of these Maryland manors, and something of the lives of their owners, will be the purpose of these brief sketches, as we pass from the bustle of these modern days back to the simpler and more romantic years of the Stuarts and the Baltimores.
The negotiations by which Sir George Calvert sought his charter were well-nigh concluded before his death; but the document, through some mysterious caution on the part of Mr. Attorney-General Noyes, failed to pass the Great Seal until after his demise. Cecilius, his son and heir, inherited not merely the grant, but the good-will of King Charles I., with the name of the new region, Mary-Land, chosen by the King in honor of the fair young Queen, Henrietta Maria, who was so soon to come upon troublous times.
Hardly less grievous than their Queen's were the experiences of some of the women of the colony in its very early days. Of that unknown one of whom one of the Jesuit Fathers wrote, we have this testimonial : " A noble matron also has died, who, coming with the first settlers
II
12 OLD WARDOUR CASTLE. defended by LADY BLANCHE ARUNDELL against the Parliamentarians in 1643.
into the colony, with more than woman's courage, bore all difficulties and inconveniences. She was given to much prayer, and most anxious for the salvation of her neighbors . .. a perfect example of right management as well in herself as in her domestic concerns . . . she was fond of our society while living, and a benefactor of it when dying . . . of blessed memory with all, for her notable examples, especially of charity to the sick, as well as of other virtues."
That provision for settlement of the land had long loomed large in the mind of the Statesman Baron, is shown in the fact that, as early as his visit to Virginia, 1629-30 (where, although he had been among the first in the Virginia companies and a member of their Council, he could not be allowed to remain, by reason of his late change of faith to that of the Church of Rome), he had, with one of the Arun- dells, made application to the Attorney-General for a grant of land south of the James River, within the " boundries of Carolana, to be peopled and planted by them with permission to erect Courts."
Whether the Arundell in question was Thomas, Baron of Wardour, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, or Thomas, Earl of Norfolk, cannot here be settled; either would have represented the Roman Catholic gentry, who were then looking for a country where they might enjoy the full freedom which Englishmen had always held as their ideal. Lord Arundell of Wardour had lately given his daugh- ter, our gentle Lady Anne, to be the bride of Cecilius, son and heir of Lord Baltimore, and the beautiful old Castle of Wardour sheltered him for many days, when by reason of his very great outlays he would otherwise have " lacked dyett " for himself, his retinue and his family. Wardour Castle was indeed the cradle of the Maryland Colony. Within its halls were many of the conferences held with Father Blount and others who were vitally interested in the condition of England of that day. Always a center of Catholicism and a shelter for those who had to seek homes elsewhere, it had given to the Church a home for learning, protection for the religious, preservation to the records, and its Maryland children rise up to-day and call it blessed. The death of Lord Arundell of Wardour occurred so near these nego-
13
tiations that the records are not clear. When them was associated Father Blount, Provincial of the English Society of Jesus, who rep- resented the families of Norfolk, Howard and Warwick.
Lord Baltimore, with his chaplains, had made careful exploration of the country north of the James and on both sides of the Chesapeake, where they reported to the Provincial, " the land was pleasant to look upon, and fitted to be the homes of a happy people," a prophecy well fulfilled, as we can testify in our day and generation, in this, our fair land.
In the two years which elapsed from the draughting of the charter to the date of the pilgrimage to Maryland, my Lord Baltimore had made his longer journey, leaving his son and heir, Cecil (so baptized, but confirmed as Cecilius), to take up the burden and to perfect the preparation for the life over seas.
It was to a young man of twenty-six years that this heritage came- this superb grant of from ten to twelve millions of acres, exclusive of the waterways; and the notable document drawn by the father, by which such unusual privileges were secured to the colony, was left to the interpretation of the son, who, luckily for us, had even wider and broader outlook for the future than those who preceded him.
It was a day when the old men dreamed dreams and the young men saw visions, and in the new world toward which men turned such eager, wistful faces, the institutions of old England were to be trans- planted. The Proprietary had the charter right of re-establishing in America the feudal system, which had been gradually broken up in England, and by an unusual assertion of the royal prerogative on the part of Charles I., Baltimore was granted the right to erect manors and manorial courts in Maryland, a right which the statute " Quia Emptores " prevented the nobles from enjoying in the old country. " This great land-law, marking an epoch in the constitutional history of England, enacted in 1290, was virtually set aside by Charles I., after an interval of three and a half centuries, and the privilege denied the great feudal barons of England was bestowed in all its fulness upon the young Irish peer."
14
15
Fürit
MANOR OF LANHERNE. TEMPUS, 1450. AN OLD ENGLISH MANOR HOUSE BELONGING TO THE ARUNDELLS.
From pencil sketch by The Hon. Gertrude Arundell. Presented by The Late Lord Arundell, December, 1902
The dream of the older men, set forth in the application to the Attorney General for a grant south of the James, " upon which courts might be erected," was thus fulfilled, while the visions of the young men in this age of adventure were to be realized in the grants of land, which would aid them to carve out their fortunes from the virgin forests of the new colony and would also carry with them dignity and power, to the owners and heads of these small principalities.
The land system instituted by Lord Baltimore, we are told by Wilhelm, tended to reproduce, in Maryland, not the England of the Stuarts, but the England of the time of King John and the Great Charter ; but curiously enough, the Province made as rapid strides in a decade as England had made in a century. He traces, too, an analogy, very interesting, between the Proprietary, the lords of manors, and the freeholders, on the one hand, and the King, the Barons and the gentry on the other. The Indians, slaves, and re- demptioners may be compared to the villeins and serfs, and the free- men of the counties and " St. Marie's Citie " to the free inhabitants of the cities and free boroughs. The geographical subdivision of the land into counties, hundreds and manors, and subsequently into parishes and towns-nay, even into cities with their charters-bore a striking resemblance to similar institutions in England. Nor would it be difficult to trace a resemblance between the colonial Assembly of Maryland, composed of one house and limited almost entirely to land- holders, and the imperfect Parliaments of King John and his son Henry III. The exemption of the inhabitants of the Province from imperial taxation and from the judicial administration of Eng- land also tended to make the institutional and constitutional history of Maryland develop in a direction parallel with that of England.
The English manor-house of the feudal period (and indeed of to-day ) is a very simple form of dwelling, and has not the sumptuous elegance either of castle or of hall. Nathaniel Hone, in The Manor and Manorial Records, says: " A quadrangle with buildings on all four sides ; but the central court . . . into which all the windows look from sunless rooms. The only exception is the hall window, which
16
has a southern outlook. The hall was heated by a brazier in the center, and the smoke went out at a louvre in the roof. There was one gloomy parlor, with a fire-place in it, opening out of the hall. The rest of the quadrangle was taken up with kitchen, porter's lodge, cellar, and stable. Upstairs, one long dormitory." The furniture was scanty : a table made of boards laid upon trestles from whence "to lay the table," removed when not in use, some forms or stools, a long bench stuffed with straw, a few chairs of wood, chests for linen and other household stuff.
The Solar had its windows toward the south and furnished a private chamber for the lord. A winding stair of stone, in many cases exterior to the building, led to the dormitory, in rude divisions. In the rear, grouped round a courtyard, were the granaries, cattle sheds, dairy, dove-cotes and other necessary edifices.
At no great distance stood the village, made up of homesteads of tenantry, houses of the better class nearly like that of the manor lord, each in its own toft, or plot of ground, with a croft or meadow land adjacent. These arrangements show the relation of the lord to the village community; namely, that although exercising jurisdiction over the same, he forms the center of the composite whole.
After many vicissitudes, on St. Cecilia's day, Nov. 2, 1633, the Maryland Pilgrims made ready to depart. There were two sections, the first hundred and twenty-eight, who were willing to take the oaths of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration, but who, for a technical reason, omitted that formality, and were pursued by the London Searcher Watkins, whose warrant is still preserved with the " haste, haste post-haste " on three sides of the paper, and the hour at which the post rider had passed every station between London and Gravesend. These finally reached their first port and dropped anchor at the Isle of Wight, to take up the ninety-two Roman Catholics with their priests, who declined these oaths, and the twenty gentlemen, some of them certainly with their wives; and we are thus enabled to get a very fair view of that passenger list, which has been the subject of much investigation.
17
We cannot in this brief sketch follow them through the manifold experiences of their voyage of four months, which have been so well given in Father White's " Relatio."
The instructions of Lord Baltimore had been most specific. They were to hold their services on board as quietly as possible. His Lord- ship had charged each one to notify him what could be found out about the plots which had so nearly overturned his schemes at the last moment. They were to stop at Accomack and take up someone who could give them " some good information of the Bay of Chesapeake and the Pattawomeck River, and some light of a fitt place in his Lopps country to sette downe on," to be healthful and fruitful, easily fortified and convenient for trade both with English and savages. Upon landing they were to administer to the colonists the oath to " his Matie," " they are to plant nothing until the future corn crop is assured." Their military muster was imperative and salt-making was a necessity.
They were fortunate in that their pilot, Captain Henry Fleete, who had been taken into captivity by the Indians in one of the Vir- ginia massacres, had established an entente cordiale with the different tribes, who were lined up along the river shore, having been notified by their fleet-footed runners of the approach of these " great canowes," whose men " were like the leaves of the forest."
Their landing was made upon one of the Heron Islands, named without delay St. Clement's, where their thanksgiving Mass for deliverance from the perils of the deep was said and the formal occupation of the territory taken. It was soon seen that the capacity of the island was far too small for their purposes, and Fleete conveyed them up the beautiful sheet of water, known to us now as the St. Mary's River, to the town of the Yeocomicoes, with its witchetts, one of which was speedily taken for a chapel, its cornfields, and the nearby hunting grounds, where for generations they and their forefathers had dwelt. The voyagers were received with much dignity and caution by the Werowance; " I will not bid you go, neither will I bid you stay," said the chief, but under the shadows of the old mulberry tree,
18
tradition says, the treaty was made by which Augusta Carolana, that first thirty miles of territory, was purchased with the axes and hoes, beads and cloth, of the ventures made by Sir Richard Lechford, the Eures and others, who had thus taken stock in the infant enterprise.
The laying-out of the town under the shelter of the double line of fortifications, St. Inigoe's Fort for the water and St. Mary's for the land, was their first care, and extreme caution was observed as to any expeditions made, beyond these military cordons, until the Yeo- comicoes had fulfilled their bargain and remained with their suc- cessors while the corn crop was harvested, and until their women had taught to the housewives the mysteries of their preparation of " pone and omine " and had then folded their tents for the beginning of that pathetic journey which takes them out of our ken.
The instructions of 1636, some two years after the landing, had set forth: "And we do ... authorize you that every two thousand acres . . . so to be passed . . . be erected and created into a mannor. And we do hereby further authorize you that you cause to be granted unto every of the said Adventurers within every of their said manors respectively, . . . a Court Barron and Court Leet, to be from time to time held. .
The conditions of plantation with regard to the taking up of land were fully complied with, from the colonist who only transported himself and wife, to those who brought in from twenty-eight to forty settlers. But there were many other things to contemplate before men reached the period of manors and manorial courts.
The good ship the Ark, with her convoy the Dove, brought only a very few of those who would naturally have taken up the thousand acres. Perhaps the first land in bulk was 4000 acres laid out on St. George's for Captain Henry Fleete, as we have seen, a pioneer in these virgin forests, and was probably the reward for his services ren- dered. But the succeeding arrivals, Gerrards, Brents, Snows, Evelyns, were the beginnings of a goodly company who, about 1639, availed themselves of these privileges; and while the "conditions " provided that any man who produced the requisite number of settlers and regis-
19
CALVERT'S REST. ON CALVERT'S BAY. ST. GABRIEL'S MANOR.
The home of The Hon. William Calvert, Son and Heir of Governor Leonard Calvert
tered the oaths that were necessary might take up manor land with Court Baron and Court Leet, naturally those nearest the Lord Pro- prietary were the first to be served, and we see kith and kin, with per- sonal friends and those who had served his Lordship in one capacity or another, among the first manor lords.
The whole of St. Mary's County, lying south of Trinity, now Smith's Creek, was laid out for the Governor, Leonard Calvert, in 1639, with the right of Court Baron and Court Leet. There were three manors, St. Michael's, St. Gabriel's and Trinity Manor, and it was on the manor of St. Gabriel, on the 7th of March, 1656, " by the steward of the manor, that one Martin Kirke took of the lady of the manor in full court, Margaret Brent, by delivry of the said steward, by the rod, according to the custom of said manor, one Messuage, lying in the said manor, and the said Kirke having done his fealty was thereby admitted tenant."
Some of these tenants on these three manors had then been so careless as to fall behindhand for three years' rent, and they owed each as much as six barrels of corn and twelve capons for this period; and when the lady of the manor, Margaret Brent, as the Governor's Executrix, pointed out that through their part in the rebellion against the Lord Proprietary they had forfeited their holdings, the court confirmed her decision, the first and only instance in the colony of forfeiture for rebellion.
On the arrival of the Hon. William Calvert, only son and heir of the Governor, Leonard Calvert, he succeeded to a portion of St. Gabriel's, known as Calvert's Rest on Calvert's Bay, and his home is still standing, from which many of the proclamations relating to the colony were issued by him, as its Secretary; and it was probably in its adjacent waters that he was " unfortunately drowned." The date of the building of Calvert's Rest was visible in the brick gable end until repeated applications of a fine and substantial pink wash effectually obliterated it.
Coming up from Point Lookout, on the opposite side of Trinity (now Smith's Creek) from Trinity Manor, was St. Elizabeth's
21
ST. ELIZABETH'S MANOR. JUTLAND
22
Manor, which contained two thousand acres, and of which the Jutland estate, with its quaint old house, is the survival. It was granted to Thomas Cornwallis in 1639, and in after years became the early home in Maryland of the Hon. William Bladen, member of the House, clerk of the Council and the first " Public Printer of the Province."
Then comes St. Inigoe's Manor, as to which the old record reads, " lying on the east side of St. Georges River, commonly called St. Maries River, containing and laid out for two thousand acres, and St. Georges Island on the other side, of one thousand acres, the whole forming St. Inigoes Manor." R. F. Thomas Copley brought in servants for which he received twenty-eight thousand five hundred acres of land. It is supposed that Thomas Copley and the R. F. Philip Fisher were identical. He was known as Thomas Copley, the land agent for the Society of Jesus; and of these grants, three thousand one hundred acres were issued for St. Inigoe's, and four thousand for St. Thomas' Manor. Grants were made out to Father Ferdinando Pulton; but when, in crossing the river, he was accidentally shot, they were assigned to Mr. Cuthbert Fenwick and later to R. F. Starkey. The beautiful little manor house, with its chateau-like roof, with the picturesque windmill at the end of the point, was one of the most striking features of that lovely landscape. But the all-devouring waters swallowed up the windmill, and the all-devouring flames con- sumed the old manor house, and it is with the greatest appreciation that the possession of this rare sketch of its departed glories is here acknowledged to the courtesy of the late and lamented Father Fullerton. But before the manor house was built, the fort on the manor had served the purpose of keeping watch and ward upon the water-front. Just a few years after the landing, every barque that sailed up to " Fort Point " had to pay tribute in ammunition to that stronghold, and must ride at anchor for two whole tides, both coming and going, under the lee of the fort.
Among the relics saved by the care of the Jesuit Fathers are the ancient cannon-murtherers, they were called-some of them of Spanish make, so the story goes. One is at Annapolis on the State
23
ST. INIGOE'S MANOR. ON THE ST. MARY'S, ST. INIGOE'S CREEK.
House green, and two may be found at Georgetown College, which has also the beautiful old claw- and ball-foot council table, with George Calvert's cutlass and leather scabbard.
Not only did the Assembly use St. Inigoe's for some of their sessions, but proclamations were issued from it, and among the bulletins posted upon its walls one reads thus: "Upon the discharge of three guns, every householder shall answer it, and every housekeeper inhabiting St. Michaels Hundred between St. Inegoes Creek and Trinity Creek shall immediately upon the knowledge thereof carry his women and children to St. Innegoes Ffort, there to abide one month." These pre- cautions were soon justified, for, on the appearance of "Sixteen strange Indians " in the settlement (possibly one of the early raids of the Susquehannocks), the wife and child of one of the colonists had been " murthered," and he makes his appeal: "Since that blood cryeth to Heaven for vengeance, yr Petitioner hereby throweth him- self, together with the blood of his murthered wife and child, att your feete, craving justice-which blood he humbly begs of the Just Judge of Heaven and Earth, never to remove from your souls nor the souls of your childrens children until it be satisfied." Signed, Thos. Alcock.
The farms which belong to this manor are known the world over for their rich cultivation, and are still among the best lands in the neighborhood, although the glory has departed.
As the years went on, the white-winged ships sailed across the Atlantic, carrying the products and " rarities," sometimes the great trunks of cedar trees, sometimes rather strange beasts. Of one pro- jected consignment, the Governor writes: " the lyon I had for you is dead," while redbirds, rattlesnakes and other queer cargoes travelled over the sea with the constant correspondence which kept his Lordship in touch with his possessions in Mary-land.
The early letters of Father Thomas, alias Andrew White, of Thomas Copley and Thomas Cornwallis, who, with Jerome Haw- ley, had been appointed as the commissioners to aid the young Governor, give us our only glimpses of these first five years. And the ships brought back with them company after company of men of
25
CORNWALLIS'S CROSS MANOR HOUSE. Through the courtesy of Mrs. Charles Grayson, the present owner.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.