USA > Maryland > An historical view of the government of Maryland : from its colonization to the present day > Part 23
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The rule of this commonwealth party of the province was of short duration. The proprietary adopted speedy and efficient Proprietary pow. measures for the restoration of his government. He by governor Phi- procured from King Charles, who was just restored er re-established hp Calvert, in November, 1660. to the throne of England, a general letter of instruc- tion, enjoining all the officers and inhabitants of the province to assist him in the re-establishment of his jurisdiction; and a simi- lar command of assistance addressed to the government of Vir- ginia. He also commissioned as governor, his brother Philip Cal- vert, to whom he gave authority to proceed against the insurgents, either in the courts, or by martial law, at his pleasure; and in- structed him on no account to permit Fendall to escape with his life. The government of Virginia came cheerfully into the com- mands of the king, and proffered Calvert all necessary assistance. He however experienced no difficulty in assuming the govern- ment, which was abandoned by Fendall after a fruitless effort to excite the people to opposition. (34) The first act of Calvert, after the assumption of the government, was to proclaim King Charles II .; (35) for although, at the revolutionary Assembly of 1659,
(33) Journals of Assembly from 1659 to 98, 5th to 7th page. Preface to Bacon's Edition to the Laws of Maryland.
(34) Council Proceedings from 1656 to 1668, Liber HI II, 74 to 82.
(35) Council Proceedings, H HI, 76.
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HISTORY FROM THE COLONIZATION [Hist. View.
l'endall'and his adherents had professed all due submission to the authority of the restored monarch, their inclinations were otherwise. No public act had been done to announce his resto- ration ; and one of the earliest acts of Fendall and his council " had been, to proclaim Richard Cromwell as protector, as soon as the intelligence of his father's death was received. In confor- mity to the proprietary's instructions, governor Calvert proclaim- ed a general indemnity to all, except Fendall and Hatch, for whose apprehension proclamations were immediately issued. In a few days, Fendall came in voluntarily, and submitted himself to the discretion of the government; and notwithstanding his gross treachery, and the express injunctions of the proprietary not to permit him to escape with his life, he was only imprisoned for a short period; and was discharged from all the penalties of the sentence passed upon him by the provincial court, except the deprivation of the privileges of voting and holding office. He lived to repay this humanity many years afterwards, by at- tempts to excite another rebellion in the province. (36)
The proprietary government was now firmly re-established, and the province restored to tranquillity, which it enjoyed with- Administration out interruption for many years afterwards. In the beginning of the year 1662, the proprietary sent out
of the govern- ment from 1660 quid 1676. to the province, as its governor, his son and heir apparent, Charles Calvert, who continued to reside in the province and administer its government until the death of his father, ex- cept during one or two occasional absences of short duration. The transactions of the government during this period, in estab- Jishing its boundaries, and in establishing or remodelling its in- stitutions, belong to the history of the grant or of the provincial institutions ; and have been, or will hereafter be, considered in connexion with the particular subjects to which they refer. Be- sides these, this interval presents no events which are important in the elucidation of the political history of the province.
Caciliny Lord Baltimore, the first proprietary of Maryland, died on the 30th of November, 1675; and was succeeded in his ti-
(36) The various proceedings relative to Fendall may be seen in Council Proceedings, 1656 to 1668, Liber II II, pages 74, 76, 79 to 82 and 89:
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tles and estate in the province, by his son and heir,
Accession of Charles Calvert, Charles Calvert, the then governor of Maryland. as proprietary.
As soon as he was notified of his accession, the new proprietary, intending to return to England, immediately" convened an Assembly. At this Assembly, the legislation of the provinces was rescued from the confusion and obscurity which had characterised it for some years, from the want of a re- gular expression of the proprietary will upon the acts from time to time passed, and from the enactment, during that period, of various acts upon the same subject, and tending to the same purpose. A general revision of the laws then took place, under which, those then in existence and proper to be continued, were definitely ascertained. (37)
The government of the province was then put in commission, to be administered by a deputy governor, in the name of the pro- prietary's infant son, Cecil Calvert, as nominal governor; and He departs for England: in 1676, triumphs over the objections to his government, and returns to the, proprietary departed for England. There ar. rived, he found himself and his government the subject of complaint to the crown. The detail of Maryland in these complaints is not necessary for our purpose. 1680. : Representations had been made by some of the re- sident clergy in the province, to the heads of the established church in England, which drew a most hideous picture of the immoralities of the colony, and were preferred by the bishop · of London to the committee of trade and plantations, as exhibit- ing grievances requiring redress. (38) The remedy proposed
(37) This was accomplished by the acts of 1676, chap. Ist and 2d.
(35) The principal representation upon which the complaint was predica- ted, is contained in a letter written from Patuxent, in Maryland, by the Rev. Mr. Yeo, to the archbishop of Canterbury, in May, 1676. "The province of Maryland, (says he,) is in a deplorable condition for want of an established ministry. Here are ten or twelve counties, and in them at least 20,000 souls: and but three Protestant ministers of the church of England. The priests are provided for, and the Quakers take care of those that are speakers ; but no care is taken to build up churches in the Protestant religion. The Lord's day is profaned. . Religion is despised, and all notorious vices are committed: so that it is become a Sodoin of uncleanness, and a pest house of iniquity. . As the Lord Baltimore is lately gone for England, I have made bold to address this to your Grace, to beg that your Grace would be pleased to solicit him for some estab- lished support for a Protestant ministry." Chalmers, 375. Now here is a most
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[Hist. View.
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indicated the cause of complaint. The clergy wanted an estab- lishment and endowment of lands; and their piety was shocked at the temporal emoluments in the possession of the Catholic priests of the province. The answer of the proprietary was easily made. He referred to the permanent law of the province, tolerating all christians, and establishing none ; and to the gene- ral impracticability of procuring, through the Assembly, the ex- clusive establishment of any particular church ; and he was releas- ed from the subject by the injunction, to enforce the laws against immorality, and to endeavor to procure a maintenance for the support of a competent number of the clergy of the church of Eng- land. (39) The complaint of the Virginians, that Maryland had not aided in the protection of her frontiers, was reported to be utterly groundless ; and thus triumphant over his enemies, in February, 16-0, (new style,) the proprietary returned to the province, and resamed the personal administration of its government. The at- tempts of Fendall and Coode, in the following year, to excite se- dition in the colony, were attended with no consequences at that period, which deserve special consideration. They met with no correspondent spirit on the part of the people, and were instantly checked by the arrest and conviction of these notorious agita- tors. They derive their consequence, from their connexion with the events which led to the Protestant revolution, and with the character of one of these personages, who was destined to be the leader of that revolution: and will hereafter be adverted to, in illustration of its causes and objects. 1
The proprietary remained in the province until 1684, ad- ministering its government with a parental care for the rights and interests of his people, which secured for him general respect and affection. The events now occurring in the mother country, were already ripening the jealousies of the people of
frightful picture of the immorality of the province : and the whole grievance is the want of an established clergy ; and the remedy, its establishment. How unlike his divine Master, who did not wait for an established support to go forth on · his mission of grace. "Having a care for the body," is too often all that is meant by " having the care of souls."
(39) Chalmers's Annals, 365.
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Chap. II.]
The government administered from this period until May, 1094, by the proprieta- sy in person ; and character of his administra- tion.
TO THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 217
England for their liberties and their religion. The cry of "no Popery," was already abroad to ex. cite apprehension; and vague surmise and suspi- cion as to the ulterior designs of the crown, were - infusing themselves into the public mind. The acts of the government, and the succession to the throne in prospect, were well calculated to sustain and increase these, and to pre- pare the public energies for the crisis which was rapidly ap- preaching. Extending to and diffusing themselves amongst the colonies, (which were always tremblingly alive to the movements at home,) by their travel, these jealousies lost none of their pow- er to alarm and influence, and found ready recipients in the breasts of the colonists, yet smarting under the recent restrictions of their trade, and ever apprehensive of the destruction of their chartered liberties. In Maryland, subject as she was to the do- minion of a Catholic, yet peopled principally by Protestants, they were calculated to produce peculiar effect. Yet in the midst of all this, the personal government of the proprietary, not- withstanding the occasional differences between him and the As- sembly, was always alluded to in the Assembly transactions of that period, in terms dictated by the most grateful affection: and his departure excited the general regrets of his people.
That departure appears to have been occasioned by the jeo- pardy, in which his proprietary rights were now placed by the Danger to his go. vernment from the inclinations of the crown. temper of the crown. We have already adverted to the jealousy and aversion, with which it generally regarded the independence of the charter and pro- prietary governments, and the exemption of their rights and reve- nues from its discretionary control. These governments, for the most part, originated in the personal attachment of the king to the original grantees, or were granted to subserve some temporary hu- mor, or to conciliate, from motives of policy, some temporary dis- content. Springing thus from the favoritism or impulse of the mo- ment, after the temporary causes which gave them existence subsi- ded, the control which the ties and securities of these charters in- posed upon the crown, was alike that of sullen wedlock, when the golden link of affection has become the chain that fetters. In those days, the king enjoyed facilities for release from his obliga- tions, even beyond those of the modern victim of marriage. If
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HISTORY FROM THE COLONIZATION [Hist. Vicw.
other causes were wanting, his pliant courts could find a sanc- tion for divorce from the charter restrictions, in the knowledge of his will. The writ of quo warranto, once issued, never failed to accomplish its purposes. It was as true as the Indian's arrow ; and the colony, which saw it impending, never contemplated its defeat, except by sturdy reliance upon itself, or by propitiating the favor of the monarch.
The proprietary knew this full well; and it now required all his vigilance to avert its application to his own rights. He The jealousies of the crown enhanced by the opposition to the restrictions in- pried upon the trade of the co. long. does not appear to have enjoyed any peculiar favor, either with king Charles II. or his successor. Too little of the libertine and sensualist for the former, and yet too liberal and tolerant in his religious prin- ciples for the latter, he rested for his protection solely, upon the chartered sanctity of his rights, and the pleading virtues of his wise and liberal administration of them. To both of these monarchs, such claims were "as dust in the balance," when weighed against their own selfish views, or the suggestions of their capricious tyranny. Complaints were continually poured into the ear of king Charles, relative to the Catholic partialities of the proprietary administration. The sources from which they came, entitled them to but little respect ; and if they were even worthy of it, the refutation of the charge was triumphant. The proprietary referred to the cherished laws and institutions of the colony, cocval with its existence, which permitted the freest exer- cise of their religion to every christian sect. He transmitted to the mother government full lists of the officers of the province, from which it was manifest, that its offices were distributed without re- ference to religious distinctions; and that in fact the military power of the colony was almost exclusively in the hands of the Protest- atits. ( 10) In reply to this, the exemplary Charles, whose whole weigh was at war with every thing that gives efficacy and purity to rel ion, gave his commentary upon religious liberty, by ordering the proprietary " to put all the offices into the hands of the Pro- testants." Yet no one ever suspected Charles, of peculiar attach- ment to the Protestant or any other religion ; and the secret of
(40) Sec Chalmers 369, and the reference given in Note 27, to the papers in the Plantation office, which, as he says, fully sustain the truth of this re- mark.
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Chap. II.]
TO TIIE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. i
his injunction lay deeper. The system of restrictions upon the colonial trade, the full establishment of which is identified with his reign, was his most favorite policy; and the opposition which it encountered in the colonies, only endeared it the more to him. We have, elsewhere, described the character and ob- jects of that system, and the reception with which it met in Ma- ryland. The proprietary's course, notwithstanding the provoca- tions he received from the king's officers, did not directly deny, as did that of some of the other colonial governments, the valid- ity of the system; although his charter had infinitely stronger claims to entire exemption, than any other. Ile opposed what he considered its abuses ; and in so doing, he called down upon him- self from the crown, its severest reproaches. In one of Charles's letters to him, after charging upon him acts of obstruction, which prevented the collection of the tobacco duty imposed by the statute 25th, Charles II. chap. 7th, to the amount 'of £2500 * sterling, he gave the proprietary a gentle caution, the alarm- ing force of which could not be misunderstood. " Although, says he, your proceedings, in obstruction of our officers and in contempt of our laws, are of such a nature, as that we might justly direct a writ of quo warranto to be issued out ; we have, nevertheless, out of our great clemency, thought fit, for the present, only to require the commissioners of our .cus- toms, to charge you with the payment of the said sum, and to cause a demand to be made from you for the same." (41)
Such symptoms of dissatisfaction, aggravated as they were by the representations from time to time transmitted to the king
Return of the proprietary to by his officers in the province, required the proprie- tary's attention to his interests at home; and there- fore putting the government in commission in May,
England in May, 1634; and the state of his rights there. 1684, to be administered in the name of his infant son, Benedict, Leonard Calrert, as the governor, he departed for England. He was destined never to return to the province. Hc arrived only to witness the accession of king James II. and to encounter yet more serious designs upon his rights. Professing the same religion with the new monarch, and receiving and pro- claiming the knowledge of his elevation with joy fulness, he had
(41) See this letter in Chalmers 377, note 30, chap. 15, dated 12th August, 1682.
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HISTORY FROM THE COLONIZATION [Hist. View.
reason to expect some degree of royal favor. Yet although members of the same church, James's religion and his were of very different casts. His principles, as manifested in his provin- cial administration, were full of benignity and toleration-Those of the monarch, exhibited only that cold, selfish and contracted bigotry, which mistakes its own malignity, restlessness under control, and vindictiveness towards all opposition, for the energies of religion; and they carried with them, a spirit yet more averse to the political liberties of his people.
The general designs of this king against the liberties of the English people, and his peculiar opposition to the charter liber- The charter of ties of the colonial governments, have been portray- ed by other and abler writers : and it will suffice to say that Maryland came in for her full share of them.
Maryland rescu- ed from destruc. tion by the Pro- testant revolu- tion.
.
James's connexion with the grant to Penn, and his inclinations against the charter of Maryland thereby occasion- ed, (which have already been described,) were calculated to give fresh incentives to the general design, in the particular instance. It seems also, that he was further instigated to his attack upon the charter of Maryland, by the representations of a Jesuit, call- ed Father Peters, the causes of whose hostility have not been de- veloped. (12) The design of destroying it was soon formed : and no appeals or representations of the proprietary could avert it. In April, 1687, the quo warranto against it was issued: (43) but be- fore the judgment on it was obtained, the monarch was himself of brought to judgment by the people: and the proprie- Overthrow
the proprietary tary rights only escaped from the arbitrary power of a Government in 1659. Catholic king, to be prostrated by the efforts of a Protestant Association within the province. The origin and re- sults of that association form the subject of the next chapter.
The character and results of the proprietary government, dur- ing this aera, were such as to reflect imperishable lustre upon the Character of names of Cecilius and Charles Calvert. It is not
Cecilius and Charles Calvert, and the results
of their Aduna-
istrations.
the lustre, which glares around the achievements of ambition or the triumphs of war, and which, like the fire of the funeral pile, hides the victims by
(42) British Empire in America, Vol. 1st. 331.
(43) Chalmers, 371.
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Chap. II.] TO THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION.
which it is fed. It is the mild and steady radiance, which beams upon a people's interests from the liberal and gentle administra- tion of them, not to burn, but to quicken and ripen into happi- ness and prosperity. Their memory wants no monument, but the full and faithful history of their administration, and a contrast of it, with the "lights and temper of the times" in which they lived, and with the specimens of colonial administration around them. The character of Cecilius, the founder of Maryland, has come down to us, identified in his acts and in the language of historians, with "religious liberty and respect for the rights of the people." "Never (says Dr. Ramsay) did a people enjoy more happiness, than the people of Maryland under Cecilius the father of the province:" and on his tombstone (says the more accu- rate Chalmers,) ought to be engraven, "That while fanaticism deluged the empire, he refused his assent to the repeal of a law, which, in the true spirit of Christianity, gave liberty of con- science to all." His son and successor had grown up in the government of the province, before he became its proprietary : and thus familiarised to the wants and interests of the colony, he had the sagacity to perceive, and the liberality to pursue, the policy which these recommended. The language and transac- tions of the Assembly of the province, throughout that period, abound with attestations to the excellence of their administra- tion. (44) The voluntary grants of permanent revenue under the
(44) Although we are so far removed from this age, the facts which illus- trate the character of the founders of our State, cannot be uninteresting. We shall therefore be pardoned for giving a few extracts from the Assem- bly transactions, in illustration of the general remark of the text. In the recital to the act of 1640, the Assembly say, " they were thankful to Almighty God for the benefits they had received, since their colony was first brought here, and planted at his lordship's great charge and expense, and continued by his care and industry, and they desire that this may be preserved for ever amongst their records as a memorial to all posterity of their thankfulness and fidelity." Again, in the act of 1671, chap. 11, granting the tobacco duty, they say, " the upper and lower house of Assembly, reflect- ing, with all imaginable gratitude, upon the great care and favor expressed by his lordship to the people of the province in the unwearied care which his lordship had shewn, and the vast charge and expense he was put to from the time of their first seating unto this instant, to preserve them in the enjoy- ment of their lives, liberties, and the increase and improvement of their estates and fortunes, therefore, &c." At the session of 1674, this duty was
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HISTORY FROM THE COLONIZATION , [Hist. View.
tonnage and tobacco duty acts, and the frequent occasional gifts by the Assembly, were avowedly made in acknowledgment of it. Nor were these acts and professions, those of a servile and submissive people. The frcemen of Maryland, as they were called, were emphatically so from their origin. They never per- mitted the proprietary to entrench upon what they conceived to be their rights: and the records of this period furnish many in- stances, in which they opposed and defeated the designs of the proprietaries. Their testimony, in the midst of these occasion- al differences, to the purity of the proprietary motives, and to their general regard for the interests of the colony, is therefore of the strongest character. Whenever by the temporary excite- ments, which have been described, the proprietary government was for a time suspended, we find the inhabitants of the pro- vince looking back to it, as the children of Israel to the flesh- pots of Egypt, and returning generally with joy. ' A brief view of the progress of the colony, will exhibit results correspondent to the character we ascribe.
The colony of two hundred persons, planted in the year 1634, was enlarged, as early as the year 1660, into a population of twelve
thousand, and. was continually on the increase
Population of - (w. colony dur- from the latter period until the Protestant revo- ing this aera. lution. (45) In 1665, it had increased to sixteen
continued to the proprietary's son and heir, Charles Calvert, during his life, in erpress terms, as an act of gratitude. At the session of 1676, immediately after the accession of the latter to the proprietaryship, the lower house (to use their own language) " considering that he had lived long in the pro- , vince, and had done the people many signal favors, as a token of their love, duty and respects, unanimously desire his acceptance of all the public to- bacco then unappropriated." At the session of 1682, the Assembly, " to de- monstrate its gratitude, duty, and affection to the proprietary, prayed his ac- ceptance of 100,000 lbs. of tobacco to be levied that year," for which the proprietary returned his thanks, but replied .. that considering the great charge of the province, he did not think fit to accept thereof. And even at the session of 1658, on the eve of the Protestant revolution, the Assembly say, " That there is nothing more certain, than that his lordship and his noble ancestors, had, with the hazard of their lives, buried a vast estate in the first subduement and continued settlement of the province, to a far greater value than the profits of the province did at that time or were likely to amount to." Con lan- guage be stronger, or evidences more abundant ?
· (45) Chalmers, 226. Ramsay's United States, vol. I., 146.
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