USA > Maryland > Talbot County > History of Talbot county, Maryland, 1661-1861, Volume I > Part 15
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3 In the year 1759 the Yearly meeting of Maryland advises care in importing and buying negroes: but does not condemn. In 1760 the meeting condemns
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given by the meetings, there had grown up a sensitiveness in the minds of individual members of the society on this subject. Thus, Will Dixon, in the year 1664 (as by the minutes of the Third Haven meeting), wishing "to sell a negro his freedom desires ye meetings advice." No advice is given, but he is referred to the yearly meeting "for advice in y't particular." This same Will Dixon, who married the widow of Wenlock Christison, by his will, admitted to probate in 1708, emanci- pated several negroes, made provision for their support, by giving them land and means to build houses. In his will he says they had served him twenty years. There can be little doubt that these negroes whom Will Dixon felt called upon to set free at his death, were of that cargo of negroes sent out of Barbadoes by Wenlock Christison, for the recovery of the value of which suit was brought by Col. Diggs. Even so early then as the dates given there was evidently a repugnance upon the part of Friends to holding slaves. The subject of the growth of the sentiment of hostility to slavery among this people, is one of the most interesting that can engage the attention of the ethical philosopher, and its study may serve to elucidate, if not solve, that great problem that has bothered the brains of students of the human mind for thousands of years, the origin of our notions of right and wrong. Those who believe that there has been enthroned in every man's bosom a severe and incorruptible judge or arbiter who passes upon the moral quality of every action with infallible rectitude of decision, will hesitate and doubt when viewing this case of Wenlock Christison. Here was a man whose fundamental religious belief was the presence in his own bosom and in the bosom of all "Friends of Truth," of an inspired monitor that warned him of evil and prompted him to the good only; a man belonging to a society whose pure and lofty code of morals has been the admiration of the ages, but to the standard of which those ages have never yet attained; a man so firm and tenacious of what he deemed the right, that sooner than bate one jot or tittle, sooner than take off his hat in honor of man, or hold up his hand except in prayer, was prepared to go to the gallows, and who did actually receive many cruel and ignominious scourgings; a man who had manifested in his life a readiness to follow the Light which he verily believed was divinely enlightening him, even though the following it should lead him into the very jaws of death; a man whose loftiness of purpose and sanctity of life had been such that par-
importing slaves. In 1762 the meeting condemns importing and buying, also selling without the consent of the meeting. In 1777 slaveholding was made the ground for "disownment."
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tial friends had attributed to him the inspiration of the prophet and the miraculous power of the apostle, yet this man without compunction- with entire innocence, as we may be well assured,-could, and did, deliberately engage in a transaction, which, at this day, by the common consent of humanity and religion, of reason and sentiment, possesses every element of injustice and impiety. That Friends in the moral twilight of two hundred years ago, should have held the slaves they had inherited from their parents, acquired by marriage or even pur- chased from traders, before they had been "convinced"-before the "inner light" had dawned upon their minds, we were prepared to believe: but that a Friend should have been among the very first of whom we have any account in this county to participate in the slave trade, and this Friend should have been Wenlock Christison, is so incredible that it would be beyond belief if it were not so well attested. In our judg- ments of men so astounding a fact as this "must give us pause."
THE LLOYDS OF WYE EDWARD LLOYD (I)
THE PURITAN
It is proposed in this contribution to our local annals to give a brief account of conspicuous members of a family whose record is more intimately interwoven with the history of Talbot county, than is that of any other existing within its bounds-The Lloyds of Wye. Being among the very first to be planted here, becoming deeply rooted in our soil, and never spreading widely beyond our borders, it may, if any of European race can, be called autochthonous. Its possessory interests whether in land or slaves, those forms of property which here, until of late, great wealth assumed, have always been the largest within our limits, and its personal influence has not been incommensurate with its affluence. Here this family has ever been represented and most worthily represented by some member or members notable for private graces and public virtue. Through some member or members it has continuously, as it were, from the first settlement and organization of the county to the present, been participating actively and prominently in every important social movement, and by general consent it has always stood, for whatever is gentle in birth and breeding, for whatever is honorable in character and conduct, and in short, for whatever is of good report among the people of Talbot.
1
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Tradition claims to confirm what the name of the family suggests, that the Maryland Lloyds are of Welsh origin; but all attempts to trace them to their original hearth-stone-to the very place in the Principality where they had their primitive home-have been vain, so common is this patronymic and so widely spread are those that bear it in the British islands.1 It is by no means certain, though it is not improbable that the founder of the family in Maryland, Edward Lloyd (I), of whom it is now proposed to speak, was of Welsh nativity. Names of tracts of lands and rivers or creeks by which those tracts were bounded within this county and in Anne Arundel, popularly thought to owe their origin to him, seem to betray a memory of the land of his birth.2 The date of his coming in has never been determined with precision, but it is said, upon uncertain authority, that this occurred in the year 1645. The first authentic knowledge we have of him is, that prior to 1650 he was one of that body of Puritans seated in Virginia upon the Nancemond and Elizabeth rivers, who were then undergoing from the people and authori- ties of that dominion a mild sort of persecution because of their religious non-conformity-a persecution, however, which in the end was suffi- ciently stringent to cause a desire to remove out of that jurisdiction.3 The long controversy that had been raging in the mother country between Parliament and King, between Puritan and Prelatist, between Liberty and Prerogative, between Independence and Conformity, extended to Virginia. There were no warmer adherents of the royal cause at home than existed in this province; but a few of the opposite
1 Among papers at Wye House are letters that seem to identify the Lloyds of Maryland with the Lloyds of Wales. One hundred years ago Richard Bennett Lloyd brought from England a blazon of the arms of the Lloyds, under which he wrote, September 14, 1775, that they were the arms of the family that went from Wales to the province of Maryland. There is another heraldic evidence of the same point, which need not be recited.
2 As for instance the tract of land in Talbot county called "Hyer Dier;" the Severn river in Anne Arundel; the Wye and Tred Avon (third Haven) creeks in Talbot.
3 There was an Edward Lloyd living at Elizabeth City, Virginia, as early as 1623. (Original lists, etc., by John Camden Hotten), Edward Lloyd was a Burgess in the Virginia Assembly, from Lower Norfolk county, Feb. 17, 1644-5. (Hening's statutes at Large), Vol. 1, page 289. A Cornelius Lloyd was a Burgess from the same county in 1642-3-4 and 1647 and (as Left. Coll. Cornelius Lloyd) in 1652 and 1653 (Hening). Whether the Edward Lloyd of 1623 was the same as the subject of this sketch is doubtful. But Edward Lloyd the Burgess was prob- ably he who shortly after the date last mentioned came to Maryland and became the founder of the family here.
.
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party made their appearance and propagated their tenets, religious and political. The former were decidedly in the majority and gave policy to the Dominion which favored the Stewarts and the Church of England. After the defeat of the cause by Cromwell, this party receiving many accessions from the Cavalier families became more embittered towards the few Puritans living in Virginia, and revived those laws which some years before had been passed against non-conformity, but which had not been rigidly enforced. These people opened negotiations with the Maryland authorities looking towards their removal to this province. After receiving such guarantees of their civil and religious liberties as they demanded, in or about the year 1649 they broke up their settle- ments upon the Nancemond and Elizabeth rivers, which of late had been growing in numbers and influence under the encouragement af- forded by the success of their party at home, and removed to Maryland, settling at a place on the Severn to which they gave the name of Provi- dence, near the site of the present city of Annapolis. Among those who sought refuge here was Mr. Edward Lloyd (I) a conspicuous actor in the important events which immediately followed, and doubtless, a prominent man among the people before their expulsion from Virginia.
In the records of Lower Norfolk County, Virginia, of 1649, is the following:
Whereas, Mr. Edward Lloyd and Mr. Thomas Meeres, Commissioners with Edward Selby, Richard Day, Richard Owens, Thomas Marsh, George Kemp and George Norwood were presented to ye board by the Sheriff for seditious sectuaries for not repairing to their church and for refusing to hear Common Prayer, liberty is granted till October next to inform their judgments and to conform themselves to the established law
Before that term of probation had expired all the above named were safely settled in the province of Maryland.
After their settlement at Providence, the Puritans refused to submit, at once, to the rule of the Proprietary, on the ground that they were re- quired, before receiving patents for their land, contrary to previous stipulations upon the part of the Maryland authorities, as they alleged, to take certain oaths which they as republicans in politics and non-con- formists in religion, could not do in conscience. Now that the King had lost his crown and his head, and that Parliament alone was the "keeper of the liberties of England," they thought such words as "ab- solute lord" and "royal jurisdiction" which were used on the form of oath "were far too high for a subject to exact and too much unsuitable
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to the present liberty which God had given the English subjects from arbitrary and popish government, as the Lord Baltimore's government plainly appeared to be;" and further the "oath was exceedingly scrupled on another account, viz. : that they must swear to uphold the government and those officers who are sworn to countenance and uphold anti-Christ, in plain words, expressed in the officer's oath, and for these people to own such by an oath, when in their hearts they could by no means close with; what could it be accounted but collision." Evidently this was straining the meaning of words to the utmost. In fact the Puri- tans confidently believed that the authority of Lord Baltimore would be abrogated under the Parliamentary régime and that a new form of government would be instituted that should be in correspondence with the new order of things at home. Accordingly they proceeded to set up at Providence a government of their own similar to that which existed in New England. On the 29th of April in the following year, 1650, the district of country embracing Providence was erected into a county to which the name Anne Arundel was given, and of this Mr. Edward Lloyd was, by Governor Stone, made Commander, his commission bear- ing the date of July 30th of that year. The powers thus delegated to him were of a very comprehensive character, and difficult of exact defini- tion. "He appears to have been somewhat in the nature of a deputy to the Governor of the province, and to have been invested by the tenor of his commission with all the Governor's military as well as civil powers, as to that particular county, though subordinate to the superior powers and appellate jurisdiction of the Governor and Council at St. Mary's.4 On the day previous to the issuance of the commission of Mr. Lloyd as Commander, Governor Stone issued to him another commission, which empowered him to grant patents for lands within the county of Anne Arundel according to the conditions of plantation as established by the Proprietary. The same was done for Captain Vaughan, of the isle of Kent. This extraordinary power was bestowed for the purpose of saving the trouble and expense of going to St. Mary's by those desiring to obtain warrants. But it was necessary that records of these warrants should be made by the Secretary of the Province at the seat of Government. We
4 Bozman's His't of Md., Vol. II, page 407; where also may be found the essen- tial parts of a commission to Mr. James Homewood, Mr. Thomas Mears, Mr. Thomas Marsh, Mr. George Puddington, Mr. Matthew Hawkins, Mr. James Merryman and Mr. Henry Catlyn, who with the Commander, Mr. Lloyd, were to act as Commissioners and Justices of the Peace of the county-that is to say as judges of the county court.
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shall see in the sequel that the neglect of Mr. Lloyd and Captain Vaughan to forward information of such patents as were issued by them, caused the revocation of their commissions.
The erection of their settlements into a distinct county and the promise that they should have the appointment of officers, civil and military, of their own selection, seems to have pacified the Puritans at Providence, for the time at least; for two deputies or burgesses were sent by them to the General Assembly, who immediately took their seats and participated in legislation, one of them indeed being appointed Speaker. Yet there is no evidence that the oaths of office were essentially modified to suit their scruples. But when the Assembly again met in 1651, no dele- gates made their appearance from Anne Arundel; but a message was received from Mr. Lloyd, the purport and motive of which are not known except as far as they are revealed by a communication of Lord Baltimore addressed to the Governor and the two houses of Assembly, which says:
We cannot but much wonder at a message which we understood was lately sent by one Mr. Lloyd from some lately seated at Anne Arundel within our said province of Maryland to our General Assembly held at St. Mary's in March last, but are unwilling to impute either to the sender or deliverer thereof so malign a sense of ingratitude and other ill-affections as it may seem to bear, conceiving rather that it proceeded from some apprehensions in them at that time, grounded upon some reports in those parts of a dissolution or resignation here of our patent and right to that province, which might perhaps for the present make them doubtful what to do, till they had more certain intelligence thereof from hence.
From this it is very evident that there was incipient rebellion at Providence and that Mr. Lloyd with his people were in expectation of the disposition of the Lord Proprietary, and were not disposed to give support or countenance to his authority. It will presently be seen that this expectation was not without foundation. In September, 1651, instructions were given by the home Government for the reducing of Virginia and all the plantations within the Chesapeake bay to their due obedience to the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England. The commissioners named for this work were Captain Thomas Stagge, with Mr. Richard Bennett and Captain William Claiborne-the two last well-known in Maryland history. The reduction was speedily accomplished, and Lord Baltimore deprived of all authority and power in the province. Governor Stone, however, was reappointed by the
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commissioners, with a Council composed chiefly of Puritans and wholly of those disaffected to the royal and proprietary interests. While it is no where recorded that Mr. Lloyd retained his position as Commander, there is no doubt of his being in full sympathy with this political move- ment and of his participation in the active measures for its accomplish- ment, for as a part of the scheme for "reducing, settling and governing the plantations within the bay of Chesapeake," the commissioners crossed over to Kent Island and we find Mr. Lloyd, with Mr. Bennett and others, deposing Capt. Robert Vaughan, the Commander, and ap- pointing in the name of the keepers of the liberty of England a board of commissioners for the Island,5 which at this day contained most of the settlers upon the Eastern Shore.
A little before this, namely on the 5th of July, 1652, we find him in connection with Mr. Bennett, William Fuller, Thos. Marsh and Leonard Strong, at the Severn negotiating a treaty with the Susquehannocks for the surrender of certain territory upon the Eastern and Western Shores of the bay.
In December of this same year, 1654, Governor Stone published an order rescinding the commissions that he had issued to Mr. Lloyd and Captain Vaughan, authorizing them to issue patents for land in their respective counties. The reason assigned for this step was that these officers had failed to have entered upon the records of the Secretary's office, such land warrants as they had granted. This extraordinary neglect of so important a matter must have had strong motive. It is unnecessary in this biographical sketch to discuss the influences which controlled the conduct of Mr. Lloyd and Captain Vaughan. They were doubtless of a political nature, and had their source in a belief that Lord Baltimore would soon be dispossessed of his proprietary rights, as indeed he was, as already mentioned. It is curious to note that this neglect of Mr. Lloyd to record patents gave rise many years afterwards to much and costly litigation respecting titles.
Lord Baltimore having been deprived of his proprietary rights by the existing government, which he notwithstanding was politic enough to acknowledge, presented remonstrances. But these, though they were not entirely unheard, did not receive that consideration which he con- ceived they merited and demanded-such was the pressure of public
5 The names of these commissioners were Mr. Phillip Conner, Mr. Thomas Ringgold, Mr. Thomas Bradnox, Mr. Henry Morgan, Mr. Nic Browne, Mr. Thom- as Hynson, Mr. Joseph Wickes, Mr. John Phillips and Mr. John Russell. Old Kent, page 28.
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affairs at home. However, he prevailed upon Gov. Stone, who had been retained in his place by the Commissioners of settlement under a prom- ise made by him to them that in all things, especially in the issue of pat- ents for lands, he would act as under the authority of the "Keepers of the liberty of England," to follow the line of policy dictated by himself. "The next year," to quote the words of another, "under directions of Lord Baltimore, Stone violated the compact and began to issue writs in the Lord Proprietary's name, to admit to the Council only those appointed by Lord Baltimore, and to require the inhabitants to take an oath of fidelity, which if refused by any colonist after three months, his lands were to be confiscated for the use of the Proprietary."6 This created great indignation among Puritan settlers, and as a consequence on the 3d of Jan. 1854 a petition was addressed to the Parliament's Commissioners, from the Commissioners at Severn, that was subscribed by Mr. Edward Lloyd and seventy-seven others, in which they com- plained that having been invited and encouraged by Capt. Stone, Lord Baltimore's Governor of Maryland, to remove themselves into the province, with a promise of enjoying the liberty of their consciences in matters of religion and other privileges of English subjects; and having with great cost, labor and danger, so removed themselves, and having been at great charges in building and clearing:
now the Lord Baltimore imposeth an oath upon us to make us swear an absolute subjection to a government where the ministers of State are bound by oath to countenance and defend the Roman Popish religion, which if we do not take within three months, after publications all our lands are to be seized for His Lorships's use.7
Upon the receipt of this petition from the Puritans of Maryland, of whom Ed. Lloyd appears in the light of a leader, to the Commis- sioners of settlement who were then in Virginia, Mr. Bennett and Col. Claiborne returned to Providence, and on the 20th July, 1854, they
6 E. D. Neill's Founders of Maryland, page 125.
7 Biographical Cyclopedia, for Md. and Dist. Col. article Edward Lloyd. Neill in his Terra Mariae, page 119, says after stating that in 1853 Gov. Stone ordered oaths of fidelity to the Proprietary to be taken by the Puritans before he would issue them patents for lands. "This created great excitement among the settlers, who had come from Nancemond, Va., and their friends-men who had done more than any other to build up and give character to the colony; and Edward Lloyd and seventy-seven other persons of the house-keepers and freemen of Severn river, and Richard Preston and sixty others of Patuxent river, petitioned the commissioners for the commonwealth of England for relief."
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compelled Gov. Stone, under a threat of using arms for the enforcement of their commands, to lay down his office and to submit "to such government as shall be selected by the Commissioners in the name and under the authority of his highness, the Lord Proprietor." They then, on the 23rd of the same month in the name of Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, appointed a board of Commissioners to administer the government, and of this board Mr. Edward Lloyd was a member.8 Again in 1655 Gov. Stone, by direction of Lord Baltimore, whose temerity is inexplicable, attempted by force of arms to re-estab- lish the government of the Proprietary, and was defeated in a battle with the Puritans fought near Providence. Mr. Lloyd's name does not appear in any extant records of this affair. Capt. Fuller was in command of the Providence forces and probably held the official posi- tion formerly occupied by Mr Lloyd. Again in 1656 Mr. Josias Fen- dall was appointed Governor by Lord Baltimore, who, when he attempted to exercise jurisdiction, was arrested by the Puritans and carried before the Provincial Court composed of the Commissioners of Parliament, namely Capt. William Fuller, Mr. Edward Lloyd, Mr. Richard Wells, Capt. Richard Ewen, Mr. Thomas Marsh, and Mr. Thomas Meares, where he was charged with actions dangerous to the public peace. But in this year, the matter in dispute between the Lord Proprietary and the inhabitants at Providence, having been deferred to the Commis- sioners of Trade, was decided in Lord Baltimore's favor. On the 20th of March, 1658, Capt. William Fuller, Richard Preston, Edward Lloyd, Thomas Meares, Philip Thomas and Samuel Withers, as envoys of the government at Providence, yielded submission to Governor Fendall, and his councillors, the representatives of the Lord Proprietary; and so this contest ended. 9
But it would seem that this opposition to Lord Baltimore did not prevent his appointment to a place in the Council of Gov. Fendall.10
8 This board of Commissioners was composed of these gentlemen, most of whom were Puritans and all of them, presumably, were commonwealth men or Cromwellians: Capt. William Fuller, Richard Preston, William Durand, Edward Lloyd, Capt. John Smith, Leonard Strong, John Lawson, John Hatch, Richard Wells, and Richard Ewen.
9 It will be perceived that no attempt has been made to give a full account of the Puritan dominance in Maryland. This has been left to the general history of the province; but the remark is ventured that the story of this period has been very imperfectly told, and is worthy of a more thorough and impartial study than has yet been bestowed upon it.
10 The appointment was made May 6th, 1658.
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This introduction into a most important department of the provincial government of a person who had for many years been conspicuously hostile to the Proprietary, and had acted as one of the court for the trial of the very man who was at the head of the government, is intelli- gible if we presume that it was made for the purpose of conciliating the Puritans of Providence, who were a strong if not the strongest party in Maryland; and that Mr. Lloyd's character and abilities were required to impart strength to an administration needing all support to give it permanence and success. We are at liberty to suppose, too, that he was a man of moderation, or as we say in modern party parlance, a con- servative, who while tenacious enough of his own and his people's rights, was not unmindful of the rights of others. He may even have felt a breath of that reactionary spirit which was abroad in the old country, and may not have approved of much that had been done under the rule of the Commissioners of the Commonwealth. But conjectures are perhaps futile and the important fact is the one which has been noted, that immediately upon the submission he was appointed a member of the Provincial Council, or Upper House of Assembly. As such we find him as strenuous a supporter of the rights of the Lord Proprietary as any of his former partizans, for in Aug. 1659, he was one of the council that ordered Col. Nathaniel Utie
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