USA > Maryland > Talbot County > History of Talbot county, Maryland, 1661-1861, Volume I > Part 16
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to repair to the pretended governor of a people seated in Delaware bay, within his Lordship's province without notice given to his Lorship's lieutenant here, and to require them to depart the province.
This was the beginning of the controversy with the Dutch of South (otherwise Delaware) river, respecting boundaries and the rights to territory that now constitutes Delaware State, in which Lord Balti- more was defeated when the dispute was taken up by the "oily" Mr. Penn.
Governor Fendall soon after this, began to betray a faithfulness to the interests of Lord Baltimore which at this day is inexplicable, except upon the assumption that he had become possessed by the spirit of repub- licanism which was passing out of the Puritans. In 1659 he instigated a revolution in the organic system of the provincial government by the abolition of the Upper House of Assembly; and for a short time his scheme was in actual operation, for he and several of his councillors took their seats in the Lower House.
and the people were commanded, by proclamation, to acknowledge no authority, except that which came immediately from the Assembly or from the King, who had now been restored to the throne of England.
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It is tolerably certain, though no record exists of the fact, that in this revolutionary movement Gov. Fendall had not the cooperation of Mr. Lloyd. The secretary of the council, Mr. Philip Calvert, and one other member, Mr. Baker Brooke, indignantly left the room when a joint meeting of the two Houses was in session, and it is probable, if Mr. Lloyd did not accompany them, he approved of their course, for we find that after Fendall was displaced and the Upper House restored, he was one of those whom Gov. Philip Calvert, who had been secretary, called to be one of the new Council. Although he had received many marks of the favor and confidence of the Lord Proprietary, we find that he was not subservient, differing from and opposing him whenever he was transcending his privileges. This was shown notably in Mr. Lloyd's opposition to his scheme for coining money, first proposed in 1659 and renewed in 1661. When this bill, entitled "An Act concern- ing the setting up of a Mint within this Province of Maryland" came up for a third reading, Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Brooke desired that there should be entered upon the journal this memorandum, that the dissenters to the voted dissented upon this ground, that they were not certainly in- formed that the County Palatine of Durham had liberty to Coine. The scheme, notwithstanding this objection of the "strict constructionists" of the Council was carried into effect and Maryland money was actually stricken; for which infringement upon the prerogative of the supreme authority of the realm Lord Baltimore was apprehended in England; but he either had interest with the court, or his offence was forgotten amidst the tumult and lax administration of justice following the restoration of royalty. Thus the correctness of Mr. Lloyd's opinion was vindicated.
It would be useless to follow, if it were possible from our imperfect records, his course while he had a seat in the provincial Council. It is fair to say that it was that of an independent and judicious legislator. He continued a member of this body until 1666, when his name dis- appears from the list of its members.
It is proper to mention here that after the coming in of the Puritans and their settlement at Providence, Mr. Lloyd acted as a land sur- veyor. In the absence of all knowledge of the character of his education this fact may be taken as evidence that he was possessed of considerable acquaintance with at least one branch of science, and its application to a useful art. The employment of this knowledge in practice gave him opportunities which he did not neglect, we may be very sure, for the selection of choice lands in eligible situations, and the discovery of val- uable tracts that had escaped being patented.
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During the whole, or the most of the time now passed over, Mr. Lloyd was a resident of Providence or Anne Arundel, but at or about the time of the organization of Talbot as a new county, say 1661, he removed to the Eastern Shore where his largest landed interests lay. The court records of this county indicate that the seventh court held within its limits was held June 30th (or 3rd) 1663, at his house. His name does not appear in the list of justices in attendance until the 15th of Novem- ber of the same year. His position of councillor made him a member of the highest court of the Province, and also entitled him, whenever present, to a seat upon the bench in any of the county courts.11 He continued to act as a Justice of the Peace of Talbot county until 1668, when he left the county.
While thus engaged in reducing the province of Maryland to submis- sion to the Keepers of the liberty of England and combating royal and proprietary claims to jurisdiction within the province; while perform- ing the duties of Councillor, which were those, at once, of cabinet officer, senator and judge, under Governor Fendall and Lord Baltimore; while executing the office of a Justice of the Peace in his adopted county, an officer whose functions were much more extended and diversified than at present, he was not negligent of his own private interests. He was laying the foundations of that great fortune which, increased from time to time, has given permanence, dignity, and influence to the family of which he was the founder and progenitor in Maryland. He was planter, Indian trader, merchant, emigrant agent and land-speculator, using the locution of the present without any intention of attaching to these designations any thing opprobrious. He became the possessor of lands which he cultivated with laborers introduced from the old country, and possibly with African slaves. He shipped the products of his own plan- tations, and those of his poorer neighbors, bringing back in return those
articles of necessity and comfort which were to be had only from abroad. With these he sent the peltries which he collected from the natives and other trappers in exchange for such articles as their fancy, their wants or their appetites demanded; he brought over indentured servants who paid for their passage by terms of service to himself, or he sold them to others; he availed himself of the "conditions of plantation" established by the Lord Proprietary, and obtained patents for land in consideration of his having brought in servants and laborers; he brought up the
11 These gentlemen were his associates of the county court: Lieut. Richard Woolman, Mr. Seth Foster, Mr. James Ringgold, Mr. William Coursey, Mr. Thomas Powell, Mr. Symon Carpenter and perhaps others.
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grants of land which had been issued to original patentees, and sold them, as well as other lands, to those demanding smaller tracts.12 He early became the possessor of large tracts upon Wye river, upon one of which since known as "Wye House" he made his home, and that is still the home of the family. It is believed that Mr. Lloyd had 'stores' upon his estates, from which his planters were supplied with foreign goods, and from which his poorer neighbors were furnished. Thus was laid the foundation of that mercantile business, which he pursued more extensively after his removal from Maryland to England.
This event took place in 1668, and it is altogether probable he was moved to take this step by a conviction that his acquaintance with the planters and with their wants, would enable him to prosecute a profit- able trade with the province. He settled in London, and from that city he made his commercial adventures. It is reasonable to believe these were conducted with success. Whether he ever returned to Amer- ca is not known, but leaving behind him a son and large estate, it is hardly likely that in the long time which elapsed before his death he did not again and again cross the ocean. Of his life in London we know little-nothing in fact but of his engagement in trade, of his third mar- riage, and of his death. His will, made March 11th, 1695, speaks of
12 An extract from the patent issued to him for a well-known tract of land may prove interesting, as it is illustrative of business methods at the date of its issue. "To all persons to whom these presents shall come greeting in our Lord God Everlasting: Know ye that We for and in consideration that William Davies, Overseer of the orphans of Walter Cooper, deceased, hath assigned to our trusty and well beloved Councillor, Edward Lloyd, Esquire, all the right to land to the said Walter Cooper for transporting himself, Ann his wife, Eliza- beth, Dorothy, Susan and Catherine Cooper, William Haynes, Thomas Green, Mary Gray, Jerry Brown, John Alinge, Catherine Hunt, Abraham Hope, George Rapin, John Fenworth, Will. A. Cooper, Solomon Alinge, Alex'r Francis, and William Weikes, and for that the said Francis and William Weikes, and for that the said Edward Lloyd hath transported Philemon Lloyd, William Scott, Edward Trowell, Samuel Hawkins, Henry Hawkins, John Flemming, Hannah Gould, and Alice Paine, into this province, here to inhabit, and upon such conditions and terms as are expressed in our conditions of plantation, of our said Province of Maryland, &c." The patent then describes with metes and bounds the celebrated tract of Hyer-Dyer Lloyd, containing 3050 acres of land in what is now and for long has been called Oxford Neck, which it con- veys to Mr. Lloyd, in consideration of the annual payment of 3£. 1s. sterling, or 2 shillings for each hundred acres. This patent from Cecelius, Lord Baltimore, is dated Jan. 10th, 1659 and signed by Jonas Fendall, "our Lieut. of our said Prov- ince." This tract now divided into many farms contained some of the best land of the county.
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himself as "Edward Lloyd of the Parish of St. Mary, White Chappel, in the county of Middlesex, merchant and late planter in Maryland." The date of his death has not been recovered, but it probably occurred soon after the execution of this will, by which he devised the Wye House to his grandson, bearing his own name, the son of Philemon Lloyd, of both of whom more will hereafter be said. Mr. Lloyd was thrice mar- ried: first to Frances, the widow of John Watkins, who came up from Virginia in the Puritan colony headed by Edward Lloyd; second to Alice Crouch, widow of Hawkins, and third to another widow, Mrs. Grace Parker of London, whose maiden name was Buckerfield. He had but one child, the son of his second wife Alice, Philemon, who subsequently became a very prominent personage in the province, and continued the family. There are family memoranda that indicate there was another son of Alice Crouch, named Edward, who lived at "White House," but it is probable he died early, and without issue.
Any attempt to form an estimate of the character of a man of whom we know so little as we do of Mr. Lloyd, might be considered vain. History has related nothing more of him than a few of his acts of a pub- lic nature. Court records and musty parchments make mention of some of his large private business transactions. Family registers, commonly kept with care within if not as a part of the sacred volume, have not per- petuated even the dates of those trivial or common incidents, such as birth, marriage, death. Even tradition, always garrulous, in general fabling where credit may be derived by descendants from ancestral virtues (and sometimes vices) has strangely never invented a legend of his life. But interpreting character by conduct we may believe him to have been a man of strong and sincere religious convictions, ready to suffer for conscience or opinion's sake. His abandoning his Virginia home rather than submit to enforced conformity with the church of England, may be taken as evidence of this. As he was of the Assembly (Oct. 1654) which passed the "act concerning religion" which provided that liberty in the exercise of religion should not be "extended to popery nor prelacy," we discover that he had not entirely freed himself from that spirit of intolerance he had severely condemned when exercised towards himself. But religion and politics were at the time inextricably min- gled, and this Act may have been aimed at arbitrary, royal and priestly power, as much as at what was deemed false belief, and corrupt prac- tices in the church. Mr. Lloyd was a republican in his politics, adhering to the Parliament rather than to the King, and then to the Protector as the guardian of the rights of the people. If he opposed the Lord
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Proprietary, it was not from a wish to deprive him of his property in the province he had founded, but of his regalia-those powers and privileges which he claimed as a count palatine under the charter granted by the deposed king. He was unwilling to take an oath of allegiance which seemed to acknowledge or savor of royalty, even when the oath had been modified to suit the political scruples of him and his coadjutors; so uncompromising was he in his adherence to the principles of popular government. It has, however, been already mentioned that his political repugnances were very much softened, for he consented to accept office under Lord Baltimore, and subsequently he returned to live in London when England was indulging in the very saturnalia of royalty. But Mr. Lloyd's life was not spent in the indulgence of religious sentiment, nor in the defence or propagation of political theories. He was no mere enthusiast in what related to the Church and dreamer in what related to the State. This is evinced by his success in affairs purely practical-affairs strictly personal to him- self. It would not do to say that he was not interested in discussions upon polemics or upon government, ecclesiastical or civil; but he was more interested in pushing his fortunes. He may even have taken some delight in harrying a priest, Romanist or Anglican, or witnessing the whipping of a Quaker by the constable of his hundred.13 He no doubt did take a kind of malicious pleasure in the discomfiture of the royalists of the province and in the triumph of the parliamentary forces at Horns Point on Severn river. But his more abiding gratifica- tions were derived from the perusal of patents for broad acres, or the deeds for lands purchased of other patentees; from a contemplation of his fields broadening under cultivation and the corresponding increase of his crops; from the scanning of his lengthening roll of his servants, indentured and enslaved, introduced through his own agency, or pur- chased from the ships arriving in Patuxent and Severn and Wye; from numbering and marking his flocks of cattle, sheep, hogs and horses, that ran wild in his woods; from counting the double profits of his ship- ments of tobacco to England, and their proceeds returned in cargoes for Maryland consumers; and later when he became merchant in Lon- don, from the success of his commercial adventures; from the favorable reports of the trading of his factors or agents in America, and the letters
13 Whether any Quaker was ever whipped in Maryland is a matter of dispute, but Edward Lloyd, the Puritan, was a member of the council in 1659 that "issued an order 'to seize and whip them (Quakers) from constable to constable' until they be sent out of the province."-Neill's Founders of Maryland, p. 131.
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of his son Philemon of the increasing value of his estates in Maryland. We are justified in believing Mr. Lloyd was in his business transactions diligent, laborious and judicious; there is no reason to doubt, if we may accept the doctrines of heredity, and judge him by his descendants, that he was direct, trusty and honorable. We know for the evidence remains to the present, that in the selection of his lands, for patent or purchase, he displayed most excellent judgment, for to this day they are among the best in this county. We also know that his planting was on a large scale, for it laid the foundation of a considerable fortune. We can only conjecture that his adventures in trade, discreetly planned and ably executed, were correspondingly great and profitable, for he transmitted to his son, Philemon, an estate, which largely increased by a provident (and not the less happy because provident), marriage made him one of the wealthiest men of the province and gave a social distinction to the family which it has maintained, and worthily maintained, to the present.
PHILEMON LLOYD (I) (INDIAN COMMISSIONER)
1646-1685
In the year 1659, when Edward Lloyd (I) the Puritan, took out a warrant for 3,050 acres of land extending from Oxford to Dickinson's Bay, to which he gave the name "Hier Dier" (variously spelled), he claimed, under the Lord Proprietor's conditions of plantation, an allow- ance of acres for Philemon Lloyd, whom, with others, he had "trans- ported into this Province, here to inhabit." It is not absolutely certain, but it is highly probable, that the person named in the patent was his own son; if so, this son must have been a mere child, for Philemon Lloyd (I), the son of Edward Lloyd (I), the immigrant from Virginia, was born in the year 1647, but two years before the expulsion of the Puritans from Virginia and their settlement at Providence now Annapolis. Assuming that Philemon Lloyd, for whom the Puritan Councillor under Gov. Fendall received 100 acres, part of his tract as mentioned, was the son of the patentee of "Hier Dier Lloyd," it is proposed to give such account of him as very scanty records will allow.
He was born in Virginia upon the Nansemond or Elizabeth river, where the Puritans were settled, and where his father was resident. Upon the expulsion of these people from the Dominion, he accompanied his parents to Maryland and grew up in Anne Arundel county, but at an early age made his home in Talbot on Wye River. Of his edu-
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cation we know absolutely nothing, but that it was not neglected, we may be sure, from the facts that his youth was spent among a people who have always and everywhere valued learning, the Puritans, and that at a very early age we find him chosen for civil positions, for the proper discharge of the duties of which more than ordinary literateness was required, if not professional training and acquirements. But he had obtained under his father the best of all kinds of education, for one of his environments, that is to say, experience and self reliance in the administration of affairs. In 1668, when he was but twenty-one years of age, his father, going to England, gave him full power of attorney for the management of his great estate in Maryland, and for the conduct of the commercial business which already had been established in this province. How well this paternal confidence was bestowed is shown by the success which attended all the adventures, whether in land spec- ulations, planting or trading. Before this date, he had become a resi- dent of Talbot county, and after the departure of his father he made his home at Wye House, which has ever been regarded as incunabula majorum-the very cradle of the family. In 1668 the land records of the county indicate that he had purchased of Stephen Whetstone the "great island in Wye river," which at first having no special name has been variously called, according as it has been owned wholly or in part by different persons, "Lloyd's Insula," Chew's, Boardley's or Paca's Island. It is now commonly designated as Wye Island. In 1669 we find Mr. Lloyd named in the provincial records as living in this county and holding a commission as Captain of the Militia. Later he became Colonel, and this title has become, as it were, hereditary, for it has been borne by the head of the family from the time of Col. Philemon Lloyd to the present, whether he has been performing military service or not. These and the like titles, which have long lost their significance, are now given in mere courtesy and often borne without authority, at one time in Maryland had a meaning indicative of military command and yet more, of social eminence, if not precedence. They now hardly distin- guish those who, however legitimately and worthily, bear them and not infrequently they provoke ridicule for their inappropriateness.
At or about this time, 1669, the precise date not having been pre- served, Mr. Philemon Lloyd (I) contracted a most advantageous mar- riage and as it proved most happy, with Madam14 Henrietta Maria
14 This appellation was evidently used by the early Marylanders as a title of honor and dignity, and was almost the equivalent of "Lady" in England, for it was bestowed only upon those enjoying social distinction. As the Lord Proprie-
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Bennett, the widow of Mr. Richard Bennett, the son of that Richard Bennett who, at one time Governor of Virginia, was the Commissioner of Parliament for settling the government of Maryland. Mr. Richard Bennett, Junior, was drowned in early manhood, leaving children amply provided for and a widow with a large dowry. Mr. Edward Lloyd (I) the Puritan, had been intimately associated politically and socially, with Gov. Bennett, and the marriage of his son with this gentle- man's daughter-in-law, young, attractive and rich, was a very natural result of this association. The memory of this lady is held in great affection and veneration by her numerous descendants, and her name is perpetuated in many families which claim her as a progenetrix. She was the daughter of Capt. James Neal, who before coming to Maryland, according to his petition to the General Assembly for the naturalization of his four children, presented April 19th, 1666, had "lived diverse yeares in Spain and Portugall, following the trade of merchandize, and likewise was there employed by his Majesty of Great Britain [Charles II] and his Royal Highness the Duke of Yorke in several emergent affairs, as by the Commissions herewith presented may appeare.15 While living in Spain and Portugal four children were born to him, of whom Henrietta Maria was one, who was named in honor of the Queen of Charles 1. There is a tradition in the families tracing descent to this estimable lady, whether well or ill founded matters little to those who are ready to believe what flatters their pride, that her mother, born in Maryland, was a maid of honor to, or at least was in the service of Queen Henrietta Maria; and that when her daughter was baptized that royal personage was graciously pleased to act as god-mother, presumably by proxy.
tary by the terms of his charter was forbidden to establish orders of nobility such as those existing at home, certain familiar titles were adopted which soon acquired a conventional significance and importance and were therefore sought after and claimed as indicative of rank. Some of these were 'Honorable,' still retained, and in many cases most signally inappropriate, if meant to express personal character as well as official station: 'Worshipful,' which has entirely disappeared, under the restricted meaning of its root; military titles from "Major General" to "Lieutenant," which still survive with much diminished lustre since the war of the Rebellion. The titles applied to women were "Madam" as indi- cating the highest provincial grade, and "Mistress," one step lower in the social scale. Those of no distinction from wealth or official station were spoken of with their simple name. The term 'Dame,' now used colloquially only, and with levity -almost with reproach-has nowhere been discovered in the county records or in private letters or memoranda. If ever used by our people it quickly disap- peared.
15 Maryland Archives, Vol. ii, page 90.
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All this may be a legend founded upon a name, probably suggested to worthy Capt. Neal and his wife Anna Gynne by their intense loyalty to their king, who at the date of the birth of their child was probably in the hands of his enemies, and by their sympathy for his suffering wife, a refugee in France. However Henrietta Maria acquired her name- whether it was bestowed by royalty or prompted by loyalty-she was thought to be fortunate when she married young Mr. Bennett, the pre- sumptive heir of a great fortune; though there were some who believed this alliance ill asserted, she the daughter of a royalist and a Romanist, he the son of a republican and a Puritan. There is no reason to believe this marriage was any otherwise than happy, until Mr. Bennett was suddenly cut off, leaving a son and daughter, the former of whom became, it is said, the richest man of his day in America. His widow, as has been noted, married Philemon Lloyd, and brought him a large fortune, chiefly derived from her former husband. Mrs. or as was the custom of the day, Madam Lloyd was a devout Catholic, having been born of Maryland Catholic parents, and in a foreign Catholic country. It is said of her
that she threw over the Roman Catholic priests the protection of her long social standing in Maryland, on both shores and that no Arch- bishop * * could have been more a of stay and prop to American Catholicism than this estimable woman.
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