USA > Maryland > Maryland : the history of a palatinate > Part 10
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And this witness, calling himself " Eben.
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Cook, Gent.," gives us a broad caricature of some aspects of life in the Province, in a poem in rough, Hudibrastic verse, entitled "The Sot- Weed Factor," which relates his adventures during a trip to Maryland, in the year 1700, or thereabouts, in quest of a cargo of tobacco, or "sot-weed," as he splenetically calls it. Hav- ing landed at Pascataway Bay, amid a crowd of planters, "in hue as tawny as a Moor," and . dressed
"In shirts and drawers of Scotch-cloth blue, With neither stockings, hat, nor shoe,"
he takes a canoe, and is paddled over to the other side, where he is scared by the howls of a pack of wolves. Presently he espies a youth driving some cows home, who at once asks him from whom he has run away. In wrath, Master Cook lugs ont his sword, upon which the youth apologises, and asks him to his father's house, where the old planter receives him with rude but kind hospitality, and presses him to stay all night. The supper-table is soon heaped with pone, mush and milk, cider-pap (small hominy boiled with cider), and hominy fried with bacon, or sweetened with molasses. Sup- per dispatched, the planter, remarking that his guest does not seem to relish their country fare, produces a keg of rum, and having re- freshed himself by the simple process of drink.
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ing from the bung-hole, invites Master Cook to follow his example, which he does so freely that he can scarce find his way to bed.
His slumbers are first disturbed by a quarrel between a dog and a pig, and then by an in- vasion of ducks and goese flying from a fox. In desperation, Master Cook leaves the house and tries to snatch a nap in the orchard, but frogs, mosquitoes, and snakes keep him from closing an eye. A breakfast on young bear's meat helps matters a little, and he starts off on horseback with a guide for Battle -Town, which he reaches without further adventure than meeting an Indian, much to his terror.
Here he finds the court in session, and a drunken crowd around, who presently are en- guged in a general fight, from which the alarmed factor takes refuge in an inn, where he loses his hat and shoes, and finally his horse. But he finds a friend here in a planter of the botter sort, or "cockerouse," as he calls him, - an Indian word for chief, - who invites him home " to take a bottle at his seat."
At the "ancient cedar house " he receives a hearty welcome and enjoys a sumptuous dinner of venison, turkey, wild ducks, and fish, washed down with ample bumpers of madeira, in which he indulges so liberally that he has to sleep off the effects under the trees, where he lies until
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the chill of the evening, and catches a fever, as a matter of course.
Master Cook now thinks about disposing of his goods, und falls in with a Quaker to whom he sells the whole for ten thousand weight of good ensked tobacco, then on board ship. Trust- ing the " conscientious rogue," he delivers the goods without getting the bills of lading, and the Quaker absconds, leaving the unlucky fnc- . tor minus both goods and tobacco.
He next secks the aid of a lawyer, with whom he goes to the provincial court at An- napolis,
" A city situate on a plain Where scarce a house will keep out rain. The buildings framed with cypress rare Resemble much our Southwark Fair ; But stranger licre will hardly meet With market-place, exchange, or stroct, And if the truth I may report, "T is not so large as Tottenham Court."
The court being assembled by tuck of drum, Master Cook's cause is heard, and he gets a verdict, but to his rage the court adjudges the payment to be made in "country_pay,"
" In pipe-staves, corn, or flesh of boar, Rare cargo for the English shore 1"
In n fury he hurries off to the fleet and takes passage for home, leaving his malediction upon Maryland and all its inhabitants.
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With all the simplicity and rudeness of this life, the people of tidewater Maryland, high and low, were singularly gentle. The records of the courts show an extraordinary absence of homicides, assaults, and other offences of a vio- lent character. The code, imitated from that of England, with its whipping-post for theft, its ducking-stool for scolds, its pillory and ear- croppings for forgers and perjurers, its brand- ing-irons for runaways, its tongue-borings for blasphemers, its gallows for murderers, was cruel in the letter, but mild in the execution. The pitiless savagery of English justice re- volted the tender-hearted colonists, und com- mutation of the lmrsher sentences seems to have been the rule. For an instance : the only conviction for infanticide that we have noted in the records of sixty years wns that of a wretched girl who gave birth to an illegitimate child in secret, which died shortly after und was privately buried by the mother. This con- cealment, under the sanguinary English stat- ute, was proof presumptive of infanticide, and the girl was condemned to death. But the Council (sitting as a court) taking into consid- eration that the body presented no marks of violence, and its being wrapped in clean linen showed "a tender care and affection on tho part of the mother," commuted the sentence to
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a fine of 6,000 pounds of tobacco. Upon this her old father sent a pathetic petition to the Council, representing that he was wretchedly poor and already crushed with grief and shume, upon which the fine was reduced to 500 pounds, or between £4 and £5 sterling.
Or take another case : The opportunities for servants to run away and escape either into Virginia or to the settlements on the Dela- ware, were so many, that the laws punishing runaways were very strict. One Susan Frizell, who hnd run away and been recaptured, was condemned to a long additional term of service. But when she complained piteously of hard usage by her master and mistress, and showed the greatest terror at the prospect of fulling again into their hands, the court was moved to pity and released her from their service. Jus- tice, however, must be done in a court of jus- tice, and they condemned her to indemnify her Inuster to the extent of 500 pounds of tobacco, to carn which she would have to serve another master. Upon this several humane gentlemen present at once subscribed 600 pounds for poor Susan, and sent her away rejoicing, a free woman, with 100 pounds of tobacco, so to speak, in her pocket.
One ancient and peculiar institution of Mary- land claims attention for its rarity if for no
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other cause, and that is the manorial courts. We have seen that the charter gave the Pro- prietary the right to erect manors which should have courts-baron and view of frank-pledge. For a long time it was doubted whether this right was ever exercised; but recently two rec- ords of these courts have been brought to light.
The court-baron was a court held by the lord of the manor for the purpose of trying contro- versies relating to manor landa, trespnasen, alienations, reliefs, metes and bounds, and other minor matters. Hero also the tenant did fenlty for his lands or received soisin. , Tho view of frank-pledge, originally the inspection of all the resident freemen, and of the pledges or sureties which each had to give for his responsibility before the law, was afterwards merged in the court-leet or popular court, held usually by the steward or bailiff and attended by all the resiants or dwellers on the manor, which took cognisance of criminal offences. A jury heard the charges and fixed the penalty, usually a fine, which was afterward revised by the sworn affeerers, who reduced it if excessive. The leet also took cognisance of accicental denths, and levied deodands.1
There is a record of a court-baron held at St.
) In 1637-38 wo have record of a tree which, having fallen upon a man and killed him, was taken as a deodand.
12
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Gabriel's Manor, in 1659, by the steward of Mistress Mary Brent. A tenant appeared, did foulty to the Indy, und took seisin of a messungo of thirty-seven acres by delivery of a rod, "ac- cording to the custom of the manor," engaging to pay yearly "fifteen pecks of good Indian corn and one fat capon or a hen and a half ; and for a heriot half a barrel of like corn or the value thereof."
There is also extant the original record of courts-baron and courts-leet held at St. Clem- ent's Manor between the years 1659-1672. The cases' tried are for assaults, appropriation of wild' hogs, keeping unlicensed ale-houses, tres- passes, thefts, and other small matters. The " King of Chaptico" is presented for pig-steal- ing .- probably the only instance on record of the trial of a monarch by a court-leet. Metes and ! bounds are looked into, constables ap- pointed, leases examined, reliefs upon aliena- tion presented, and the doings of the Indians looked sharply after ..
It is reasonable to suppose that on other manors also these courts were held; and the fact that the records were kept on the manors themselves, and not with the public records at St. Mary's, sufficiently accounts for their disap- pearance.
Another curious relic of antiquity was the
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blood-ordeal. In cases of homicide or suspi- cious death, the body was sometimes laid out, and the suspected persons were summoned to advance, one by one, and lay their hands upon its breast. There was a general belief that at the touch of the murderer, the corpse would bleed ; and possibly the dread of this may some- times have helped to the discovery of the guilty. In 1660 this was tried in the case of a servant woman who died suddenly, and suspicion fell on her fellow-servants ; but no issue of blood fol- lowing the touch, the jury concluded that her death was " the act of God."
Negro slavery existed in Maryland from its foundation, but it did not assume any consider- able proportions in this century. At the begin- ning of the next it rapidly increased, and the Trenty of Utrecht, in 1718, placing the Asiento trade in English hands, flooded all the colonies with negroes. At the time of which we are writing, laws of wholesome strictness regulated the relations between master and servant, and punished excessive severity. Some masters be- ing unwilling to have their slaves baptised, lest the rite should carry manumission with it, the Assembly decided that this did not alter their status. The unnatural cohabitation of whites and blacks was regarded with just abhorrence ; and a white woman who married a negro was
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held to have renounced her race, and became the slave of the negro's master. All negroes in the Province were slaves for life. A law in 1695 imposed a duty of ten shillings per poll on all negroes imported, and this was raised to twenty shillings in 1704.
The status of the redemptioners (as they were called later) has already been explained. They were immigrants who, being unable to pay their passage to the Province, contracted with a London or Bristol merchant to serve for two, three, or four years after their arrival, either some specified person, or simply the as- signs of the original contractor. In either case, if they disliked their employer they had the privilege of choosing another.
The labor, according to Alsop, who was one of them, was not severe ; five and a half days in the week in summer, and in winter as much time as they pleased for hunting. At the end of their term of service, which was really an apprenticeship to colonial farming, they be- came freemen, had a year's provision, tools, and clothing from their masters, and could take up fifty acres of land. The women who came over in this way either went into domestic ser- vice or were taken to wife by the planters. The market for wives was brisk in 1660; and Alsop intimates that the bachelors of Maryland
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were not disposed to be exacting on the score of personal comeliness. One of the most nota- ble of these female immigrants was a niece of Daniel Defoe, who, finding the course of true love not running smooth in England, ran away and came to Maryland as a redemptionor. Her services were bought by a farmer of Cecil County, bearing the auspicious name of Job, whose son she afterwards married.
A more unpleasant class of immigrants was that of the convicts, or king's passengers, trans- portod for seven or for fourteen years, accord- ing to the magnitude of the offence. The col- ony earnestly protested against their introduc- tion, and imposed penalties upon the masters of ships who brought them ; but when the charter was held in aboyance, all the protests were overridden. At a later date, numbers of these convicts were persons implicated in the various Jucobite plots, whose only crime was their loy- alty to the house of Stuart. The " Palatines," or German fugitives from the Palatinate, who have stamped their character upon southern Pennsylvania, and enriched it with that singu- lar tongno known as " Pennsylvania Dutch," did not enter Maryland in any numbers until toward the middle of the eighteenth century, and then they kept well away from tide-water.
In the seventeenth century there were no set-
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tlements in the piedmont region. Outside the tide-water country, about the falls of the Potomac, the sources of the Patuxent and Patapsco, and around by the north to the Susquehanna, hovered the rangers, bands of adventurous men who loved the woodland life, and under the command of their officers did constant outpost duty, watching the Indians, taking up strayed or unmarked cattle, catching runaway servants and fugitives from justice, and examining all doubtful persons entering or leaving the Province by land. At a later date, when settlements had been pushed into the piedmont country,the place of the rangers was taken by the backwoodsmen, like the Cresaps, men of the forest, who lived more by the rifle than the plough, surpassing even the Indian himself in woodcraft and the arts of savage warfare, and who partly threw aside the cus- toms of civilisation ; men who wore the Indian dress, and sometimes even the Indian paint ; who carried tomahawk and knife as well, the unerring rifle, and displayed the scalps c savage foes with all the pride of a Cayugi brave; and whose glory it was to be mistaken for Indians when they made their rare visits to the lower settlements.
Towards the latter part of the century the growth and prosperity of the Province wero
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somewhat checked. A murrain came upon the sheep and cattle, and was followed by a severe epidemic among the inhabitants. The Church Establishment with its taxation rendered the l'rovince unattractive to all who were not of that faith. Tobacco bore so low a price in England that the planters were much distressed, and yet they were debarred by the Navigation Acts from seeking any other market. They had some small intercolonial trade with New England, sending corn, beef, pork, and lumber, and getting return cargoes of rum, fish, and wooden-ware ; and this trade might be carried in native bottoms; but so thoroughly had the Acts stifled ship-building, that as late as 1721 the Provincial shipping amounted to no more than two brigs and about twenty sloops large enough to go outside the capes, and this at a time when more than a hundred English ships were loaded in Maryland every year.
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CHAPTER XL
ROYAL GOVERNMENT.
IN 1692 Sir Lionel Copley, the first royal Governor, arrived in Maryland, and the Con- vention, as the self-appointed ruling body styled itself, handed over the government to him. After appointing a Council from the leading spirits of the Associators, he convened an As- sembly, with Cheseldyn as Speaker, whose first act was to recognise the title of William and Mary, and to thank them for deliverance from "a tyrannical Popish government under which they had long groaned." This was the stereo- typed phrase which had done duty for fifty years, unchallenged; but in 1701 the Hamlets of the Assembly were called upon to reckon their groans, and specify the grievances of the Proprietary government which had oppressed them so cruelly. They specified four, of which one was false, namely, that the port-duty on tobacco was really a fort-duty and belonged to the Province; and two were franchises, not grievances, namely, that the Provincial laws did not need to be sent to the crown for con- firmation, and that there was no appeal to Eng.
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land from the Provincial courts. As for the oath of allegiance, the absence of which they felt so acutely, the Act imposing it had been abrogated by the Parliamentary commissioners, not by the Proprietary ; and the oath was, any- how, superfluous, as the charter declared all the inhabitants of the Province to be in allegiance to the English crown.
However this might be, the Assembly of 1692 were thoroughly minded that others should have cause for groaning ; and their sec- ond act was to make the Protestant Episcopal Church the established Church of the Province. The Act, though somewhat modified at times, continued in the main the same down to the Revolution. It divided the ten counties into parishes, and imposed an annual tax of forty pounds of tobacco per poll on all taxables for the purpose of building churches and maintain- ing the clergy. In 1702 it was reenacted with a toleration clause: Protestant Dissenters and Quakers were exempted from penalties and dis- abilities, and might have separate meeting- houses, provided that they paid their forty pounds per poll to support the Established Church. As for the "l'apists," it is needless to say that there was no exemption nor license for them.
We may now place side by side the three
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tolerations of Maryland. The toleration of the Proprietaries lasted fifty years, and under it all believers in Christ were equal before the law, and ill support to churches or ministers was voluntary ; the Puritan toleration lasted six ycars, und included all but Papists, Prelatists, und those who held objectionable doctrines ; the Anglican toleration lasted eighty years, and had glebes and churches for the Establishment, connivance for Dissenters, the penal laws for Catholics, and for all the forty per poll.
In fact an additional turn was given to the screw in this year ; the oath of " abhorrency," n more offensive form of the oath of supremacy, being required, beside the oath of allegiance ; and for one thing, no Catholic attorney was allowed to practise in the Province.
This increase of severity was due in part to fright. The dismissal of Marlborough, and the formidable preparations of Louis XIV. to in- vade England and reinstate James, caused deep but smothered excitement throughout the Prov- ince. Those of Jacobite leanings began to lift their heads once more and predict that great things would happen in May; and the catch-word that " the man should have his mare again," was often in their mouths. The French and their Indian allies werc threatening Albany, and tlic Governor of New York made an urgent
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appeal for help, which Maryland answered with a gift of £100 sterling, but could send no men, as there were rumors of parties of French and " naked " (i. e., Canadian) Indians hovering about the head of the bay. But the battle of La Ilogue freed the Province from one of these terrors, and the Indian scare died out of itself.
Governor Copley, who had been for some time in ill health, died in 1693, and after a brief and violent interval of Sir Edmund An- dros, Francis Nicholson, late Governor of Vir- ginia, succeeded to the oflice. As in Virginia he had transferred the capital from Jamestown, so in Maryland he summoned his first Assem- bly to meet at Annapolis,' aud this action was the knell of St. Mary's. The inhabitants of the ancient city petitioned in vain ; their re- monstrance was met with coarse scorn, and the capital was permanently fixed in the more cen- tral city on the Severn.
Whatever disaffection this or other acts of the Governor excited, found a ready mouth- piece in the reprobate Coode. This unsavory person had been elected to the Lower House in 1696, but Nicholson refused to qualify him, on the ground that he was in priest's orders.
1 In 1683 an Assembly met " at the Ridge in Ann Arundel County," and there was talk of removing the coat of govern- ment to that place.
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The Delegates replied that he had discarded the clerical character, and had already sat as a burgess, in 1681, though under the cloud of a criminal prosecution. Nicholson told them that once a priest was always a priest, and rebuked them for selecting a man of such notorious and flugitious life and conversation. In fact, in throwing off the clerical habit Coode seems to have renounced religion, morality, and even common decency ; he was a blatant blasphemer, railing openly at Christianity and the Bible; he had raised a fund to build a church, and ap- propriated great part of it ; and on one occasion he was so drunk and disorderly during divine . service that Governor Nicholson caned him with his own hand.
Filled with rage, he now tried to hatch a plot against the Governor, getting to his side two or three of the baser sort, setting afloat the most scandalous, and even incredible, stories of Nich- olson's licentious life, and bragging that "he had pulled down one government, and could pull down another." But his influence was gone, and he could get no following ; disaffec- tion itself being ashamed to acknowledge such a leader. The grand jury indicted him, and he escaped, with a few unclean birds of his own feather, to the usual city of refuge for Mary- land malefactors, Virginia, where Andros seems
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to have secretly protected him; at least, on Nicholson's application for his arrest, Andros, instead of sending the sheriff, issued a proc- lamation, which Nicholson sarcastically com- pared to the light-houses on the Barbary coast, lit, not as beacons for distressed mariners, but as signals to the corsairs. In 1701, on his ab- ject petition, Coode was pardoned, and we may suppose brought some show of decency into his life, as he sat in the Assembly as Delegate in 1708, the clerical disability being apparently overlooked.
Nicholson may have been an immoral man, 'as his enemies alleged, with singular circum- stantiality of detail, but he was not a small man ; and for one thing he was distinguished, - his zeal for education. He had founded Wil- liam and Mary College in Virginia, and he was no sooner well settled in Maryland than he urged upon the Assembly the establishment of freo seliools. The Assembly concurred, and in 1696 King William School was founded at An- napolis, Nicholson himself contributing gener- ously ; and an export duty was laid on furs for the maintenance of this and other schools.
The novelty of a Church Establishment met at first with great opposition. Only a small mi- nority of the population were members of the Church of England. The Dissenters, Quakers,
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and Catholics opposed it on religious grounds, and the indifferent were hostile to it because of the tax. The Act not specifying the quality of the tobacco to be levied, the forty-pound pay- ment was made in the worst " trash," so that the few clergymen in the Province came uear starving, and there was no encouragement for others to come. Fortunately for the Church, Compton, Bishop of London, to whom the con- dition of affairs was reported, selected as Com- missary of Maryland Dr. Thomas Bray, a man with something of the apostolic character, who entered on his task with ardor, and devoted nearly all his fortune, as well as his personal . labors, to building up the Church. He bought and sent out parochial libraries ; he secured missionaries and sent them over ; he came over at last in person, and lent his aid to the As- sembly at a critical juncture.
In 1696 a law for the Establishment was passed in the Province, repealing all former enactments, but containing also a clause that the colonists were entitled to "enjoy their righita and liberties, according to the laws and statutes of England." All laws had now to be sent to the King for confirmation, and Nichol- son warned them that this would be rejected, as it contained a provision alien to its title. The King refused his assent, as Nicholson fore-
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told, and the Established Church of Maryland was established no longer.
At this time Bray came out, and helped the Assembly to frame such a bill as the King and Council would approve. But this bill con- tained a clause providing that the service .of the Church of England should be used in every place of worship in the Province, thus destroy- ing the meagre toleration tlint had been con- ceded to the Dissenters. However, the Attor- ney-General disapproved Bray's bill, and one of a less stringent nature was finally passed.
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