USA > Maryland > Maryland : the history of a palatinate > Part 11
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More pleasant to remember are Dr. Bray's efforts for the reformation of the clergy, whose lives seem not to have been altogether exem- plary. He held a visitation at Annapolis in 1700, disciplining offenders, exhorting the luke- warm, and putting the Church into order, and though he soon after returned to England to revisit the Province no more, his exertions had placed the Episcopal Church in Maryland on a firm foundation.
In fact the position of the Church was some- what anomalous, through the whole colonial period. It was an Established Church but not a State Church. The Bishop of London wns looked on as the diocesan of the colonial Church, apparently from the fact that many of the members of the Virginin Company had
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belonged to his diocese, and the Bishop of that day was a member of the company. But he had no legal ecclesiastical jurisdiction, as wns decided by the law-advisers of the crown, and the Church was a missionary Church. The patronage, advowsons, and so forth, in Mury- land, were given by the charter to the Proprio- tary, and it rosted with him or his representa- tive to induct nny incumbent. In 1725 Bishop Gibson received a patent from George I., au- thorising him to exercise spiritual jurisdiction in the colonies ; but it was directed to lim per- sonally und not as Bishop, and expired with his life, though subsequent Bishops exercised the same or similar authority, apparently more by allowance than right.
By , this time a contest had begun which seemed to be a mere dynastic quarrel, but which in its issues involved the most momen- tous questions of modern times. The question which of the descendants of Charles V. should sit on the throne of Spain, led straight to that other question, whether North America was to be French or English, and indirectly to that still grenter question, whether it was to be Eng- lish or American.
There had been border-fighting on the north- ern frontier through most of William's reign, und, to the shame of civilisation, the savages
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were brought in as allies on both sides, the Five Nations being the allies of the English, and the Algonkin tribes of the French. The northern colonies bore the brunt of the war, and they appealed to the southern for aid. In 1694 the King wrote to Nicholson, fixing the quota of men and supplies which Maryland was to furnish. So now, in addition to the Church establishment, Maryland was saddled with crown requisitions as the second blessing of royal government.
We may note just here the beginning of the weaning process that at Inst was to alienate Maryland from the mother-country. Down to this time all discontents, all irritations, all sus- picions, were directed against the Proprietary government, as that with which the people came into contact, and the King and Parlia- ment were regarded as powers of pure benefi- cence, longing to fold the Province to their cherishing bosoms. The thongs of their shield, the charter, chafed the arms of the colonists, and they knew not from what blows and wounds it protected them, until they had thrown it away.
The Navigation Acts were violations of the charter ; but the people had grown used to them, and partly evaded them by smuggling. The colonies had never enjoyed the benefits of
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free commerce and ship-building, and hardly knew what they missed. The crown had al- ways claimed the right to regulate commerce, and even when that right was stretched so as to cripple their industries and load them with indirect taxation, the people bore the burden ahnost as patiently as do their successors, with less reason, at the present day. The rapacity and insolence of the royal collectors were felt as personal irritations, and not as the fault of the system. But now, in the forty per poll and the crown requisitions, the colonists distinctly felt the immediate pressure of England's heavy hand. The rift was started, and wedge after wedge was to be inserted, until taxation for revenue, writs of assistance, the Boston Port Bill, and the statute of Henry VIII., should rend the empire in twain.
For the present, these requisitions, though not squarely refused, met with steady opposi- tion. They had to pass the Assembly, as they were nominally free gifts, not impositions, and the Assembly was always ready with difficul- ties : the Province was too poor to pay, or the defence of the Canada border did not concern Maryland, or Maryland had all she could do to provide for her own defence. At a later date the opposition was still more stubborn, as will be shown in its proper place.
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The peace of Ryswick, in 1697, suspended this grievance for a time. While it relieved the colonists from requisitions and Indian scares, it also gave King William one of the few oppor- tunities he enjoyed of turning his thoughts to the amenities of peace. He had, it seems, a " volary," or as we should now say, an aviary, at his beloved Loo, which he was desirous to enrich with specimens from his transatlantic dominions, and so wrote to the Governor for a collection of Maryland birds. Nicholson directs the sheriffs of the several counties to make known, especially among the poorer people, the King's desire, and to collect. " mock-birds, blue- birds, Baltimore birds, black birds with red wings, and all sorts of deer and other beasts of curiosity," among which, we may suppose, the opossum, the flying-squirrel, the raccoon, and the prophetic ground-hog, would not fail to be included.
Nicholson had written to the Lords of Trade asking for a general pardon for the inhabitants of Maryland, for what reasons is not now very plain. The Lords replied, expressing willing- ness on behalf of the crown, but asking what kind of a pardon was needed. The Governor laid the letter before the Delegates, who an- swered with spirit that " they were not con- scious that the Province labored under any
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guilt, and therefore humbly conceived that they had no need of pardon." Nicholson took this in high dudgeon, and told them that they were the first body of people that ever refused their King's mercy, and that since their hearts were so high, he should proceed to exact vari- ous forfeitures which he had thought of remit- ting ; but they kept firm to their determination to accept no pardon where they acknowledged no offence, and the King's peace returned to him again.
Notwithstanding the fact that the scruples of the Quakers about bearing arms, or even con- tributing to the support of those who used the carnal weapon in their defence, sometimes brought them into collision with the authori- ties, they found Maryland a safe and desirable harbor. In 1661 there were so many in the Province that they had settled meetings. In 1672 their founder, George Fox, paid Mary- land a visit and attended a large meeting at West River in Ann Arundel County, which lasted four days, and in the same year another in Talbot which lasted five, showing that the sect must have had a pretty numerous follow- ing. In 1674 they petitioned to be relieved of the obligation to testify in court, asking that their "yea, yea, and nay, nay, wherein we double the words to give them more force,"
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might be accepted as the equivalent of an oath ; but their petition was rejected, though at a later date they were allowed to affirm in- stend of swearing in judicial matters. In 1695 they were equally unsuccessful in an applica- tion to be relieved of the parish dues. The public levy, the quit-rents, and the forty per poll were the trinoda necessitas from which there was no exemption.
In 1696-97 a murrain broko out among the sheep and cattle destroying great numbers, and this was followed by an epidemic of some sort among the people, during which the Roman Catholic clergy incurred the wrath of the As- sembly by their visitations of the sick, Protest- ant as well as Catholic, their charitable actions being attributed to a desire to make converts. A mineral spring in St. Mary's County was found to have highly beneficial effects, so it was bought by the Assembly and made a pub- lic sanatorium, and huts were built near it for the accommodation of the poor. Nicholson sent a supply of Bibles for their use, and en- gaged readers to read them and other books of devotion to the sick. By October the epidemic had disappeared, und a public thanksgiving was held.
This pious und charitable act of Nicholson's was alinost his last in the Province. On Janu-
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ary 2, 1698-99, he was transferred to the gov- ernment of Virginia, and gave up his office to Nathaniel Blakiston, an amiable man and gen- erally acceptable ; but ill health compelled him to resign his position in 1703 to John Seymour.
The administrations of Blakiston and Sey- mour present but few events of interest. Shortly after the accession of Anne in 1702, war broke out again between England and France, and the usual border fighting and con- sequent requisitions followed. French cruisers entered the Chesapeake, doing some damage to the plantations, and even threatening Annapo- lis. Pirates also, among whom was the re- doubtable Captain Kidd, infested the coast, to the great damage of intercolonial commerce, and constant complaints were made, whether true or false, that they were aided and pro- tected by the Pennsylvanians. Several were captured in Maryland and sent to England for trial, until a commissioner was sent over to es- tablish courts of admiralty in Maryland.
One Richard Johnson, commander of a brig- antine, performed an exploit worth remember- ing, in 1704. His vessel was captured off Martinique by a French privateer, and he was made prisoner. On the voyage to France, he, with another Englishman, surprised the crew, threw the captain overboard, and got possession
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of the privateer, which the two brought safely to Maryland, where she was condemned, and we trust the gallant fellow received a liberal share of prize-money.
It seemed to be the theory that whenever there was war with France, the sinull body- of Roman Catholics in Maryland were ready to help the French side. Had this been the case, one could hardly blame them, for certainly a government that treated them as aliens and probable traitors had small claim to their alle- giance ; but as matter of fact there is no ev- idence that there was the least disloyalty to England among them. Yet this war gave ex- cuse for further severities against them. It was made a crime punishable with fine and im- prisonment for a priest to say mass, or exercise any priestly function ; and any member of the Church of Rome who should teach, or even board young persons, was to be sent to Eng. land for prosecution. Children of Catholics were encouraged to forsake their parents' re- ligion. A duty of twenty shillings per poll was laid on all Irish papists brought into the Prov- ince.
The same duty was laid on negroes, who now began to be imported in considerable numbers, not from the West India islands, as heretofore, but directly from Africa. In 1712 it was esti-
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mated that there were 8,000 negroes in Mary- land, out of a total population of 46,000 souls.
The long life of Charles, third Lord Balti- more and second Proprietary, was now draw- ing toward its close. He had had many trials, but perhaps the bitterest was still in store. He had held firm to his father's faith, although his steadfastness had reduced him from a prince to a mere absentee landlord, and was likely at any time to reduce him to a beggar. The fast failing health of the childless Anne, on whose death England would have to choose between the lineal heir to the throne and a petty Ger- inan prince of allen habits and speech, with nothing but Protestantism for a recommenda- tion, stimulated the hopes and activity of the Jacobites, raised still higher the hostility of the Whigs, and embittered all animosities against the Roman Catholics. Baltimore's son and heir, Benedict Leonard, saw this, and reversing the policy of his great-grandfather, publicly re- nounced the Roman faith, and attached himself to the Church of England.
Upon this, his angry father withdrew the yearly allowance of £450 which he had granted him, so that Benedict was obliged to live and educate his six children - formerly educated in Catholic seminaries on the con- tinent, at their grandfather's charge, but now
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placed at Protestant schools in England - out of his wife's settlement. In these straitened circumstances he appealed to Queen Anne, who granted him a pension of £300 during his father's life, and, at his request, appointed John Hart as Governor (Edward Lloyd, Presi- dent of the Council, having acted ad interim since Seymour's death in 1709), who allowed Benedict £500 per annum out of his emolu- ments.
Upon the accession of George I., in 1714, Benedict laid these facts before the new sov- ereign, solicited a continuance of his pension, and the renewal of Hart's commission, which the King very willingly granted. On Febru- ary 20, 1714-15, Charles, Lord Baltimore, died, at the age of eighty-five, and Benedict Leonard succeeded to the title and estates. But he had hardly been recognised as Proprietary, when he also died, on April 5, 1715, and his son Charles, a minor, succeeded to his title and rights, as fifth Lord Baltimore, and fourth Proprietary.
As the charter still stood firm, and the Pro- prietary government was only suspended by the crown on William's pretext that it was un- safe in Catholic hands, with the accession of a Protestant that pretext was no longer tenable, and, on the petition of Lord Guilford, Charles's guardian, the King, " to give encouragement
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to the educating of the numerous issue of so noble a family in the Protestant religion," restored the government to the youthful Pro- prietary, after twenty-three years of abeyance. Lord Guilford at once assumed the administra- tion in the name of his ward, and Hart was re- commissioned as Proprietary Governor. Theo- retically this placed Maryland where she bad been in the days of Cecilius, but in reality the Palatinate government, like the Abbot of Ab- ingdon, had
" Had a knock of a king, and incurable the wound."
CHAPTER XII. CHANGED RELATIONS OF THE PROVINCE. BORDER WARFARE.
THOUGH the relations of the Province and people to the Proprietary government were now legally and nominally the same that they had been under Cecilius, in reality the status was altogether changed. In the first place, there was no fundamental difference of faith between the Proprietary and the great major- ity of his colonists, and the former fears, sus- picions, and incitements to revolt were at an end. There might henceforth be Catholics and Protestants in the Province, but not ą Catholic and a Protestant party. In the second place, the reinstatement of the Propri- etary seemed tantamount to a confirmation of the charter. These facts tended to strengthen the Proprietary's power. On the other hand, almost a generation of royal government, the increase of population and wealth, the youth of Baltimore, even the very fact that he could bave no partisans where he had no adversaries, nor reap the benefit of personal loyalty when that did not conflict with loyalty to the crown, - these all tended to make the change one of
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form rather than substance, and henceforth the career of Maryland does not greatly differ from those of the other colonies.
One noble legacy the royal government had left, as alnost its last act and parting gift to tho Province. The laws had fallen into much confusion, with abrogations, alterations, expira- tions, and reenactments, and for some time the crown had been urging their thorough revision. In 1715 this was done by the Assembly, and a body of laws framed, which may almost be called a code, and a copy of this code was sent to every county. So satisfactorily was the work done, that it remained, broadly speak- ing, the law of the Province, and, fundament- ally, the law of the State, almost to our own times.
As we have seen at the beginning of this sketch, the colony was at all times inclined to ~ hold on to the common law of England, nor was any very sharp distinction drawn between the common and the statute law as applicable to those cases in which the Provincial law was silent. But how far the statutes of England were pleadable in the Provincial courts, was a point on which there was much dissension at various times ; the Upper House and the Pro- prietary preferring that if there were any ex- tension of the English statutes to Maryland, it
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should be restricted to such as were most suit- able to the Province, or least infringed upon his chartered rights ; while the Lower House, on the other hand, wished to introduce the whole, or to leave the power of selection to the courts.
In 1722 an act was passed recognising the extension to the Province of an English statute, in opposition to previous decisions of the Pro- vincial Court ; and, at the same session, a series of resolutions was adopted by the Lower House, defining the attitude of the Province toward the English law, and the relations of the people to the mother-country. They planted themselves at once on their rights as free Englishimen, and on the letter of the charter, declaring that " this Province is not under the circumstance of a conquered country ; that if it were, the present Christian inhabitants thereof would be in the circumstance not of the conquered, but of the conquerors, it being a colony of the English nation, encouraged by the crown to transplant themselves hither, for the sake of improving and enlarging its dominions; which, by the blessing of God upon their endeavors, at their own expense and Inbour, has been in great measure obtained; " and that, " whoever shall advance that his Majesty's subjects, by such their endeavors and success, have forfeited any part of their English liberties, are ill-wishers
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to the country, and mistake its happy constitu- tion.
" Resolved also, that if there be any pretence of conquest, it can be only supposed of the native Indians; which supposition cannot be admitted, because the inhabitants purchased great part of the land they at first took up from the Indians, as well as from the Lord Proprietary, and have ever since continued in an amicable course of trade with them, except some partial outrages and skirmishes, which never amounted to a general war, much less to a general conquest ; the Indians yet enjoying the rights and privileges of treaties and trade, of whom we frequently purchase their rights of such lands as we take up, as well as of the Lord Proprietary.
" Resolved further, that this Province hath always hitherto had the common law and such general statutes of England as are not re- strained by words of local limitation, and such acts of Assembly as were made in the Prov- ince to suit its particular constitution, as the rule and standard of its government and judi- cature." And they further declare, that those who maintain the contrary "intend to infringe our English liberties, and to frustrate the in- tent of the crown in the original grant of this Province." And to show that this was meant
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as a solemn Declaration of Rights, they placed it on record that these resolutions grew out of no present irritation or apprehension, " bnt were intended to assert their rights and lib- erties, and to transmit the sense thereof, and of the nature of their constitution, to poster- ity."
The Upper House refused to coneur in these resolutions, and the Proprietary dissented from the Act, but these words were of the kind that do not die. They led to a contest between the Honses which lasted for years, and ended in a virtual triumph for the Lower House. The aets and usages of the Province were to be its code ; but where these were silent, the laws and statutes of England, as practised within the Province. Thus, without abandoning their right to self-government, they secured for them- selves the benefits of the English law so far as it snited them. Nothing better shows the tem- per of the Marylanders, or illustrates the igno- ranee and blindness of the English fifty years later, who talked of " our subjects in America," and were amazed at the exasperation of the Americans at finding themselves treated as men who had somehow forfeited their birth- right by extending the British empire beyond the seas. It needs but these resolutions to ex- plain what Burke calls the " fierce spirit of
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liberty " which sprang up in answer to the at- tempt to lay a tax upon the colonists by a body in which they were not represented.
The Jacobite party in England had many well-wishers in Maryland, and their presence gave rise to almost as many fears and suspi- cions as were rife in the mother-country. Knowing this fact, they kept quiet for the most part, but could not always check the raslı- ness and folly of some. On the night of June 10, 1716, the Pretender's birthday, some hot- headed youths, one of whom was a nephew of Charles Carroll, Lord Baltimore's agent, got possession of the cannon of the fort at Annp- olis and fired a salute. Governor Hart suc- ceeded in having the offenders arrested and imprisoned, whereupon Mr. Carroll, stretching the very extensive powers he had or claimed, released his nephew. The whole business brought about much bad blood.
The proceeding was all the more foolhardy that in England the party had made their great stroke and failed. The rising under Mar and Derwentwater, in 1715, had terminated in dis- astrous defeat. The hands of the crown were loaded with prisoners, and the very doubtful policy was adopted of sending them to the col- onies; much to the discontent of the provincial legislatures, who thought they had already
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trouble enough with their native Jacobites, without any alien reinforcements, and moreover strongly objected to having the provinces con- verted into penal settlements. Two shiploads of these prisoners, mostly Scotchmen, were sent over to Maryland in 1717, and they were al- lowed to choose between indenting themselves as servants for seven years, and being sold for the same term of servitude. Their lot was probably not so hard as it sounded, nor was the Province the worse for the presence of men whose only fault was fidelity to a hopeless cause and an unworthy chief. Some charita- ble persons, perhaps of Jutobite leanings, pur- chased several and set them free, which they were allowed to do on giving security for their good behavior and continuance in the Province.
The years which now followed were among the least eventful in Maryland's history. Gov- ernor Ilurt was removed, und succeeded by Charles Calvert, uncle of the Proprietary ; and on his death, in 1726, Lord Baltimore's brother, Benedict Leonard, was appointed. Ill health compellod his resignation in 1731, and he sailed for England, but died on the voyage. His suc- cessor was Samuel Ogle.
One important evont marks this peaceful time, and that was the foundation of Baltimore. Maryland had never taken kindly to towna,
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and though in Queen Anne's reign, in conform- ity with the royal wish, a number were founded, the reluctant Assembly "erecting " them by batches - forty-two at once in 1706 - scarcely any passed beyond the embryonic stage. The land might be surveyed, staked off in lots, and offered for sale; but if people would not buy and build, what could be done ? The " port," solemnly invested with riglits of entry and clear- ance, remained a mere landing-place and load- ing-wharf. The county-seat had its court-house and jail, its stocks and pillory, but their attrac- tions were insufficient to lure the planter from his home embowered in trees, in the midst of his broad acres.
St. Mary's and Annapolis, the one waning as the other waxed, remained the only real towns of the colony for the first ninety years of its existence. Joppa, on the Gunpowder, was the next, and had a fair share of prosperity for fifty years and more, until her young and more vig- orous rival, Baltimore, drew off her trade, and she gradually dwindled, peaked, and pined away to a solitary house and a grass-grown grave-yard, wherein slumber the mortal remains of her ancient citizens. ,
Baltimore on the Patapsco was not the first to bear that appellation. At least two Balti- mores had a name, if not a local habitation, and
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perished, if they can be said ever to have rightly existed, before their younger sister saw the light. There was a Baltimore laid off on Bush River in Baltimore County in 1683, and another in Dorchester County, ten years later, but the records are dumb as to their history and no stone marks their sites.
In 1729, the planters near the Patapsco, feeling the need of a convenient port, made application to the Assembly, and an act was passed authorising the purchase of the neces- sary land, whereupon sixty acres bounding on the northwest branch of the river, at the part of the harbor now called the Basin, were bought of Daniel and Charles Carroll at forty shillings the acre. The streets and lots were laid off in the following January, and purchasers invited. The water-fronts were immediately taken up, which shows that the first settlers were looking to advantages of shipping rather than habita- tion. The harbor was excellent; and though hills, gullies, and marshes bordered the town on three sides, probably none of the founders of · Baltimore imagined a time when it would be straitened in its original sixty acres, when it would drain its marshes, tunnel its gullies, and partly level and partly climb its rocky hills.
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