USA > Maryland > Maryland : the history of a palatinate > Part 6
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Fendall had not been long in office when he began a course of intrigue, apparently with the object of enlarging his own power at the ex- pense of the Proprietary, by assuming to hold his office from the Assembly itself, thus making Maryland a miniature commonwealth, of which he aspired to be the petty Cromwell. What influences ho brought to bear we cannot cer- taiuly say, na he worked in the dark ; but his followers, at a later day, pleaded that they were deceived by falso representations, and did not
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understand his aims. At the session of March, 1659-60, the plot was ripe, and the first move was made.
First, the Burgesses sent a message to the Governor and Council, stating that they held themselves to be a lawful Assembly, without dependence on any other power, and asking if the Upper House had any objections to make to that view. The Upper House, in reply, asked if by " lawful Assembly " they meant that they were a complete legislative body without the Upper House ; and if, by the words " without dependence," they meant that they were inde- pendent of the Proprietary's authority. A conference between the Houses was then held, after which Fendall declared his opinion that, us he then stood, he could only assent to laws provisionally, until the Proprietary's pleasure was known. But that he verily believed the intent of the patent to be that the freemen assembled should make the laws, which, when published in the Proprietary's name, should be in full force. That was what he understood to be the real meaning of the clause, that the Proprietary might make laws with the assent of the freemen. Councillors Gerrard and Utic sided with the Governor ; the Secretary and the rest dissented.
The Burgesses, led apparently by one Hatch,
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of Charles County, now took the next stop. They notified the Governor and Council that they would not consider them an Upper House, but they might, if they pleased, take seats in the Lower. Apparently they did not see that, as the councillors were appointed by Balti- more and there was no limit to their number, this arrangement placed it in his power to swamp the Assembly with his adherents; but it is pretty plain that they were merely carry- ing out a programme laid down by Fendall. After some discussion as to the organisation of the Assembly on this new footing, Fendall agreed to their terms. He was to be the I'resident of the body, but the Burgesses re- tained their Speaker, who had the power to adjourn or dissolve the Assembly. The Seere- tary und Councillor Brooke protested, and with- drew. Fendall then surrendered his commission from the Proprietary, and accepted a new one from the Assembly. The whole constitution of the Province was thus overthrown, the Pro- prietary's entire authority was swept away, and he was left without a representative, without an executive officer, and without official means of communicating with his colonists.
Though Fendall and the rest must have known that they were sure to be called to a sharp reckoning for these doings, yet they went
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on as if they were assured masters of the posi- tion. They repealed all previous laws and made it felony to disturb the government they had established. Fendall issued a proclamation forbidding all persons to own any authority save what came directly from the King or the Assembly, thus openly renouncing the charter and the Proprietary's government.
Before these things were done, Baltimore had sent out orders to have the boundaries of his Province surveyed, and all the inhabitants brought within his jurisdiction. This, most likely, was owing to his hearing something about the Dutch and their proceedings on the Delaware. How and when these people came to Maryland must now be explained.
James I., whose title to the mainland of North America rested on the discoveries of Cabot sailing in the service of Henry VII., had, in 1606, divided the territory between the London and Plymouth Companies, whose joint boundaries included all the land between the thirty- fourth and forty - fifth parallels. The New England settlers, however, kept well to the north, and the Virginians to the south, and into the unsettled space between them the Dutch dropped in 1623.
With the settlement at Manhattan this nar. rative has nothing to do. But the Delaware,
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or South River, as the Dutch called it, attracted their attention, and they made one or two tran- Bient lodgments upon it, the latest of which, at " Zwaanendal," on the Lewes River, came to a tragic end in a few months, the settlers being massacred to a man by the Indians in 1631. So at the time of the issue of the Maryland charter there was not a European living on the Delaware.
In 1638 Sweden caught the colonising fever, and a party of adventurers, learning that the shores of the Delaware were unsettled, sailed up the bay and river, and established them- selves at the present sito of. Wilmington, where they built a fort and named it Fort Christina, in honor of their twelve-year-old Queen, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. The Dutch, growing alarmed at the growth of this colony, built a fort in 1651 near the present site of New Castle, but it soon had to surrender to a Swedish man-of-war, and the triumphant Swedes gave the name of New Sweden to the west bank of the Delaware. But in 1655 the Dutch took Forts Christina and Casimir, and reduced alf New Sweden, which they divided into two prov- inces, Altona and New Amstel.
But Dutch and Swedes had been squabbling over land which belonged to neither, and to Governor Alricks of New Amstel, Utie was 7
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now sent to notify him that he was within the limits of Maryland, and to warn him that the settlers must either acknowledge Maryland's jurisdiction, quit the Province, or take the con- sequences, which Utie intimated would be seri- ous. Alricks, with Beekman, the Governor of Altona, received Utie courteously, but expressed great astonishment at his message. On liis ro- quiring an immediate answer, they pleaded thiat the matter was too high for them, and that the decision rested with Parliament and the States General of Holland.
News of all this was soon carried to their chief, the doughty Peter Stuyvesant at Man- hattan, who averred that Alricks and Beckman were a pair of poltroons who had been scared by Utie's bullying talk, and sent down Martin Krygier, a man of war, with orders to take command, put the South River militia on a war footing, and seize Utie. Before he came, low- ever, Utie was gone. The Assembly lind really no intention of going to sanguinary extremi- tics, but merely wished to give the Dutch for- mal notice that they might not at some future day plead adverse possession.
Stuyvesant, not knowing but that a serious attack might be in preparation, sent two en. voys, Augustine Herman and Resolved Wal- dron, to the authorities of Maryland to complain
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of Utie's proceedings and discuss the whole question of title. All the arguments were gone over, hactenus inculta included; and the envoys with exemplary gravity trumped the English title by going back to Columbus and elaiming as the natural heirs of their old tyrant, Spain. As neither side was willing to concede anything in words, or ready to undertake any- thing in action, the upshot was merely an ex- change of manifestos, after which the envoys departed, Waldron to report to Stuyvesant, and Herman to Virginia, to try his hand, he says, at stirring up dissension between that Province and Maryland.
But the state of affairs in Virginia was not what it had been. On September 8, 1658, the great Protector died, and the leading-staff soon fell from the nerveless hand of his successor. The people of England, seeing that their choice lay between government by the army and the restoration of the Stuarts, wisely chose the lat- ter, and Charles II. was proclaimed amid uni- versal rejoicings. The cavaliers in Virginia now lifted their heads once more, and that staunch royalist, Berkeley, always the friend of Maryland, was again governor.
Herman, we may conjecture, did not find much encouragement there. But a change had come over the spirit of the Bohemian surveyor.
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He had come ont, like Balaam, to curse the land, and now that he had seen it, he was in- clined to bless it altogether. In more prosaic phrase, what he saw of Maryland during that journey of his determined him to make it his home; and he wrote to the Proprietary, offer- ing to make a map of Maryland -now moro than over needed to settle boundary disputes - in consideration of the grant of a manor. Bal- timore agreeing, Herman took up some five thousand acres on the Elk, in the region he had traversed on his way from Now Amstel, and named his grant Bohemia Manor. He applied for, and received letters of free deniza- tion so that he could hold land, and in 1666 he and his family were naturalised by the first act of the kind passed in the Province. He grad- ually increased his holding to twenty thousand acres or more, and became a great territorial magnate, in which capacity we shall hear of him again. The map, by no means a bad one, was faithfully produced in about ten years. It contains one curious feature showing how lim- ited a view of the extent of the western conti- nent prevailed as late as 1670. In the north- west corner of his map is a representation of the Alleghanies above the present Cumberland, and this note is appended : "These mighty high and great Mountaines trenching N. E.
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and S. W., and W. S. W. is supposed to be the very middle Ridg of Northern America and the only Naturall Canso of the fierceness and Ex- treame Stormy Cold Winds that comes N. W. from thence all over this Continent and makes Frost."
When the news of Fendall's treachery reached Baltimore, he acted with promptness and en- ergy. He at once dismissed Fendall and ap- pointed his brother, Philip Calvert, Governor in his stead. He also obtained from the King letters commanding all to acknowledge and sup- port his government, and directing Berkeley to give any help that might be needed in bringing the disaffected to reason. Pardon was to be granted to those whom he had misled by his false statements, but Fendall was on no account to escape with life. Fuller also was mixed up in it, and may possibly have been the secret instigator of it all ; and he, too, was to have no mercy, as he showed none to the men murdered at Providence.
Some have fancied that they saw in the re- bellion of Fendall a movement for popular lib- erty, but it was nothing of the sort. It was an intrigue of a few restless and ambitious spirits, and had no popular foundation at all. It may have been an abortive imitation of the action of the Virginia Burgesses in 1658. The only incen-
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tive addressed to the people was a lying state- ment that the Proprietary had resolved to lay an export duty of ten shillings a hogshead on tobacco. Its only result, if successful, would have been to bring the Province directly under the crown, and to deprive the people of the franchises of their charter. At this time the I'roprietary's rights and the people's liberties were indissolubly bound together, as events hereafter were to show.
In fact, so soon as Philip Calvert produced his commission, the whole plot collapsed. There was no resistance, and the help which Governor Berkeley was ready to give was declined with thanks. Fendall made some attempt to raise a mutiny in Charles County, but it was a miser- able failure, and the records are almost con- temptuous in their silence. He, Gerrard, and Hatch surrendered themselves to justice, were tried at the Provincial Court, found guilty of treason, and condemned to banishment, with forfeituro of estates; but on their pleading in a rather abject manner for pardon, the lenient Governor mitigated the sentence to a fine, with perpetunl disfranchisement, and security for future good behavior. Those whom Fendall had drawn into his plot, Utie included, were freely pardoned on submission, and that was the end of the whole business.
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The government now settled itself in the form which was never after disturbed until the Revolution. The charter gave the Proprietary the right of making laws with the assent of the freemen, but by Baltimore's concession, the freemen now initiated laws, subject to his as- sent or dissent. The legislative body consisted of the Governor and Council, sitting as an Up- per House, and the elected Burgesses, or delo- gates, sitting as a Lower House. But the charter also gave the Proprietary or his repre- sentative the right to enact ordinances, under certain restrictions, which should have the force of law ; and this was done by the Gov- ernor and Council, sitting as a Council, in which form, also, they transacted executive business.
Thus the powers of government were distrib- uted in this wise : the executive was the Gov- ernor, acting with advice of his Council, and through his appointed officers ; the legislative, the two Houses of Assembly and, to a limited extent, the Governor and Council; the judici- ary, the Provincial Court held 'at the seat of government, the various county courts, and the justices of the peace.
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CHAPTER VIL
INDIAN AFFAIRS.
IN 1661, Charles Calvert, only son and heir of the Proprietary, was sent out as Governor, his uncle, Philip, being appointed Deputy-Lieu- tenant and Chancellor of the Province. Charles seems to have lacked the firmness and constancy of his father, but he possessed a full share of his justice, humanity, and thoughtful care for the interests of the Province, which prospered during his administration.
The relations of the colonists with the Indi- ans were still in a somewhat unsettled condi- tion. On the Western Shore, to the south (and perhaps also to the north) of the Patux- ent, dwelt various tribes belonging to the Pas- cataway confederacy, and these were friendly, and indeed to a certain extent subject to the English, and under their protection. North of the Patapsco and at the head of the bay were the Susquehannoughs, who seem as a nation to have observed treaties pretty well ; though we. may be allowed to doubt whether, in case of hostilities, they would rigidly have observed that clause in the treaty of 1652 which required
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cach party to give the other twenty days' notice before beginning operations. To the north of these were their enemies, the fierce Oneidas and Senecas, of the Five Nations, and the Mingoes, who often made incursions upon them, and sometimes cut off a travelling Englishman, or plundered an outlying farm. On the Eastern Shore, about the Wighcomico, were the Wico- meses, whom the Proprietary had once the odd fancy of gathering into a manor and making copyholders. Here were the Assateagues and their allies, against whom the Virginians in 1659 wished to engage the Marylanders in an expedition ; but the invitation was declined on the ground that the Virginians had stated no cause of complaint, and the Marylanders for their part had none. Here too were the Nanti- cokes, a brave people, who gave the colony much trouble at times, and a remnant of whom survived to a date almost within memory.
Characteristic notes of dealings with these tribes are scattered through the records. When a plantation is plundered or hogs killed, or, as sometimes happens, a settler is slain, the Pascataways readily give up the offender to justice, while the Susquehannonghs usually as- severato that it was the Mingoes' or Senecas' doings, not theirs, and that they are behaving in an altogether exemplary manner.
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In 1660 there came a grand embassy from Uttapoingassinem, the new emperor of Pascat- away, bringing a present to the Governor, and desiring the continuance of the peace made with his predecessor. The Governor asked whether the emperor obtained the dignity by succession or election ; upon which the chief ambassador, the emperor's brother, expounded the matter as follows : -
" Long ago there came a king from the East- ern Shore who ruled over all the Indians now Inhabiting within the Province, and also over the Patowmecks and Susquehannoughs, whom, for that he did as. it were embrace and cover them all, they called Uttapoingassinem. He dying without issue, made his brother king af- ter him, after whom succeeded his other broth- ers, after whose death they took a sister's son ; and so from brother to brother, and for want of such to a sister's son. The government thus descended for thirteen generations without in- terruption until Kittamaquund's time, who died without brother or sister, and appointed his daughter to be queen; but the Indians with- stood it as being contrary to their custom ; whereupon they chose Walucasso, the late emperor, who was descended from one of Utta- poingassinem's brothers. Wahucasso at his death appointed this other Uttapoingassinem
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to be king, being descended from one of the first kings. This man, they said, was jan jan wizous, which in their language signifies a true king ; and they would not suffer us to call him tawzin, which is the style they give to the sons of their kings, who by their custom are not to succeed, but only brothers or sisters' sons."
Here we are brought in sight of that remark- able principle of reckoning descent through the female line only, which prevailed throughout the North American tribes; and which, whether considered as indicative of high regard for lin- cal descent combined with rather loose moral- ity -the parentage of the mother being cer- tain, and that of the father uncertain ; - or as a survival of customs dating from the earliest ages of mankind, is one of the many interesting problems connected with these singular peo- ples.
This emperor's reign was but brief, as he died in 1662; and in pursuance of an embassy sont by the confederacy, Governor Charles Cal- vert and suite went to Pascataway to take part in the election of a new emperor, by the kings and chiefs assembled for that purpose. After long council held, the kings presented as their choice a boy of eleven, son of the late emperor. This seeming contrary to their custom, they ex- plained that their emperors were chosen from
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two families, this youth being of one, while of the other family there was a maiden to whom they proposed to marry him, thus socuring succession through a female of royal blood. They submitted their wishes to the Governor, asking his approval and the assurance of his protection to the young prince. He answered favorably, and warned them that if the new emperor died suddenly or under suspicions cir- cumstances, he would assuredly hold them to a strict account. Various ceremonies followed, after which Walucasso, as he was now called, was declared emperor of all the tribes of Pas- cataway, Chincoteague, Potopaco, and Matta- woman.
A solemn treaty was also concluded with the Susquehannouglis, at Spesutia Island,1 in May 1661, which may be given in brief as the typ of all these treaties. The gathering was im- posing : on the English side were present Gov- ernor Philip Calvert, Secretary Coursey, and the Council ; on the Indian side, the most illus- trious sachems of the noblest totems, dressed, we may be sure, in the highest style of bar- bario magnificence. Chief of all was " Dahada- ghossa of the great Torripine family," that is, of the Terrapin or Turtle totem, "Saranga- 1 Spes-Utia, " Utie's Hope," so named by its ownor, Colonel Utie.
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raro of the Wolfe family, Waskandoqua of the Ohongeoguena nation, Kagoregago of the Un- quehiett nation, Sarogundett of the Kaiquari- ega nation, Uwhannieretea of the Usququhaga [Cayuga ?] nation, and Waddenhago of the Sconondihago nation."1
The stipulations were that each contracting party should assist the other in war, all prison- ers to be delivered to the English, who disap- proved of torture. The English were to send fifty men to the Susquehannoughs to build them a block-house on scientific principles (which was done at the precise northern boundary of the Province, under 40° north latitude). Because of the difficulty the English had in distinguish- ing members of one nation from those of an- other, certain places were appointed for those who came into the Province to repair to, and a system of passes for such as wished to travel farther. Any parties who, by pursuit of en- emies or other causes, should approach an Eng- lish house, were to give notice by shouting and to lay down their arms, which the English were to hold till their departure. Follow the hiero- glyphs of the chiefs.
In treaties with the weaker tribes places
1 The names are given as they appear on the record. They sorve, at all events, to Illustrato the alphabetic struggles of our ancestors with barbaric vocables.
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were appointed where, in case of alarm, the women and children were to be placed under English protection, and it was expressly stipu- lated that these Indian women and children, in caso their natural protectors were killed, should not be servants to the English, but re- main free. In treaties with the Susquehan- noughs care was always taken to include the Pascataways, " who are under our protection." Thus, with the exception of the "Jhonadocs " (Oneidas ?), " Cinagoes " (Senecas), and the Mingoes, all the tribes in the Province were more or less under the authority and guardian- ship of Maryland.
- The tribes last referred to were not only un- friendly but bold and aggressive. There were murders committed at the head of the bay, and on the Bush, Gunpowder, and Patapsco rivers, and the cries of the bereaved went up to the Assembly. Thomas Allcock, whose wife and child were murdered, appeals to them with a passionate vehemence that moves our sympathy to this day : " Your petitioner hereby throweth himself with the blood of his murdered wife and child at your feet, craving justice; which blood he humbly begs of the just Judge of heaven and earth never to remove from your souls, nor the souls of your children's children, till it be satisfied."
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D'Hinoyossn, now Governor of New Amstel, was vehemently suspected of conniving at these outrages, if he did not instigate them, and his behavior was certainly ambiguous. From all these causes, so strained had the relations with the Dutch become that a council was held to consider the expediency of making war upon them. , In 1659 Lord Baltimore had empow- ered an agent in Holland to demand of the West India Company the surrender of the lands on the Delaware, and, on their refusal, sent out the agent, Captain Neals, to the Prov- ince, with a commission authorising him to levy men and make war upon the intruders by land and water. His lordship thought that the Virginians and New Englanders would be help- ful in the matter. This commission now came up, in consideration of the subject; but the Council concluded that no help was to be ex- pected from the Virginians and New England- ers, and that Maryland would have to take the risk of a war with the Dutch West India Com- pany, and perhaps with the whole force of the States General, which it was not able to bear. Moreover there were doubts whether New Am- stel was or was not within the fortieth parallel, and until that should be exactly determined, it was well not to be too hasty, and so the war was, very wisely, deferred.
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Troubles at the north were followed by troubles at the sonth. The exact situation of Watkins' Point, which marked the boundary of the Province, had for some time been in dis- pute, and commissioners liad been appointed on both sides to settle the matter. Before they met, however, Colonel Edmund Scarborough, one of the Virginia commissioners, took it upon himself to reduce the lower settlements. Ilis report to the Governor and Council is an amus- ing document. He was evidently a past mas- ter in the arts of bullying and wheedling, and having with him " abont forty horsemen, for pomp and safety,", ramped around among the poor Quakers of Manokin and Annamessex, threatening vengeance, arresting some, and placing " the broad arrow " of confiscation on their houses ; while to others, who were loth to forego Maryland's greater freedom of trade, lie was lavish of promises of equal freedom under Virginia. In mentioning this he takes care to remind the Governor and Council that they need not hold themselves bound to perform what he had promised in their name. Gov- ernor Berkeley, however, disowned and put a stop to these outrageous proceedings, but con- tinned Scarborough on the commission, to Maryland's injury later.
CHAPTER VIII.
SPOLIATIONS OF MARYLAND TERRITORY.
IT must be confessed that, compared with the other colonies, the history of Maryland seems rather tame and uneventful. Small boundary disputes, occasional depredations of Indians, a sputter of rebellion now and then, little squab- bles in the Assembly, these are the only events that break the peaceful monotony of the rec- ords, which are dated from St. Mary's, or St. Inigoes, or Mattapaniont, or Resurrection Manor, as the Governor and Council moved about ap- parently with much the same motives as deter- mined the good Dr. Primrose's migrations from the blue bed to the brown.
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