USA > Maryland > Maryland : the history of a palatinate > Part 8
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too heavy a burden on the people. This looked well ; but a storm was gathering far worse than Maryland had yet encountered.
The Proprietary, whatever his prudence, hu- manity, and equity, was always at a disadvan- tage with his colonists as the adherent of a church that was intensely hated and feared ; and the " Popish Plot " of Ontes had shown how ready men were to believe the most mon- strous fabrications, and rush into a frenzy of rage and terror. Never was there a more in- structive lesson of the deadly power of words: the names of " Papist " and " Jesuit " were enough to throw the people into delirium in which reason, justice, law, and humanity were alike forgotten ; and in Maryland, as in Eng- land, there were always men ready to kindle the people's passions, and play upon their fears, for their own advantage.
But before sketching the events which fol- lowed, we will go back a little to touch that small, but not uninteresting episode in the his- tory of Maryland, known as the settlement of the Labadists. These were a sect of Quietists or Mystics, founded by one Jean Labadie or De la Badie, a Frenchman. Labadie was an enthusiast who believed himself divinely com- missioned to restore the church to its primi- tive parity and apostolic gifts. He was first a
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Jesuit, then a rigid Calvinist, and after trying various forms of religion, none of which was quite to his mind, founded a sect of his own. The Labadists believed in the inward illumi- nation of the Spirit, and professed the gift of prophecy ; they had a community of goods, and held peculiar and inconvenient views on the subject of marriage.
The dangerous antinomian doctrines of this sect caused it to be looked on suspiciously by the civil authorities of Holland, where it was founded, and after various expulsions and emi- grations the community found a resting-place at the village of Wiewerd in Friesland. Grow- ing somewhat straitened for room, in 1679 they sent out two missionaries, Peter Sluyter and Jasper Dankers, to America, to look for a suit- able spot to plant a colony.
These missionaries, whose journal is still ex- tant, landed first at New York, where they made the acquaintance of Ephraim Herman, eldest son of Augustine, over whom they soon established an influence, and finally made a convert of him. As they were looking for land, he brought them down to Bohemia Manor, to see his father. The old patriarch was sick, lonely, and unhappy amid his wide possessions - now about twenty thousand acres - but re- ceived them with kindness and countersigned
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their passports that they might travel down the peninsula. Here, and on their journey down, they were much impressed with the for- ests of stately trees, the fertility of the soil, und above all with the infinite multitudes of ducks and other waterfowl that blackened the creeks and coves. A boy of twelve who brought down three or four at a shot, complained of his bad luck, as usually he killed twelve or eight- een at a shot.
Much to the missionaries' disgust, they fell in with some Quakers on their journey, who gave an exhibition of the singular performances from which the sect derived its name. After drinking some rum the Quakers began to groan, and were then seized with a fit of quaking, but nothing came of it. There was a Quakeress with them, whom they call " the great proph- etess," who " travelled through the whole coun- try in order to quake," which she did at dinner with great energy, and then fell to shrieking. " The Indians," they say, " hate the Quakers very much on account of their deceit and covet- ousness." Their scorn of these inoffensive peo- ple - " miserable Quakers," they call them - who held doctrines in some respects not unlike their own, is amusing.
The toleration of Maryland, no doubt, com- bined with the physical advantages of the coun-
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try in determining their choice of a site, and they finally returned to Bohemia Manor, where they arranged to purchase a tract of some three or four thousand acres, in what is now Cecil County, and then, after some further journeys, went back to Wiewerd.
In 1683 they came back with the nucleus of a colony, and Herman -very reluctantly, for he had grown angry and alarmed at the influ- ence they had established over his credulous and pliable heir, who had forsaken his young wife to join their community - deeded the land to them. Sluyters, who contrived to merge in himself the whole' title to the land, gradually made himself the despot of the little commu- nity, and ruled it in hard and arbitrary fash- ion, with the help of his wife, the rest being little better than his slaves. They were indus- trious and frugal, but their peculiar life and doctrines rendered them objects of dislike and suspicion to all their neighbors. In 1698 there was a partition of the property, Sluyter retain- ing as his share enough to make him a wealthy man. He died in 1722; and the colony in America and the parent community at Wie- werd seem to have come to an end at about the same time.
The settlements on the Delaware were, as we have seen, held by the officers of the Duke
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of York, though within the Maryland grant. As the whole sovereignty was sure before long to pass into his hands with the crown, it is likely that for some time nothing would have been done to disturb the existing status, but for the activity of a favorite of the Duke's, William Penn. Penn had obtained, under cir- cumstances which do not here concern us, a trusteeship, which he improved into a part ownership, of New Jersey, und looking to the west of the Delaware, he saw the land that it was good, and longed for the possession thereof.
It so happened that the crown owed the es- tate of his father, Admiral Penn, some £16,000, which it would not, and probably could not, pay, so Willium proposed to accept as a quit- tance a province west of the Delaware and north of Maryland. A copy of the petition was exhibited to Lord Baltimore's agents, that they might report if in any way it encroached upon his rights or territory. They replied, ask- ing the Council to express in the grant, if it should pass, that the southern boundary of the territory conveyed should run north of the Sus- quehannough fort, which stood under 40° north latitude, Maryland's northern boundary; and also that there should be n clause inserted sav- ing all Baltimore's rights. This letter being submitted to Penn, he declared himself per-
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fectly willing that the Susquehannough fort should be the northern boundary, and was ready to comply in all other matters. From so fair-spoken and amiable a neighbor, nothing was to be apprehended, and the charter passed in March, 1681, conveying to Penn a tract bounded on the east by the Delaware River, "from twelve miles northward of New Castle town," on the north by the parallel of 48º north latitude, to extend westward five degrees of longitude, and to be bounded on the south "by a circle drawn at twelve miles distance from New Castle, northward and westward to the be- ginning of the fortieth degree of north latitude, and thence by a straight line westward." Noth- ing was said about the Susquehannough fort.
The charter was much the same as that of Maryland; but all provincial laws were to be submitted to the Privy Council for their assent, and Parliament reserved the right to levy taxes on the colonists, the Attorney-General consid- ering the Maryland charter too liberal in those respects.
Penn now wrote a letter to Herman and other Marylanders at the head of the bay, in- viting them, with an abundance of fine prom- ises, to acknowledge his government, cautioning them to pay no more taxes or levies to Mary- land, with a covert threat of his " power with
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his superiors " in England in case of their con- tmmacy, and concluding with a characteristic twang. He hopes " that we shall all doe the thing that is just and honest, according to our respective stations." " Which," he adds, "is allwaies wise."
Having dropped this seed to fructify in the minds of the Marylanders, he appointed Wil- linm Markham to go out as deputy governor, with instructions to have an interview with Baltimore and adjust their common boundary. Markham provided himself with a proper sex- tunt, and found to his surprise that Upland . wns twelve miles south of 40° and New Castle twenty miles. After this discovery he used every stratagem to avoid meeting Baltimore. Baltimore, however, weary of his evasions, went suddenly to New Castle, and there found Markham and his sextant, but or. proposing to take an observation, some of the glasses had been carried off, and could not be found. An observation, however, was made with another instrument, much to Markham's disgust, who, finding that the facts were against him, began to take high ground and to inquire if Balti- more meant to limit the King's power, and so forth.
- In the mean time Penn's seed had sprouted, and the settlers in Baltimore and Cecil coun-
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ties, not knowing what his power with his su- periors inight amount to, refused to pay the year's levies, and the militia had to be called upon to support the sheriffs in their collections.
Penn was now eager to obtain a further grant from the Duke of York, and at last got from that prince a conveyance of New Castle with a territory of twelve miles around it, and the land bounding on the Delaware, south to Cape Henlopen ; not a rood of which belonged to the Duke to convey, nor was even in his patents, as Penn knew perfectly well. Satis- fied now in mind, Penn came out with a body of colonists in 1682, and took possession of Up- land, from which place he sent polite messages to Baltimore, asking an interview.
The interview took place in December. A protocol of the conference is preserved, and is a curious document. After various unctuous protestations of friendship and good-will, Penn proposed that Baltimore should determine his northern boundary by measuring two degrees of latitude north from Watkins Point. Balti- more replied that his charter gave him nothing by degrees, but fixed his northern boundary at the fortieth parallel, which was Penn's south- ern boundary. Penn then proposed a measure- ment from the capes, which were "anciently reputed to lye within the latitude 37° 5'." Bal-
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timore said the simplest plan was to tako a good instrument and fix at once the fortieth parallel ; and then turning on Penn, asked him how it was that, whereas formerly Penn had told him that the Duke hud offered him Dela- ware, and he had refused it because he knew it was Baltimore's, now he had taken possession of it? Penn begged that they might return to their former discourse. After wearisomo itera- tion of his proposal to take a measurement from the capes, Penn broached n proposition which makes one suspect that he was not now so san- guine in his hope that all would do the thing that was just and honest. . It was that Balti- inoro should take his sonthern boundary thirty iniles lower, thus robbing Virginin of n strip of the mmrrow peninsula for the sake of giving Penn a tract reaching from the Delaware to . the meridian of the first fountain of the l'o- tomac. Naturally, Baltimore rejected this ex- traordinary suggestion, that he should not only rob himself, but break the eighth command- ment and his charter for Penn's benefit, and the conference closed.
In May they met again. Baltimore again proposed an observation of the fortieth parallel, taken by a joint commission ; Penn insisted on a measurement from Watkins Point. At last, being pressed hard to explain, if Watkins
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Point lay in 38°, what advantage could be guined by measuring two degrees instead of taking at once an observation at 40°, the truth bolted out. By such a measurement, he said, "ont of every degree he did not doubt but to gaine six or seven miles, and by that meanes to gett water at the head of Chesapeake Bay."
There was the secret. He wanted an outlet on the Chesapeake. In fact, he had pledged himself to his Society for Trade that the head of the bay was within his boundaries. Now if Baltimore would rob Virginia for his benefit, he would be most thankful; but if not, he would -gain six or seven miles to a degree, and " doe the thing that was just and honest," in that way.
The accession of the Duke of York as James . II. now gave Penn the opportunity of showing his " power with his superiors," and the expe- diency of a quo warranto began to be urged. This process, however, took time, and, more- over, did not quite answer the purpose, for the quo warranto touched only the question of jurisdiction, and this Penn never possessed, nor at this time claimed, in Delaware, for which he had no charter but only a grant of land. So after repeated applications on Penn's part, the Privy Council, on November 7, 1685, reported that the peninsula should be divided between
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the contestants by a meridian line running north from the latitude of Cape Henlopen.
The extravagant iniquity of this decision is apparent. In the first place, as has been shown, the phrase hactenus inculta was not a condition of the grant. Even had it been, there was no settlement upon the land when the charter was granted. And had it been otherwise in both cases, the grantor had him- self explained his own grant, and declared that this phrase should not be construed to impeach or avoid it. But perhaps the most glaring iniquity lay in the double-dealing in the matter of the Dutch. When they did come later, they were not regarded as settlers, but lawless inter- lopers, and as such they were forcibly reduced by the English. In a word, when it was a question of dealing with the Dutch, they were no settlers but unlawful intruders ; but when it was a question of robbing Baltimore to grat- ify a royal favorite, then the Dutch were set- tlers and their occupation valid.
James, however, did not press either the for- feiture or the division very urgently, having a charter or two to break on his own account, and notably the Great Charter of England; and meanwhile a writ was drawing by a might- ier hand than Sawyer's, summoning him to answer by what warrant he disgraced the 1
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throne of Alfred and Elizabeth ; and in the stormy pleadings that followed, Penn's soft whisper passed unheard. Indeed, in 1689, Penn was arrested and imprisoned for a while under suspicion of being a Jesuit in disguise.
While all these matters were pending, the Proprietary was unfortunate enough to incur the severe displeasure of the crown in conse- quence of the rash and violent aet of one of his officers. As early as 1669, Ceeilius hud ap- pointed his nephew, Sir William Talbot, Chief Secretary of Maryland. Sir William had a kinsinun, George Talbot, of Irish birth, who in 1680 obtained a large grant of land on the Sus- quehanna, at the time when Baltimore was auxions to get the northern part of his province settled. In 1683 he was Surveyor-General of the province ; and in the next year, when Balti- more went to England, leaving his son Bene- dict Leonard, a minor, as nominal governor, with a commission of deputy governors to trans- net the business of the office, Talbot was nt the head of these. Ile seems to linve carried inntters with a pretty high hund in the region about the head of the bay, where he built a fort not far from New Castle, garrisoned it with a band of Irish retainers, and behaved much after the fashion of a warden of the Scottish marches in the old border times, seouring about with a
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troop of rangers to keep the Indians in check, and occasionally bullying P'enn's settlers.
Nothing would have come of this, had not Talbot's hot Irish blood betrayed him to a deed of violence which had serions consequences. Collectors and excisemen have in all lands and times possessed a singular faculty of aronsing the old Adam in all with whom they come into contact ; and the movements of the royal rev- enne collectors in Maryland may be tracked through the records by wrath and execration. In one case we find the Council denouncing to the Lords of Trado the proceedings of one of these gentry, who went about "insulting over his Majesty's good subjects at a most prodigious rate, commanding their persons at his pleasure, and arbitrarily pressing and taking away their servants, horses, boats, and other necessaries." Another of the tribe, a certain Christopher Ronsby, seems to have had more than the av- erage share of the official characteristic, and to have been an arrant knave to boot. Baltimore complained of him to the King ; and the collec- tors made the counter-charge that he was ob- structing them in their dnties, which brought down upon the Proprietary a sharp rebuke, and a demand for £2,500 said to be lost to the revenue from this cause.
In 1684 a ketch belonging to the royal navy
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came to St. Mary's, where its captain indulged in carousings with Rousby and the other collec- torx, while treating the Provincial authorities with insolence. Talbot went on board the ves- sel, and while there a violent quarrel arose, the sequel of which was that Talbot stabbed Rousby to the heart. He was at once seized and ironed, and notwithstanding the efforts of the Council to have him tried in Maryland, he was carried off to Virginia and delivered to the rapacious Governor, Lord Howard of Effingham,1 who treated all the remonstrances of the Maryland- ers with contempt. In his hands, Talbot's death was inevitable, unless he could offer a mighty bribe. But the Proprietary was anx- ious that his kinsman should have at least the chance of a fair trial ; so he obtained an order from the Privy Council to have him sent to England.
But when the order, dated January, 1685 (N. S.), reached Virginia, the bird was flown. In the dead of winter, Talbot's devoted wife and two brave and faithful Irishmen of his re- tainers sailed down the bay in a little skiff and up the Rappahannock to a point near Glouces- tor, where he was imprisoned. Here they con- trived by some device to effect the release of the
1 A little later we find Howard intriguing with the l'rivy Council to have Maryland granted to himself.
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prisoner, and carried him off in safety to his distant manor. The line and cry was pro- claimed throughout the Province ; and so hot was the pursuit, according to local tradition, that Talbot was forced to secrete himself in a cave on the Susquehanna, where he was fed by two trained hawks which brought him wild- fowl from the river. However this may have been, he soon surrendered himself to the an- thorities, who, after some delay, delivered him to Effingham ; probably not until they knew that the Privy Council had in August dis- patched orders for him to be sent to England for trial. Effingham, disregarding this order, still kept him a prisoner, and in April, 1685, he was brought to trial . and convicted. In the mean time the Proprietary had not been idle in his kinsman's behalf, and had obtained - possi- bly through the influence of Tyrconnel, but the relationship is mere conjecture - Talbot's par- don from the King in time to save his life. Little is known of his later history ; but it is said that he returned to England, fought on the Jacobite side, and afterwards entered the French service and was killed in battle.
It must be confessed that the position of Bal- timore during these years was n trying ono. While he was in the Province, Penn and his ubettors were intriguing against him in Eng-
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land, and when he was in England both his friends and enemies in Maryland so acted as to bring his government under the suspicion of the crown. The revolution of 1688 but ag- gravated his difficulties. A sovereign of his own faith had shown no regard for his rights, and a Catholic Proprietary had but little to hope from an alien monarch who took the crown by revolution and because he was the hereditary foe of the Church of Rome, and who conceived that the stringent compact made with him by those who placed him upon the throne absolved him from all other engage- ments entered into by his predecessors.
At the same time, some change in the rela- tions of Maryland to the mother country was unavoidable. The old indifference to colonial rights and interests still existed ; but not so the old indifference to colonial dominion. England had now a continental policy and a great conti- nental war on hand, the extent of which none could foresee, and which might involve a strug- gle between the French and English colonies in America. For this cause, if for no other, it was desirable that the colonies might be brought into somne arrangement which would secure promptness and unity of action, if necessary. The Proprietary governments were now felt to be anomalies, which should be cleared out of
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the way. Pretexts were near at hand : Penn, though a Protestant, and indeed an ultra-Prot- estant, had been a favorite of James ; Balti- more, certainly no favorite of James, was a Romanist.
All things at this time seemed to conspire against Baltimore. Another collector was killed in the Province, and though it was merely in a private brawl, and the parties were brought to justice, it had a bad look. Discontents had arisen on account of certain laws, and about election matters. Mr. Joseph, President of the Commission of Deputy Governors who adminis- tored the Province during the absence of the Proprietary and minority of his son, was a fool- ish wordy man who had given offence by his Jacobite leanings, his high notions of preroga- tive, and by insisting that the Lower House, some of whose members he had good reason to suspect, should take the oath of fidelity a sec- ond time, which they refused to do. The news from England of the landing of William and the events which followed, kept men's minds in a state of excitement and uneasiness.
Upon the accession of William and Mary, Baltimore at once sent orders to have them proclaimed in Maryland ; but the bearer of the dispatches died on the way, so that after proc- lamation had been made in Virginia and New
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England, Maryland had not officially recog- mised the new sovereigns. This delay caused suspicion and anxiety among the colonists, many of whom were persuaded that it was in- tentional, and part of a popish or Jacobite plot. Another inessenger was sent out with the proc- clamation, but the mine had been sprung before he arrived.
In March a rumor was started that the Catholics had entered into a conspiracy with the Indians to murder all the Protestants in the Province, and that large bodies of the savages were actually moving upon the settle- ments. At the mouth of the Patuxent those who were sent to inquire into the matter were told that a massacre of settlers had begun at the head of that river; and messengers being sent off in haste, found the people there arm- ing, because they were told the Indians were attacking Mattapany. A number of the lead- ing men, Kenelm Cheseldyn, Speaker of the Lower House, Colonel Jowles, and others, cer- tainly most, and probably all, Protestants, in- vestigated the matter, found it pure fabrication, and, to quiet the people, set their hands to a declaration that it was " nothing but a sleeve- less fear and imagination, fomented by the artifice of some ill-minded persons, who are studious and ready to take all occasions of
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raising disturbances for their own private and malicious interest."
This was in March, but in July, Coode, who was now a captain of militia, Blakiston, one of the collectors of customs, and a bitter enemy of Baltimore, and some others, suddenly ap- peared at the head of an armed force, and marched upon St. Mary's, which surrendered without resistance. Coode and his party now put forth a declaration of their motives for ap- pearing in arms.1 It is a string of general charges, without specific allegations, and some quite obviously false, in which the words " I'mpist " and " Jesuit " are made to do full duty ; and particularly charges a popish plot to massacre the Protestants, with the help of the Indians. And this paper was signed, not only by Coode, but by Cheseldyn and others who had solemnly averred that these rumors were false and malicious. But Coode had fired their ambition. He now took the title of " General," and his followers were all to have high dignities and bask in the sunshine of royal favor.
The President und Council took refuge in a fort at Mattapany, on the Patuxent, where they were besieged by Coode, and soon sur- rendered.
1 It was printed at St. Mary's, by Nothend, the printer of the Province, and is the earliest known document with a Maryland imprint
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