USA > Maryland > The founders of Maryland as portrayed in manuscripts, provinical records and early documents > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11
The latter died in 1639, and Marmaduke became administrator, but in consequence of sickness returned to England, and was living in 1659 in County Straf- ford, at Fenny Hill. In the absence of Marmaduke, Surgeon Thomas Gerrard, who married his sister Susanna, attended to the affairs of the brothers Snow.
On the 21st of August, 1638, Lord Baltimore relin- quished the right to frame laws to be assented to by the Provincial Assembly, and granted to them the privilege of making their own laws, subject to his ap- proval. Under this privilege, a legislature convened, on the 25th of February, 1639, and the first law enacted was, " that Holy Church shall have and enjoy all her rights, liberties, and franchises, wholly and without blemish."
This is the language of the English Statute Book, since the days of Henry the Second, who ratified Magna Charta. It was enacted, A.D. 1225; that: " The Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her rights and liabilities inviolable." Fifty years later, in the days of Edward the First, it was declared that " the peace of the Holy Church shall be kept and maintained in all points." A century later, in the
1
ʻ
1
99
HOLY CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
reign of Edward the Third, the phraseology is, " Holy Church shall have all her liberties and franchises in quietness."
In A.D. 1377, at the commencement of the reign of Richard the Second, it was declared . that, " Holy Church shall have and enjoy all her rights, liberties and franchises wholly and without blemish."
During the reign of Henry the Eighth, it was enacted by Parliament, that the King of England should be "Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England," any usage, custom, foreign laws, foreign authority, prescription, or any thing or things to the contrary notwithstanding. After this period, the Holy Church of the English Statute, was that Church, of which the King was the supreme head.
By the charter of Maryland, the ecclesiastical law of England, was made the law of the Province.1
In 1642 Father White and three other Jesuits were in Maryland. Father Philip Fisher, the Superior, was at Saint Mary, Roger Rigby on the Patuxent, and Andrew White at Piscataway, on the Potomac, nearly opposite Mount Vernon.
Notwithstanding there was no Church of England minister in the Province, the Snow family, and other Protestant Catholics, appear to have held religious
1 Sir Edward Northey, Attorney General of England, gave this decision :
" As to the said clause in the grant of the province of Maryland, I am of opinion the same doth not give him power to do anything contrary to the ecclesiastical laws of England." -- Chalmers's Opinions.
farm
100
THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
services. Surgeon Thomas Gerrard, whose wife and son-in-law were decided Protestant Catholics, had legal difficulties in 1642, relative to the use of a chapel, ' probably growing out of his position, as the acting administrator of the estate of Justinian Snow.
David Wickliff,1 in March, 1642, complained to the Assembly, in behalf of the Protestant Catholics, that Gerrard had taken away the key of their chapel, and removed the books. The case was heard, and he was ordered to relinquish all title to the chapel, to restore the books, and pay a fine of five hundred pounds of tobacco, for the support of the first Protestant Catho- lic minister who should settle in the Province.
The news, that the only religious teachers in Mary- land, were Jesuits, created great dissatisfaction in England, and the House of Commons, on December 1, 1641, presented an address to Charles the First, at Hampton Court, in which they complained that he had permitted "another State moulded within this State, independent in government, contrary in interest and affection, secretly corrupting the ignorant or neg- ligent professors of religion."" Lord Baltimore per- ceived that loyal English subjects would continue to shun Maryland, if he continued to favor the Jesuits, and his poverty was so great, that unless he received a revenue from his Province, he must continue to depend
1 Wickliff in 1638 was entered as one of the servants of George Evelyn.
Rushworth, vol. IV.
·
101.
BALTIMORE OFFENDS JESUITS.
upon his father-in-law, Earl Arundel, for bread to sup- port his family. Determining to attract Protestant colonists, he offended the Jesuits. Without his con- sent, they had received a present of land from the converted Piscataway Chief, and he therefore sent over certain instructions, for the obtaining of land.
When Governor Calvert and Secretary Lewger sub- mitted these papers to the Jesuits, they objected.
A memorandum still preserved and supposed to be in the handwriting of John Lewger says :
" The Governor and I went to the good men about difficulties.
"1. About putting the statute of mortmain on all lands. Gov. Calvert construed it, so as that no man could have an additional grant, except he would accept the statute, for all his land.
" 2. One of the good men thought that publishing the conditions of Plantation would not incur excommuni- cation, but thought it might be a mortal sin, to propose an act or obligations against good manners or piety, or to assent to it.
"3. The oath in the instructions to -be tendered to such as were to take land, was decided to be against conscience, and to incur excommunication bullæ cancel to publish or administer any such oath."
1 The Pope's Bull " In cena Domini" was read every year on the day of the Lord's Supper or Maundy Thursday, and contained excom- munications and anathemas against heretics and all who disturbed or opposed the jurisdiction of the Holy See.
3
102
THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
The Governor and Lewger shrank from obeying Lord Baltimore, as they not did wish to be excommu- nicated from the Church of Rome. In September, 1642, two Jesuits in England desired to join the Mary- land Mission, but Baltimore said, that he " could not in prudence allow them to go, unless an agreement was first made." On the 5th of October Lord Baltimore's sister wrote : " I have been with my brother, but he is inexorable until all conditions be agreed upon between you."
A few days after, the Jesuits assented to the follow- ing positions of the Proprietary.
" Considering the dependence of the Government of Maryland on the state of England, unto which it must, as near as may be, be comformable, no ecclesi- astical person whatever inhabiting or being within the said Province ought to pretend or expect, nor is Lord Baltimore or any of his officers, although they be Roman Catholics, obliged in conscience to allow said ecclesiastics, in said Province, any more or other privileges, exemptions or immunities for their per- sons, lands or goods, than is allowed by his Majesty or his officers and magistrates to like persons in Eng- land."
" And any magistrates may proceed against the person, goods, etc., of such ecclesiastie for the doing of right and justice to another, or for maintaining his Proprietary prerogatives, and jurisdictions, just as against any other person, residing in said Province.
----
103
FATHER WHITE A PRISONER.
" These things to be done, without incurring the censure of bulla cance, or committing a sin for so doing.1
The Priests did not keep faith with Lord Baltimore, as we discover from the Jesuit Relation of this period. It says : " When our people declared it to be repuguant to the laws of the Church, two priests were sent from England, who might teach the contrary, but the re- verse of what was expected, happened ; for our reasons being heard, and the thing itself being more clearly understood, they easily fell in with our opinion."
The civil war in England growing out of resistance of the Parliament to the arbitrary demands of the King, induced strife in Maryland.
Under a letter of marque granted by Charles the First to Governor Calvert, he seized the ship of Capt. Richard Ingle of London in 1643. Ingle in retaliation obtained a commission from Parliament, and appeared with the ship Reformation, and attacked those who would not acknowledge the " Keepers of the liberties of England " as Parliament was styled.
During his stay Father Copley's house at Potopaco was attacked as well as the Jesuit plantation of St. Jingo. Fathers White and Fisher were taken pri- soners, and brought to London. White was tried and found guilty of teaching doctrines contrary to the laws of England, but on the 4th of July, 1646, judg-
1 Streeter's Early Maryland Papers.
VE
104
THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
ment was stayed. After remaining in Newgate pri- son for many months, in January 7, 1648, the House of Commons " did concur with the Lords in granting the petition of Andrew White, a Jesuit, who was brought out of America, into the kingdom, by force, upon an English ship," and he was ordered to be dis- charged provided he left the kingdom, within fifteen days.1 He never returned to America, but Father Fisher appears to have resumed labor in 1649, with one companion, probably Father Lawrence Starkey who came at this time to Maryland. A letter of Fisher is extant addressed to his Superior in which he writes under date of March 1, 1648-9:
" Although my companion and myself reached Vir- ginia on the 7th of January, after a tolerable journey of seven weeks, there I left my companion, and availed myself of the opportunity of proceeding to Maryland, where I arrived in the course of February."
During the uprising of the friends of Parliament under Ingle, Father Copley seems to have remained at St. Inigo. In a relation, appended to Father White's journal, there is narrated a very wonderful and indeli- cate story which proves that the Jesuit mission was not entirely broken up. It is in these words :
" It has been established by custom and usage of the Catholics who live in Maryland during the whole night of the 31st of July, following the festival of St. Ignatius,
1 House of Common's Journal.
-
-
-
105
A SOLDIER'S INDELICACY.
to honor with a salute of cannon, their tutelar guard- ian and patron saint.
" Wherefore in the year 1646, mindful of the solemn custom, the anniversary of the holy father being ended, they wished the night also consecrated to the honor of the same, by the continual discharge of artillery. At this time there were in the neighborhood certain sol- diers, unjust plunderers, Englishmen indeed by birth, of the heterodox faith, who, coming the year before with a fleet had invaded with arms almost the entire colony, had plundered, burnt, and finally having ab- ducted the priests and driven the Governor himself into exile, had reduced it to a miserable servitude. These had protection in a certain fortified citadel, built for their own defence, situated about five miles from the others; but now aroused by the nocturnal report of the cannon, the day after, that is, on the first of August, rush upon us with arms, break into the houses of the Catholics, and plunder whatever there is of arms or powder.
" After a while, when at length they had made an end of plundering, and had arranged their departure, one of them, a fellow of a beastly disposition and a scoffer both contemptible and blasphemous who dared to assail St. Ignatius himself with filthy scurrility and a more filthy act.
" " Away to the wicked cross with you, Papists,' says
14
106
THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
he ' who take delight in saluting your poor saint, by the firing of cannon, I have a cannon too, and I will give him a salute more suitable and appropriate to so miserable a saint.'
" This being said (let me not offend the delicacy of your ears) he resounded with a loud report, and de- parted, while his companions deride with their insolent laughter.
"Buthisimpious and wicked scurrility cost the wretch dear; for, scarcely had he proceeded two hundred paces from the place, when he felt a commotion of the bowels within, and that he was solicited to privacy ; and when he had gone about the same distance on his way, he had to withdraw privately again, com- plaining of an unusual pain of his bowels, the like of which he had never felt in his life before. The re- maining part of his journey ; to wit : four miles, was accomplished in a boat, in which space, the severe torture of his bowels and the looseness of his belly frequently compelled him to land. Having arrived at the Fort, scarcely in possession of his mind, through so great pain, he rolls himself at one time on the ground, at another casts himself on a bench, again on a bed, crying out all the time with a loud voice ' I am burning up! I am burning up ! There is a fire in my belly ! There is a fire in my bowels !'
"The officers, having pitied the deplorable fate of their comrade, carry him at length, placed in a boat
---
--- -
-
107
A WONDERFUL STORY.
to a certain Thomas Hebden a skilful surgeon,1 but the malady had proceeded further than could be cured or alleviated by his art. In the meantime you could hear nothing else coming from his lips, but that well known and mournful cry ' I am burning up! I am burning up ! Fire ! Fire !'
" The day after, which was the 2d of August, his in- tolerable suffering growing worse every hour, his bowels began to be voided, piecemeal. But on the - 3d of August, furious and raging, he passed larger portions of the intestines some of which were a foot, some a foot and a half, others two feet long. At length the fourth day drained the whole pump, so that it left nothing remaining but the abdomen empty and void. Still surviving, he saw the dawning of the fifth day, when the unhappy wretch ceased to see and live, an example to posterity of divine vengeance warning mankind.
"Discite justitiam, moniti et non contemnere divos.' Innumerable persons still living, saw the intestines of the dead man for many months hang upon the fence posts ; among whom was he who has added his testi- mony to these things, and with his hands handled the bowels, blackened, and as if crisped up, by this fire, of modern Judas."
1 Thomas Hebden was in the employ of George Evelyn of Evelyn- ton Manor at Piney Point in 1638, and a member of the Assembly. Streeter says he was a carpenter. In his will he requested Father Copley to pray for his soul.
£
RELIGIOUS CONDITION DURING THE AS- CENDENCY OF PARLIAMENT.
LORD Baltimore, finding that few colonists would go to Maryland from England, undeterred by the threat of excommunication, appealed to Massachusetts through Major Edward Gibbons, described in an old chronicle as the "younger brother of the house of an honorable extraction, "1 the owner of a windmill at St. Mary, a trader in the Potomac, and a prominent citizen of Boston. Gibbons once lost a vessel in the waters of Vir- ginia and Maryland, and perhaps the Jesuits' letter of 1642 alludes to him in these words: "Father White suffered no little inconvenience from a hard-hearted and troublesome captain of New England, whom he had engaged for the purpose of taking him and his. effects, from whom he was in fear a little while after, not without cause, that he would be either cast into the sea, or be carried with his property to New England, which is full of Puritan Calvinists, that is of all Calvin- ist heresy.
" Silently committing the thing to God, at length in
I Scottow.
- ---------.
109
INVITATION TO PURITANS.
safety reached Potomac, they vulgarly call it Patemeak, in which harbor, when they had cast anchor, the ship stuck so fast, bound by a great quantity of ice, that for the space of seventeen days, it could not be moved. Walking on the ice, as if on land, the Father departed for the town ; and when the ice was broken up, the ship driven and jammed by the force and violence of the ice, sunk, the cargo being in a great measure re- covered."
The year after the Jesuits refused to yield to the Proprietary, on the 13th of October, 1643, Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts makes the following entry in his Journal :
" The Lord Baltimore being owner of much land near Virginia, being himself a Papist and his brother Mr. Calvert, the Governor there a Papist also, but the colony consisting of both Protestant and Papist, he wrote a letter to Capt. Gibbons of Boston and sent him a commission wherein be made a tender of land in Maryland to any of ours that would transport them- selves thither with free liberty of religion, and all other privileges which the place affords, paying such annual rent as should be agreed upon, but our Captain had no mind to further his desire, nor had any of our people temptation that way."
By an unexpected Providence, settlers at last came from Virginia, and the fortunes of Lord Baltimore by their advent were greatly improved. The Puritans of
---
110
THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
Nansemond County, Virginia, in 1643 had secured the services of Rev. William Tompson a graduate of Ox- ford, John Knowles of Immanuel College, Cambridge, and Thomas James for their parishes. They were coldly received by Governor Berkeley, and his chaplain Thomas Harrison, because they were non-conformists. One month before the great massacre by the Indians, Berkeley secured the passage of an act forbidding any . to officiate in churches who did not use the Book of Common Prayer. In a little while, the three ministers retired, but soon the Governor of Virginia was sur- prised by his able chaplain, Harrison, becoming a non- conformist, leaving Jamestown, and preaching to the Puritans of Nansemond and Elizabeth River.1
In 1644, Roger Williams of Rhode Island visited England and published a treatise on religious toleration, of which, a Chaplain of the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote : " Witness the book printed, 1644, called The Bloody Tenet, which the author affirmeth he wrote in milk; and if he did so, he hath put much rats-bane into it, as namely : That it is the will and command of God that since the coming of his Son, the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turk- ish or Anti-Christian consciences, and worships, be granted to all men in all nations and countries ; that Civil States with their officers of justice, are not Go-
1 Calamy and Winthrop.
---
=
-
-----
111
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
vernors or defenders of the spiritual and Christian · state and worship."1
At the same period, it was urged by the friends of Roger Williams " that the Parliament will provide that particular and private congregations may have public protection ; that all statutes against the Separatists be reviewed and repealed; that the Press may be free for any man that writes nothing scandalous or danger- ous to the State; that this Parliament prove themselves loving fathers to all sorts of good men, bearing respect unto all, and so inviting an equal assistance and affec- tion from all."
On October 27th, 1645, the House of Commons or- dered : " That the inhabitants of the Summer Islands, and such others as shall join themselves to them, shall, without any molestation or trouble, have and enjoy the liberty of the conscience, in matters of God's wor- ship, as well in those parts of America, where they are now planted, as in all other parts of America where they may hereafter plant."2
The Rev. Patrick Copland,3 Governor Sayle and
1 Featley's Dipper dipped.
2 Journal of House of Commons.
3 Patrick Copland was an earnest and useful clergyman of whom too little has been krown. In 1614 he was Chaplain of one of the ships of the East India Company. In 1616 returned to England ac- companied by a talented native youth whom he had taught chiefly by signs, " to speak, to read, and write the English tongue, both Roman and Secretary, within less than the space of a year.". At his sugges- tion the lad was publicly baptized on Dec. 22, 1616, in St. Dennis church, London, " as the first fruits of India."
1
112
THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
others for conscience sake left the Somers Islands, and settled at Eleuthera, a small isle of the Bahamas group, adjoining Guanahani or Cat Island, the first land of the West, seen by Columbus. Sayle visited the Puritans of Virginia, and invited them to go to the Patmos, which their fellow religionists had selected, but they declined.
The Rev. Thomas Harrison, in a letter dated No- vember 2, 1646, and sent to Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, by Capt. Edward Gibbons, afterwards appointed Admiral of Maryland, writes : " Had your proposition found us risen up, in a posture of removal, there is weight and force enough [in yours] to have staked us down again."
Not long after, in 1617, Copland with bis pupil, sailed for the Indian Ocean in the Royal James, one of the fleet which Sir Thomas Dale, late Governor of Virginia, assumed the command of on Sept. 19, 1618. In the presence of Dale, in view of an impending naval conflict with the Dutch on the 2d of December, Copland preached on the Royal James. On the 9th of August, 1619, Dale died, and his old associate Sir Thomas Gates died in the same service the next year.
On the 26th of April, 1620, Copland in the Royal James went to Japan.
Leaving Java in February, 1621, the ship slowly returned to England, and having become interested in Virginia by conversing with Dale and Gates, on the homeward voyage he collected from fellow passengers, £70, for a church or school in Virginia. .
Arriving in the Thames about the middle of September, the next month John Ferrar, Deputy Governor of Virginia Company, announced the collection, to the members. The next year Copland preached be- fore the Company, and the sermon was published with the following title :
Virginia's God be thanked | or | a Sermon of | Thanksgiving | for
1
-
113
VIRGINIA PURITANS.
The steady persistence of Harrison, and the increase of his congregations, irritated Governor Berkeley, and
the happie | Successe of the affayres in | Virginia this last | yeare | preached by Patrick Copland at | Bow-Church, in Cheapside, before the Honorable | Virginia Company, on Thursday, the 18 | of Aprill 1622. And now published by | the Commandement of the suid hono | ra- ble Company. | Hereunto are adjoyned some Epistles, | written first in Latine (and now Englished) in the East Indies by Peter Pope, an Indian youth, | borne in the Bay of Bengale, who was first taught | and converted by the said P. C. And after bap- | tized by Master John Wood, Dr. in Divinitie | in a famous Assembly, before the Right | Worshipfull, the East India Company, | at S. Denis in Fan-Church Streete | in London, December 22, | 1616 | London | Printed by J. D. for William Sheffard and John Bellamie, and are to be sold at his shop, at the two Grey- / hounds in Corne-hill, neere the Royall | Exchange 1622.|
In this sermon is an allusion to the motto of the Seal of the Virginia Company, which was the motto of the Colony until the Revolution of 1776. He speaks of " This noble Plantation tending so highly to the advancement of the Gospel, and to the honoring of our dread Sove- reign, by inlarging of his kingdoms, and adding a fifth crown unto his other four ; for ' En dat Virginia quintam,' is the motto of the legal seal of Virginia."
On October 20, 1619, the Company appointed a Committee to meet at Sir Edwin Sandys', " to take a cote for Virginia, and agree upon the Seale." On the 15th of the next month the device was presented for inspection. When the seal was presented to King James, he looked at the reverse with the figure of St. George slaying the Dragon, with the motto, " Fas alium supe- rare draconem," referring to the heathenism of the In- dians, and ordered that the motto should not be used.
The face of the legal seal was an escutcheon, quart- ered with the arms of Eng- land, France, Scotland, and Ireland ; crested with a maiden Queen, with flowing hair and eastern crown ; sup- porters, two men in armor.
M
15
-1
T
114
THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
in the face of the action of Parliament, he influenced the Assembly of Virginia, on the 3d of November, 1647, to enact the following :
" Upon divers informations presented to this Assem-
Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh's friend, dedicated his Fairy Queen to Elizabeth " Queen of England, France, Ireland, and Virginia." After James of Scotland became King of England, Virginia could be called, in compliment, the fifth kingdom.
In the " Mask of Flowers," played by the Gentlemen of Gray's Inn upon 12th night, 1613-14 in honor of the nuptials of Somerset, Kawasha, a God of the Virginians appears, and in the play occurs the following :
"But now is Britannie fit to be A seat for a fifth Monarchie.
Copland was elected Rector of the College-at Henrico, but the mas. sacre by the Indians in the spring of 1622 thwarted his design of re- siding in Virginia.
John Ferrar's brother Nicholas, who became a clergyman, sympa- thized with Copland in the desire to educate the Indian children of North America, and aided in establishing a school at the Somers Islands. When he became a non-conformist is unknown.
In December, 1638, the celebrated divine Hugh Peters, then of Salem, Mass., writes a letter " To my worthy and reverend Brother, Mr. Copeland, Minister of the Gospel in Bermudas." -
While residing in Pagets' tribe, Copland gave a tract of land for a free school. In a letter from this settlement, dated 4th of December, 1639, and addressed to Governor Winthrop of Boston, he thanks him for twelve New England Indians sent to be educated, but were left at Providence island. He adds: " If they had safely arrived here, I would have had a care of them to have disposed of them to such hon- est men, as should have trained them up in the principles of religion, and so when they had been fit for your plantation, have returned them again to have done God some service, in being instruments to do some good for their country."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.