USA > Maryland > The founders of Maryland as portrayed in manuscripts, provinical records and early documents > Part 7
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He then tells Winthrop how the Dutch at Amboyna, East Indies, copied the Jesuit method of training and educated their own children and the native youth in the same school, each acquiring the other's language. He continues : "Being at Naugasack, a famous city of Japan, ¿ saw with my own eyes, monuments of many fair churches
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ACT OF UNIFORMITY.
bly against several ministers for their neglect and re- fractory refusing, after warning given to them, to read Common Prayer in Divine service upon the Sabbath days, contrary to the canons of the Church, and the Acts of Parliament therein established : for future remedy hereof,
" Be it enacted, by Governor, Council and Burgesses - of this Grand Assembly, That all ministers in their
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and a University which sometimes they had there, but by their prag- matic intermeddling with State matters was banished from Japan." He then stated that he had " a Papist catechism in my study, imprinted at Naugasack, with the Italian letters, in Japan tongue."
The letter concludes by recommending for education George Stirke, the son of a lately deceased scholar, poet, and minister of the Islands. Young Stirke entered Cambridge, graduated in 1641, and became a man of science.
Although the House of Commons in 1645, had ordered liberty of conscience and worship in the Plantations, the Independents of Somers Island and Virginia were oppressed by those in power.
In behalf of the Congregationalists of the former place, Captain Sayle explored and selected one of the isles of the Bahamas, for the use of all who desire entire freedom of worship. He then went to Vir- ginia and extended an invitation to Rev. Mr. Harrison's congregation to cast in their lot with them. In November, 1646, he and the Rev. Mr. Golding came to Boston and from thence sailed to England, where they obtained a patent from Parliament, for the settling of Eleutliera, with provision for entire liberty of conscience. Upon Sayle's return, about seventy persons left Somers Island for Eleuthera, among whom was the venerable Patrick Copland nearly eighty years of age. The isle proved a dream place, and they suffered for food. The Boston churches hearing of their destitution in 1650 or 1651, sent to them a ship filled with supplies, which arrived on Sunday, just as their faithful pastor had finished an exposition of the 23d Psalm.
Authorities consulted in preparing of the above sketch : Calendar of East India Co. Papers; Virginia Co. MSS .; Hubbard, Winslow, Johnson, Winthrop, Nichols Progresses of King James.
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THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
several cures throughout the Colony do duly, upon every Sabbath day, read such prayers as are appointed and prescribed unto them, by the said Book of Common Prayer.
" And be it further enacted, as a further penalty to such as have. neglected, or shall neglect their duty herein, that no parishioners shall be compelled, either by distress or otherwise, to pay any manner of tithes or duties, to any non-conformist aforesaid."
The next year Berkeley ordered Harrison, and Elder William Durand to leave Virginia.1 Harrison went
1 William Durand of Upper Norfolk in Virginia had listened to the preaching of Rev. John Davenport, first minister of New Haven, Ct., when he was Vicar of St. Stephens, Coleman street, London.
There came with him to Maryland in 1648, his wife, his daughter Elizabeth, and four other children. Two freemen, William Pell and - Archer, and servants Thomas Marsh, Margaret Marsh, William Warren, William Hogg, and Ann Coles. The Commissioners who in 1652, made a treaty with the Susquehannas, at the Severn River were Richard Bennett, Edward Lloyd, William Fuller, Leonard Strong and Thomas Marsh.
In October 1651, Durand obtained a grant of land at the Cliffs of the Chespeake in Calvert County, near the possessions of Leonard Strong and William Fuller. In 1654, he was made Secretary of the Province. When the Quakers arrived he was kind to them, and one of the Society of Friends in 1658, writes " William Fuller abides unmoved : I know not but that William Durand doth the like."
Rev. Thomas Harrison received the degree of D.D., after he went to England. On October11th, 1649, the Council of State wrote to Gov- ernor Berkeley that they were informed, by petition of the congrega- tion of Nansemond, that their minister Mr. Harrison, an able man, of unblamable conversation had been banished the Colony because he would not conform to the use of the Common Prayer Book, and as . he could not be ignorant, that the use of it was prohibited by Parlia- ment, he was directed to allow Mr. Harrison to return to his ministry."
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PURITANS IN MARYLAND.
to Boston, consulted with friends, and as a result sailed for England, to complain of Berkeley's tyranny, and Durand began to negotiate for a settlement in Mary- land.
Upon the express assurance, that there would be a modification of the oaths of office and fidelity, an en- joyment of liberty of conscience, and the privilege of choice in officers, the Virginia non-conformists agreed to remove to the banks of the Severn.'
Harrison Dever went back but became Chaplain of Cromwell's son Henry, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was in Dublin at the time of Oliver Cromwell's death, and pre ched a funeral sermon from Lamentations 5 ch. 16 v. " The crown is fallen from our head ; wo unto us that we have sinned." It was published with the following title : " Threni Hybernici : or Ireland sympathizing with England and Scotland, in a sad lamentation for the loss of their Josiah. Repre- sented in a sermon at Christ Church in Dublin, before his Excellency the Lord Deputy, with divers of the Nobility, Gentry, and Commonality there assembled to celebrate a funeral solemnity, upon the death of the Lord Protector ; by Dr. Harrison, Chief Chaplain to his said Ex- cellency."
Upon the accession of Charles the Second, unable to accept the terms of conformity, he retired to Chester, England. An officer on the 3d of July, 1665, reports : " A conventicle of one hundred persons was appointed at the house of Dr. Thomas Harrison, late Chaplain of Harry Cromwell, broke open the house, found some under the beds, others in the closets, and thirty were taken before the Mayor."
Just before he left America, he married Dorothy, daughter of Samuel Symonds formerly of Veldham, Essex, who came to Ipswich, Mass., in 1637 and died in 1678, having been for several years Deputy Governor, and respected for his great worth. Mrs. Lucy Downing, sister of Gov. Winthrop, of Mass., in a letter to her nephew, Jolin Winthrop of Ct., writes under date of Dec. 17, 1648. " You hear, I believe, our cousin Dorothy Simonds, is now won and wedded to Mr. Harrison, the Virginia minister."
1 Hammond.
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THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
William Stone of Hungar's Neck, Eastern Shore of Virginia, a nephew of Thomas Stone, haberdasher of London, and brother-in-law of Francis Doughty,1 a non-conformist minister, was on the 6th of August, 1648, commissioned Governor, in the place of Thomas Green.
In accordance with stipulations with the Puritans, in his commission, is found for the first time, the pledge, not to disturb any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ merely for, or in respect of his or her religion, or the free exercise thereof.2
1 In Governor Stone's will Francis Doughty is called his brother-in- law. Donghty was the son of a Bristol alderman and probably the same person who when Vicar of Sodbury, Gloucester, had been arraigned before the High Commissioner, for contempt of his Sacred Majesty, having spoken of him, in prayer, as " Charles by common election, and general consent, King of England."
In 1639, he came to Massachusetts, and from thence went to Long Island, and while there used to preach to the English-speaking mem- bers of the Reformed Church in Manhattan, now New York City. His daughter Mary, there married Adrian Vander Donk, a Leyden graduate and distinguished lawyer. After his decease, she became the wife of Hugh O'Neal of Patuxent, Maryland, and her father appears to have resided in the same vicinity. Herrman, one of the New Netherlands Commissioners, says that while he was dining with Philip Calvert, on Sunday, the 12th of October, 1659, " Mr. Doughty, the minister accidentally called."
2 Streeter who made a thorough investigation says : " Mr. Chalmers was in error, when he asserted, that in the oath taken by the Governor and Council between the years 1637 and 1657, there was a clause bind. ing them not to molest any one, on account of his religion, who pro- fessed to believe in Jesus Christ. The oath of 1699 is the first on record administered to the Governor and Council ; and it most carefully avoids all allusion to religion. The same form was certainly in use, as late as April, 1643, when James Neal took the oath of Councillor,
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PLOWDEN ON TOLERATION.
Plowden, who had lived in Virginia, at the time of the controversy, between Berkeley and the non-con- formists, in the description of Nova Albion, pub- lished in London, 1648, advocated the principle, insisted upon by the Puritans, as a condition of residence in Maryland. He writes of religion in these words: " I conceive the Holland way, now practiced, best to ' content all parties. By Act of Parliament or General Assembly to settle and establish all the fundamentals necessary to salvation, as the three creeds, the com- mandments, preaching on the Lord's Day, and great days, and catechism in the afternoon, the sacraments of the altar and baptism
"But no persecution to any dissenting, and to all such, as to the Walloons, free chapels, and to punish all as seditious and for contempt, as bitter, rail, and condemn others of the contrary ; for this argument or persuasion, all religious ceremonies r church discipline should be acted in mildness, love, and charity, and gentle lan- guage, not to disturb the peace or quietness of the in- habitants."
as is distinctly stated, according to the form described in the act of Assembly of March, 1639.
If Chalmers meant by the expression " between 1637," for 1637, as many have contended, he was clearly mistaken ; if he intended to leave the date unfixed, he has given himself large scope, and afforded ground for fais inferences.
The prohibition in regard to molesting believers in Christ cannot be found in any commission before that to Governor Stone in August, 1648. Streeter's Early Papers ; M'd Hist. Soc. Publication, 1876, pp. 243,244.
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THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
The legislature of 1649 embodied the agreement, and the principie recognized in Stone's commission, in the " Act concerning Religion."
Hammond, a friend of Lord Baltimore, but hostile to the non-conformists, asserts, that the inhabitants were composed of conformists, non-conformists, and a " few Papists."
In a pamphlet published at London, in 1656, he writes : " And there was in Virginia, a certain people congregated into a church, calling themselves Inde- pendents, which daily increasing, several consultations were held by the State of that Colony, how to suppress them, which was duly put in execution, as first, the pastor was banished, next other teachers, then many by informations clapt up in prsion, then generally dis- armed, which was very harsh. *
" Maryland was counted by them as a refuge, the Lord Proprietor and his Governor solicited, and several addresses made for their admittance and entertainment into that Province." These conditions were presented ; "that they should have convenient portion of land assigned, the liberty of conscience, and privilege to choose their own officers." He continues, " An Assembly was called throughout the whole country, after their coming over, consisting as well of them- selves, as the rest, and because there were some few Papists that first inhabited, these themselves, and others, being of different judgments, an Act was passed
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ACT CONCERNING RELIGION.
that all professing in Jesus Christ should have equal justice."1 Hammond further states, that at the request of the Virginia Puritans, " the oath of fidelity was overhauled, and this clause added to it, 'provided it infringe not the liberty of conscience.' "
The Act was not approved by Lord Baltimore for many months. In the Record Book, the following note is appended, signed Philip Calvert. " An Act of As- sembly, 21st April, 1649, confirmed by the Lord Pro- prietary by an instrument under his hand and seal dated Aug. 26, 1650.''2
Lord Baltimore's defence before Parliament, speaks of this law originating in Maryland. He writes in one place : " Although those laws were assented unto by the Lord Baltimore in August, 1650, yet it appears, that some of them were enacted in Maryland, by the As- sembly there, in April 1649." In another place, speak- ing of a law of 1650, is the following statement :
" It was one of those laws passed by the Assembly in Maryland, in April 1650, when the people there knew of the late King's death, a year after, the other law above mentioned, with divers others, which were enacted in April, 1649,3 as aforesaid, though in the in-
Leah and Rachel. London, 1656.
2 Annapolis Manuscripts.
3 Blome in his Britannia published in 1673, at London, and to which book Cecil, Lord Baltimore was a subscriber, asserts that " His Lord- ship, by advice of the General Assembly of the province, hath long since established a model of good and wholesome laws, with toleration of religion, to all sorts, that profess faith in Christ."
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THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
grossment of them all here, when the Lord Baltimore gave his assent to them altogether, in August 1650, it was written before it, because they were transposed here, in such order, as the Lord Baltimore thought fit, according to the nature, and more or less import- ance of them, placing the Act concerning Religion first."1
. This Act was contrary to the teachings of the Church of Rome, since it was the recognition of Christians who rejected the Pope, and when the Assembly of 1650 met, there was an expression of dissatisfaction.
The burgesses of the Assembly were as follows.
John Hatch, St. George's Hundred.
Walter Beane, 66 .. .
John Medley,
Newtown .
66
William Brough, 66 .. .
Robert Robins, .
Francis Posey,
St. Clement's .. .
Philip Land, St. Mary's . "
Francis Brooks, 66 ..
Thomas Mathews,
St. Inigo's
Thomas Sterman, St. Michael's 66
George Manners,
66
James Cox, Anne Arundel
George Puddington,
When the delegates came to be sworn, all the Roman Catholics, four in number, objected to the principles of the Act concerning Religion, passed by the last
1 The Lord Baltimore's Case. London, 1053.
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WILKINSON THE CLERGYMAN.
Assembly. Medley, Manners, and Land thought it was not right to have a perpetual law upon the sub- ject, but Thomas Mathews, who came from the precinct in which the home of the Jesuits was situated, told the Assembly, that he could not take the oath of toleration, " as he wished to be guided, in matters of conscience, by spiritual counsel."1
He was then censured and expelled, and Cuthbert Fenwick was returned in his place.
It was not, until after the Act concerning Religion, was passed, that any Protestant clergyman per- manently settled in the Province.
About the year 1650, there arrived William Wilkin- son, Cl'k, about fifty years of age, with his wife, daughters Mary, Rebecca, Elizabeth, step-daughter Margaret, and servants Robert Cornish, and Ann Stevens. Like Father Thomas Copley, he engaged in trade, to assist in his support.2
1 Annapolis Manuscripts.
2 Early in 1654 Stringer, a carpenter, died at Wilkinson's house, and left chests, locked up in the store. In rendering the account of this man's estate, the Minister presents a curious mingling of charges, in tobacco weight.
For the use of his boat and a boy. lbs. 50
" boarding at his house 7 or 8 days and 2 men. 400
" funeral sermon. 100
dinner. 300
a plank for his coffin. 60
In his will made May 20, 1663, his daughter Rebecca is spoken of as the wife of William Hatton, and Eliza as the wife of Thomas Dent.
Dent was among the first settlers in the District of Columbia.
In 1662 he entered a tract of land called Gisborough, on the east side of Anacostan River, in a branch called Eastern Branch. The name
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THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
In 1652 Captain William Mitchell, one of the worst men in the Province, was appointed a member of the Council, by Lord Baltimore. He was suspected of poisoning his wife on a voyage to America. Ann, daughter of Elizabeth Bolton, of St. Martins in the Fields, Middlesex, was hired as a servant, to act as governess, whom he harshly used, and then sold to Francis Brooke, for a wife.
At a Court, held on 22d of June, 1652, at Saint Mary's, Thomas Cole, aged thirty-two years, deposed : " That before coming out of England he was at Mr. Edmond Plowden's chamber. He asked me with whom I lived ? I replied Capt. Mitchell. He persuad- ing me not to go with him to Virginia, asked me ' Of what religion he was, and whether I ever saw him go to church ?' I made auswer ' I never saw him go to church.' He replied, 'that Captain Mitchell being among a company of gentlemen, he wondered, that the world had been, so many hundred years, deluded with a man and a pigeon.""'
Mr. Plowden then told Cole, that by the dove, was meant "the IIoly Ghost," and by the man, "our Saviour, Christ."
The Province of Maryland, in 1652, by commission-
is still retained, and the U. S. Government Asylum for the Insane is on or near the tract.
The place was probably called from Gisborough a town on the fiats of the river Tees in North Yorkshire, where a Dent family lived.
In 1672 Rev. Mr. Nicholet of Salem, Mass., who had lived in Mary- land, spoke of five Protestants whom he often met, Mr. Dent, Mr. Hatton, Mr. Hill, Mr. Hanson, and Mr. Thoroughgood.
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CONFLICT WITH PROPRIETARY.
ers from Parliament, was reduced and settled with the authority of the Commonwealth of England, and Go- vernor Stone was continued in office, having promised to issue all writs and other processes in the name of " the keepers of the liberty of England."
The next year, under directions from Lord Balti- more, Stone violated the compact, and began to issue writs in the Lord Proprietary's name, to admit to the Counc' only those appointed by Lord Baltimore, and require the inhabitants to take an oath of fidelity, which if refused by any colonist, after three months his lands were to be confiscated for the use of the Pro- prietary.
At the request of Richard Preston, and over one hundred other planters, the Parliament Commissioners visited Maryland, and on the 20th of July, 1654, Stone " laid down his power as Governor of this pro- vince under his Lordship, and did promise for the future to submit to such government as shall be selected by the Commissioners, in the name and under the authority of His Highness, the Lord Protector."
In 1653 Lord Baltimore printed the statement of his reasons, as presented to Parliament, why his charter should not be abrogated. The last is as follows: "If the Lord Baltimore should by this Commonwealth, be prejudiced in any of the rights or privileges of his patent of that Province; it would be a great discour- agement, to others in foreign plantations, upon any exigency to adhere to the interest of this Common-
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THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
wealth; because it is notoriously known, that by his express direction, his officers and the people there did adhere to the interest of this Commonwealth, when all other English plantations, except New England, declared against the Parliament, and at that time re- ceived their friends, in time of distress, for which, he was like, divers times, to be deprived of his interest there, by the colony of Virginia, and others, who had commissions from the late King's eldest son, for that purpose, as appears by a commission, granted by him to Sir Wm. Davenant."1
In this pamphlet he also states that his opponents in Maryland were " obscure and factious fellows."
1 Sir Wm. Davenant K't was Shakspeare's godson, and like his godfather was given to poetry. On the 16th day of February, 1649-50, Charles issued a commission from his exile in Jersey, the opening para- graphs of which were as follows :
" Whereas the Lord Baltimore, Proprietary of the Province and plantations in Maryland, in America doth visibly adhere to the rebels of England, and admit all kinds of schismaties and sectaries, and other ill affected persons, with the said plantations of Maryland, so that we have cause to apprehend very great prejudice to our service thereby, and very great danger to our plantations in Virginia, who have car- ried themselves, with so much loyalty and fidelity to the King, our Father of blessed memory, and to us, Know ye, therefore, that we reposing special trust and confidence in the courage, conduct, loyalty, and good affection of Sir Wm. Davenant, and for prevention of the danger and inconveniences above mentioned, do by these presents, nominate, constitute, and appoint you, our Lieutenant Governor of the said province or plantations of Maryland."
With the aid of Queen Henrietta Maria, Davenant sailed from a port in Normandy, with a company of weavers and mechanics, but on the voyage, was captured, and brought to England. Lodged in the Tower, he there finished his poem of Gondibert, and at length was released " from durance vile," by the intercession of the great Puritan poet, John Milton.
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FATHERS COPLEY AND STARKEY.
A review of this publication was in 1655, printed in London, which thus answers this allusion.
" The Lord Baltimore pretends, in print, his enter- tainment in Maryland, of the Parliament friends thrust out of Virginia; but those very men whom he so styles, coming thither, being promised by Captain Stone, he would decline urging the oath upon them, complain of it, to the Parliament, are in answer there unto vilified by Lord Baltimore, and publicly taxed for obscure and factious fellows ; and in his later letters, termed the basest of men, and unworthy of the least favor or forbearance.
" Such advantages doth he make on all sides, at such a distance, and in such uncomposed times, that he confidently takes the liberty, to aver such extreme and contrary things, which amaze other men, that see them. The place as himself confessed, had been de- serted, if not peopled from Virginia."
In 1652, Father Thomas Copley died, and Father Lawrence Starkey assumed the duties he performed. Starkey was born in Lancashire in 1606, and at the age of thirty joined the order of Jesuits. He came to Maryland in 1649, and died in February, 1657, and Ralph Crouch appears to have been his successor. Sur- geon Henry Hooper, who died about the year 1650, left a legacy to Ralph Crouch for such " pious uses as he thinks fit."
A complaint was made to the Provincial Court in the spring of 1654, that Luke Gardiner who had been
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THE FOUNDERS OF MARYLAND.
in the service of Father Copley did in " an uncivil, re- fractory, and insolent manner, detain at his house Eleanor Hatton, sister-in-law of Lt. Richard Banks, and niece of his Lordship's Secretary Thomas Hatton endeavoring as was " probably reported to train her up in the Roman Catholic religion, contrary to the mind and will of her mother and uncle."
Lt. Richard Banks was authorized to go and take her from the custody of Gardiner.
This year Father Francis Fitzherbert, without any companion, sailed for Maryland. The vessel, in which he was a passenger, was exposed to a series of gales. The Jesuit Relation for that year says : "The tempest lasted, in all, two months, whence, the opin- ion arose, that it was not on account of the violence of the ship, or atmosphere, but was occasioned by the malevolence of witches. Forthwith they seize a little old woman suspected of sorcery, guilty or not guilty, they slay her, suspected of this and after examining her with the strictest scrutiny, very heinous sin." The tragedy is more fully alluded to in the Provincial Records. Mr. Henry Corbyn, a young merchant from London,1 described the circumstance
1 Henry Corbyn or Corbin was twenty-five years of age in 1654, and was the founder of the Virginia family of that name. He lived between the Rappahannock and Potomac. In 1657 was the register of the vestry of the Parish. The immigrants Washington came about the same time.
His son Gawin was President of the Council of Virginia and had four daughters, and three sons, one of whom, Richard, in 1754 used his influence to procure young Washington a commission, which he en- closed with the following note :
" Dear George: I inclose you a commission. God prosper you with it. Your friend, Richard Corbin."
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to the Governor and Council of Maryland. He was a passenger on the ship Charity, John Bosworth, Master. Two or three weeks before they reached the Chesapeake, it was rumored among the sailors, that Mary Lee, one of the passengers, was a witch, and they asked the Captain to have a trial, but he at first refused. The ship daily became more leaky, and the Captain con- sulted with Corbyn and Robert Chipsham also a mer- chant, and to allay the fears of the seamen it was decided to allow an examination.
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