USA > Maryland > The history of Maryland : from its first settlement, in 1633, to the restoration, in 1660 ; with a copious introduction, and notes and illustrations > Part 81
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Lord Bal- timore's directions for reme- dying the loss of the records.
It has been before stated, that most of the record books of the province, including such as contained the enrollment of patents of lands, had been, about the year 1644, during the time of In- gle and Clayborne's rebellion, either lost or embezzled, and some inconvenience and injury, both to the proprietary and the paten- tees, it was apprehended, might thereby arise from such loss; to the lord proprietary in the ascertainment of his rents, and to the patentees in the investigation and proof of their titles to their land, and consequent encouragement of law suits. To prevent these inconveniences and injuries, his lordship also, in the letter just referred to, gave directions to his lieutenant-the governor, to issue out a proclamation, requiring all persons, within a certain time therein to be prescribed, to produce to the
* See ante, p. 69,
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Surveyor general of the province, all such patents from his lord- CHAP. V. ship, by which they respectively claim any land within the pro- 1651. vince, and that thereupon a true list thereof be delivered unto the governor ; and he further instructed the governor to require the secretary of the province to furnish him (the governor) with a list of all such patents of land heretofore granted as were then remaining upon record; whereby, upon comparing the said lists together, the governor might see, what patents were not remain- ing upon record; and then to require all such persons as claim any land within the province by virtue of any such patents, not now remaining upon record within the province, to cause them to be enrolled in the secretary's office there,* within some conve- nient time to be limited in the said proclamation for that purpose. Whether such proclamation ever issued, we are not enabled to determine, as no such now appears on record. It must be al- lowed, that this proposition of his lordship appears to us at this day to have been a very prudent, just, and proper measure, and ought not to have been prevented or opposed even by those who wished to deprive the lord proprietary of all his rights within the province. It is true, that, although a small portion of the lands within the province had at this period of time been taken up, (settlements being as yet formed only within St. Mary's county, the isle of Kent,t and recently at Providence, otherwise called Ann Arundel, on the Severn,) and a lapse of more than a century and a half to the present day must have in some mea- sure remedied all defects of titles to lands taken up prior to 1651; yet to those, who still own lands within the limits of those early settlements within the province, it would still be a desira- ble circumstance to be enabled to trace their titles to their lands with more clearness and less doubt. This measure of his lord- ship, therefore, in every point of view, was to be applauded.}
* The secretary of the province was, at this time, clerk of the land office in the province.
t Some information, relative to the population of the isle of Kent at this pe- riod of time, (1651,) is to be derived from the anonymous pamphlet before cited, published in 1648, (an extract from which is published in Proud's Hist. of Pennsylvania, vol. 1, p. 116,) wherein the writer makes the following statement : " I hold Kent isle, having lately but twenty men in it, and the mill and fort pulled down, and in war with all the Indians near it, is not worth the keeping." The word "lately," we must suppose, referred to about the year 1647; between which time and 1651, the population could not have much increased ;- say, to thirty men ; which would not allow a computation of above twenty families on the island in 1651.
# Mr. Killy, who was clerk of the land office in 1808, when he published his book, "The Landholder's Assistant," states therein, (p. 109,) that, "although
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CHAP. V.
1651. And for civilizing the In- dians.
Another circumstance, favourable to the character of lord Cecilius, is to be derived from this message of his just cited. It has been the ambition of philanthropists, even those of the pre- sent United States of America, to make every attempt, which could plausibly promise success, towards civilizing the Indian natives of our country. The propagation of the christian re- ligion among them has been repeatedly attempted as the prima- ry step towards the accomplishment of so desirable a purpose. But reiterated experiments have demonstrated, that this mode of civilization is only an idle waste of time and money. They re- ject the system with disdain, as being not only incomprehensi- ble but irrational to their uneducated minds. Indeed, the reason of the thing itself, we might suppose, would at once convince every civilized white man, that a system of religion, like that of christianity, founded entirely on abstract ideas of the purest metaphysical nature, and built up by the most refined and subtle distinctions, could by any possible process of reasoning be made intelligible to any human being, who was accustomed to derive all his ideas from the senses merely. And further, were the sav- age capable of exercising the mode of acquiring ideas,-de- nominated reflection, yet it would be a vain expectation to be cherished, that he would thereby be enabled to understand the refined distinction between matter and spirit. His ideas of a God must be, therefore, purely material and idolatrous. Besides, there are certain tenets in the christian religion, which these un- tutored children of the forest, in the speeches of some of the most intelligent of them, have frequently attacked with some de- gree of perplexity to the missionaries and propagandists. The doctrine of eternal punishment for a temporary crime ;- of the necessity of a mediator to obtain forgiveness from an omniscient Supreme Being of infinite justice and goodness ;- that such mediator must be the son of God, which presents to them a
the books transferred in 1680 to the land office, then newly erected, are not all found or accounted for, yet he had seen no chasms in the present records," (of 1808,) "sufficient to convince him, that losses of records essentially injurious to titles of property in Maryland have occurred."-If the measure, above pre- scribed by his lordship, was really carried into execution, it may have been one cause, why no such loss, as Mr. Kilty observes, now appears, particularly as to grants or patents of lands. The "abstract of a book of record now wanting in the land office," mentioned in the deposition of Mr. Beddoe, clerk of the land office in the year 1736, (as stated in the report of the case of the Proprietary vs. Jennings, 1 Harris and M'Henry's Reports, p. 135,) may possibly have been in part the result of the above proceeding prescribed by his lordship.
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gross carnal idea ;- and that, let them lead ever such moral lives, CHAP. V. unless they previously receive a certain indescribable sensation, 1651. called the grace of God, they can never be saved or enter into the joys of heaven. These opinions appear to their uninstruct- ed minds fraught with absurdity. The lord proprietary of Ma- ryland has the credit, on the present occasion, of deviating in some degree from this hacknied mode of commencing civiliza- tion with them. The white population of that part of Maryland comprehended in St. Mary's and in part of Charles counties had now increased to that degree as to expel most of the aborigines thereof from their former scites of habitation. These rightful owners of the soil were driven out, and had to fix their homes in the more interior parts of the province. They consisted of the following tribes :- the Mattapanians, the Wicomocons, the Patuxents, the Lamasconsons, the Highahwixons, and the Chapticons : most of whose names point out their former resi- dence, to those who are acquainted with the rivers and places of note, some of which are still known under those denominations, within those two counties .* Lord Baltimore being informed of their distress, and of their willingness to form a settlement by themselves under his protection and government, and "esteem- ing himself bound," as he expresses it, "in honour and con- science to allow them, "according to their desire, some place of habitation there, by a title derived from him," sent directions, in his letter or message before cited, to his lieutenant governor to cause a grant to be made under his great seal to the said In- dians "of a certain tract of land in the head of Wicomoco river called Chaptico," containing about eight or ten thousand acres.t He further directed, that the land, so granted, should be erected into a manor, to be called by the name of Calverton manor ; and that a thousand acres thereof should be set apart as the demesnes thereof, to be reserved for his lordship's own use, as were usual in his grants of other manors. He also thereby appointed his surveyor general-Mr. Robert Clark, to be his steward of the said manor; and in his name to keep court baron and court leet, as occasion should require, in and for the said manor ; and on his
*The Wicomoco river dividing St. Mary's and Charles counties, and the Pick- awaxen and Chaptico creeks, seem to point out the scites of the residence of some of the above mentioned tribes.
t As the tract of country about the upper parts of Wicomoco river in Charles county appears to abound in swamps and marshes, it is probable, that the In- dians themselves selected this situation for their grant, as affording them a great- er quantity of game for their support.
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CHAP. V. behalf to grant, by copy or copies of court roll, copyhold estates, 1651. for one, two, or three lives, of any part of the said manor, ex- cept the demesnes thereof, to any Indian or Indians, that should desire the same, and as he the said steward, with the approbation of the governor, should think fit; provided, that no one copy- nold exceed fifty acres, unless it be to the Werowance or chief head of every of the said six nations respectively; and not to any of them above two hundred acres a piece ; and that upon every copy so to be granted there be reserved a rent of one shil- ling sterling, or the value thereof, to be paid yearly to lord Balti- more and his heirs for every fifty acres of land respectively to be granted as aforesaid, and so proportionally for a lesser or a greater quantity of land.
Whatever objections may present themselves in the mind of the reader to any of the subordinate parts of this scheme, parti- cularly as imposing on these wild children of liberty amid their native forests the apparently slavish tenures of the feudal system, yet common candour will induce every philosophic philanthropist to acknowledge, that it is by some such political institution, ex- trinsic of religious creeds and catechisms, that these human be- ings, now in a state of society next to that of nature, can be re- claimed from the barbarism and ignorance incident to their sa- vage and hunter state. The appointment of lands among them, herein directed by his lordship, was meant, without doubt, to entice them to agricultural employments; which, in all ages and countries, have been obviously the groundwork of civiliza- tion. Whether the scheme succeeded or not, (for, these Indian copyholders of Calverton manor do not now exist,) detracts no- thing from his lordship's benevolent intentions. It must now appear to the eye of every candid reader at this day as a plan of improvement both plausible and practicable; which must have been defeated merely through the influence of those moral and natural causes, principally arising perhaps from their difference of colour, and consequent repugnance to an amalgamation with the whites, which induce savages to shun the practices of civil- ization and gradually to retire, in a decreasing state, to their beloved haunts and occupations amid the wilderness of the country.
The alteration made by his lordship, in his last conditions of plantation, bearing date, July 2d, 1649, where he enlarged the quantity of lands to be granted to such colonists as should trans- port themselves and others into the province, making such quan-
New di- rections for settling the pro- vince.
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tity double to what it was by the preceding conditions of 1648, CHAP. V. to wit, one hundred acres instead of fifty,* being found incon- 1651. venient and probably productive of some injury to the strength of the province, by placing settlements too remote from each other, his lordship thought it proper, by the advice of his lieutenant, to revoke those last instructions and conditions of 1649, in that respect, and, in his message of 1651, to direct that the quantity of land to be granted should be as it was before, only fifty acres for any person of British or other descent,t who should be trans- ported into the province from and after the twentieth day of June one thousand six hundred fifty and two. He also, in this mes- sage of 1651, confirms his last conditions of plantation, of 1649, in all other respects, "with such alteration of the oath of fidelity, therein expressed, as we have formerly agreed unto by our de- claration dated the sixth of August in the year one thousand six hundred and fifty, and transmitted thither the last year."}
His lordship, however, through an anxiety to form settlements on the remote and most disputable parts of his province, by a clause, in his said message or letter, next succeeding that just stated, directs, that the same quantity of land, as that before pre- scribed by the conditions of 1649, to wit, one hundred acres for each person transported, should be granted to those, who would form settlements on those remote and disputable parts. For this measure he expresses his motive to be,-"for the better publication and remembrance of the bounds between Virginia and Maryland, and prevention of any controversies, which may otherwise happen between the inhabitants of Virginia and those of our said province about the said bounds." He accordingly directs his lieutenant to encourage some English, as soon as pos-
* See before, p. 375.
t It is worthy of remark, that the conditions of 1649 seem to confine the grants to be only "to persons of British or Irish descent," although the commis- sion annexed to those conditions and bearing the same date, expressly directs the governor to grant lands to any person of French, Dutch, or Italian descent in the same manner as to persons of British or Irish descent. Hence probably the ex- pression, as above, "other descent."
# It may be inferred from circumstances, that this declaration, of August 6th, 1650, contained his lordship's assent only, to the oath of fidelity prescribed by the act of 1650, ch. 29, before cited, and which is the same oath of fidelity above alluded to. I did not find this declaration any where on record, and probably it is not now extant in the province. It may be here observed also, that Mr. Kilty has overlooked this alteration of the instructions and conditions of 1649, con- tained in this message of his lordship of 1651, and has omitted to state it in that part of his work, (Landholder's Assistant,) where he treats of conditions of plantation, &c.
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CHAP. V. sible, to take up such land, as shall be due unto them in the 1651. province, by virtue of the conditions of plantation or other war- rant from his lordship, "near to the bounds of his said province, according to the maps thereof, which he sent thither about two years since." This is explained, in the next sentence, to be, "on or near the bounds of the said province on that tract of land, which is commonly called the eastern shore, lying between the bay of Chesapeake and the sea; and also on or near the bounds of our said province on that tract of land which lyeth between the creek or river, that runneth by Patowmack-town,* called in the map, Patowmack river, on the south, and the river, which runneth by Piscattoway, called in the maps aforesaid by the name of Piscattoway river, on the north, in which last tract is included, as we are informed, that place where Mr. Giles Brent now resides, called by him, Peace, and also the country called there the Doages." Subsequent disputes, relative to the division line between Virginia and the eastern shore of Mary- land, evidently explain his lordship's meaning here to have re- lated to settlements to be formed in that part of Maryland, of which Somerset and Worcester counties are now composed, bordering on Accomack in Virginia. The country of the Doages, (most probably a tribe of Indians so called,) must have been in that part of Charles county in Maryland, formed by the great bend of the Patowmack round what is now called Maryland Point, and extending north, as above mentioned, to the Piscatto- way. It may be remarked here, that by the charter of Maryland, lord Baltimore's part of the peninsula, termed the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, was to be divided from the residue thereof, by a right line drawn from Watkins's Point; and, as the true location of Watkins's Point was uncertain, the right line depen- dent thereon, which formed the bounds of Maryland on that side, became also uncertain, was the subject of subsequent liti- gation, and finally settled by commissioners appointed for that purpose; but why any doubts should ever have been entertain- ed, as to the bounds of Maryland, so low down the Patowmack
*This was an Indian town, seated on the Virginia side of the Patowmack, at or near to a place now called New Marlborough, in Stafford county. It seems to be the same Indian-town as that visited by governor Leonard Calvert, when he arrived with the first Maryland colony in 1634, and explored the Patowmack river as high up as Piscattoway, (see before, p. 28,) and the same as that of the Patowomeks, so often visited by the Virginians prior to the first settlement of Maryland.
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as Charles county, since the river itself formed a natural bounda- CHAP. V. ry not liable to mistake, is not easily to be accounted for at this I651. day, unless it be that the source or "first fountain" of the river, called for in the charter, was (in 1651,) totally unknown; and that none of the colonists of either Maryland or Virginia had as yet explored the Patowmack higher up than the Piscattaway.
From this letter or message of his lordship to those who ad- Mr. Mit- ministered his government in Maryland, we derive information moved
from the council.
chell re- also of a small imposture, (not indeed of much importance, except to illustrate the practices of the times,) to which his lord- ship had subjected himself by his excessive anxiety to increase the population of his province. About the time, or within a few months after, he had granted the before mentioned commis- sion to Mr. Robert Brooke,* he entered into a negotiation also with a Mr. William Mitchell; who covenanted with his lordship and undertook, to transport himself and family to Maryland in the course of the next succeeding summer, (to wit, of 1650,) and to convey thither at his own charge so many persons as to make his family to consist of twenty persons at the least, "divers of them being artificers, workmen, and other very useful per- sons ;" and in the course of the following summer (of 1651; ) to transport at least ten persons more; for the making, erecting, and settling a considerable plantation within the province. In pursuance of this agreement, his lordship gave him a special warrant, dated 18th of January, 1649, (O. S.) and directed a grant to be made to him of a manor, consisting of three thousand acres, on condition that if the said Mitchell did not comply with his contract, one hundred acres for every person wanting, in the number contracted for, should be deducted out of the number of acres to be granted to him. + Soon after, and perhaps before Mitchell's departure for Maryland, his lordship, by his commis- sion bearing date the 4th of March, 1649, (O. S.) created him one of his "council of state within the province."} To this he was induced, as his lordship now expresses it in his letter or message of 1651, "conceiving, that by his ability of understand- ing, he would have been a good assistance to the lieutenant and the rest of his lordship's council, for the better conduct of the government there, and hoping, that, according to his serious
* See before p. 376.
t See this special warrant in one of the land-office books, Liber, No. 3, fol. 408, and the substance thereof in Kilty's Landholder's Assistant, p. 79.
# "Council Proceedings from 1636 to 1657," p. 230.
VOL, II .- 54 1
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CHAP. V. professions to him, he would, not only by his advice, but by his 1651. example of life, have conduced much to the advancement of the province, as well to his lordship's honour as to his own reputa- tion." Mitchell transported himself, and possibly the number of persons for which he contracted; but after his arrival in the pro- vince, according to what his lordship says, "contrarily it seems, he not only fomented divisions, but also lived a most scandalous life, whilst he was in the province, with certain women whom he carried from England with him, leaving his wife there in a miserable condition, and did likewise, whilst he was in Mary- land, most prophanely in publick discourse, profess himself of no religion ; all of which was unknown to his lordship," (as he now states, in this his letter or message of August, 1651,) "until of late since the return of Mitchell from Maryland." His lordship, therefore, in this letter formally discharges him from being any longer "of his council of state" in the province, or of being a justice of peace therein, and directs his lieutenant, not to permit him hereafter, if he should return again into the province, to act again in either of those capacities.
The foregoing incident is here mentioned, with a view, not only of illustrating the mode of colonizing the province now adopted and used by the lord proprietary, but also of shewing the progress and effects of Puritanism, which had now taken firm root within the province. His lordship's uncommon anxie- ty for the morals of the settlers and tenants in his province, must have arisen principally from some apprehensions he was under, of giving to the Puritans, as well in England as in his province, cause or foundation for raising a clamour against his proprietary rights. Cautious to avoid in future any cause for imputations of this nature, he further directs his lieutenant, that "in case any person, who should be of his council of state, or commander of a county, or justice of peace, of his province, should there live scandalously and viciously with any lewd woman, or profess himself of no religion, and shall be legally convicted of either of the said crimes, or shall be twice legally convicted of being an usual drunkard, swearer, or curser, to suspend any such person from being of his council of state, &c., and to appoint some other person in their room, till the causes thereof be certified to his lordship, and his further pleasure be known therein."
Although Mitchell's infidelity to and desertion of his wife
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deserved the severest reprehension of every good man, and CHAP. V. lord Baltimore acted with propriety in depriving him of all of- 1651. fice in his province, yet there is danger in legislating too much or too minutely on these subjects. A too close inspection into the private lives of subjects or citizens of a state, necessary to carry laws against such immoralities into full effect, opens too wide a door to let in the tyranny and oppression of magistrates and administrators of justice. It would be impossible to depict a despot of a religious, civil or political nature, in more glaring colours than in the character of a ruling elder of New England, at this period of time. He acted as a spy in every man's fami- ly. Adultery with a married woman had before this, in Massa- chusetts, been made punishable with death, both to the man and the woman committing it .* But, what probably weighed more with lord Baltimore than any other circumstance, in prescribing the before mentioned rigid observance of the moral conduct of his councillors and others in authority in his province, was an ordinance or law, which had been then lately passed by the par- liament of England, in May, 1650, entitled, "An act for sup- pressing incest, adultery, and fornication;" which made these offences punishable with death;} and in July also, in the same year, they had passed another ordinance, entitled, "An act for preventing and suppressing cursing and swearing," imposing a considerable fine for the first offence, and doubling the same upon every repetition of it. At the same session, and about the same time, a bill had been introduced into the house "against painting,
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