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1 Brodhead's History of New York, i. 254.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
ON the southwestern coast of Ireland, not far from Cape Clear, the steamship on its way from New York to Liverpool passes within The Irish
sight of a small promontory erowned by Baltimore. an ancient village bearing the Gaelic name of Baltimore, which signifies " large townlands." 1 The events which transferred this Irish name to the banks of the Patapsco River make an interest- ing chapter of history.
George Calvert, son of a wealthy Yorkshire farmer of Flemish descent, was born about 1580. After taking his degree at Oxford and travelling for some time on the Continent, he was George Calvert. employed as an under-secretary in the
state department by Sir Robert Ceeil, after whom he named his eldest son Cecilius. His warm advo- caey of the Spanish marriage made him a great favourite of James I., so that in 1617 he was knighted and in 1619 was appointed secretary of state. He seems always to have had a leaning toward the Roman Church. Whether he was con- verted in 1624, or simply made publie profession of a faith long cherished in secret, is matter of doubt. At all events, he resigned his secretary-
1 Joyce, Irish Names of Places, Dublin, 1869, p. 322.
256 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
ship at that time. The next year one of the la -: things done by James, a few days before his death. was to raise Calvert to the Irish peerage as Baron Baltimore.
The son of Mary Stuart had a liberal way of dealing with his favourites. In March, 1623. he
granted the great southeastern promon-
A palatinate in New- tory in Newfoundland - the region now
foundland. known as Ferryland, between Trinity and Placentia bays - to George Calvert, to be held by him and his heirs forever. The govern- ment was to be a " palatinate," a statement which calls for a somewhat detailed explanation.
When that great and far-sighted ruler William the Conqueror arranged the affairs of England after the battle of Hastings, he sought to prevent such evils as those against which the newly founded Capetian monarchy in France was strug. gling for life, evils arising from the imperfect subordination of the great feudal lords. To this end he made it a rule not to grant large contigu- ous estates to the same lord, and in every county he provided that the king's officer, the sheriff, should be elothed with powers overriding those of the local manorial officers. He also obliged the tenants of the barons to swear fealty directly to the crown. This shrewd and wholesome policy. as developed under his able son Henry I. and his still abler great-grandson Henry II., has pro- foundly affected the political career of the English: Origin of race. But to this general policy Willist. palatinates. admitted one class of exceptions. I: the border counties, which were never quite five
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THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
from the fear of invasion, and where lawlessness was apt to be more or less prevalent in time of peace, it was desirable to make the local rulers more powerful. Considerations of this sort pre- vailed throughout mediaval Europe. Universally, the ruler of a march or border county, the count or graf or earl placed in such a responsible posi- tion, acquired additional power and dignity, and came to be distinguished by a grander title, as margrave, marquis, or count of the marches. In accordance with this general principle, William the Conqueror granted exceptional powers and consolidation of authority to three counties, to Durham on the Scotch border, to Chester on the border of Wales, and to Kent, where an invader from the Continent might with least difficulty effeet a landing. Local administration in those counties was concentrated in the hands of the the county ruler ; they were made exceptionally strong to serve as buffers for the rest of the kingdom, and they were called "palatinates " or "counties palatine," implying that within their boundaries the rulers had quasi-regal rights as complete as those which the king had in his palace. They appointed the officers of justice, they could pardon treasons and felonies, forfeitures at com- mon law accrued to them, and legal writs ran in their name instead of the king's. The title of " count palatine " carries us back to the times of the Merovingian kings in Gaul, when it belonged to one of the highest officers in the royal house- hold, who took judicial cognizance of all pleas of the crown. Hence the title came to be applied
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258 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
to other officers endowed with quasi-regal powers. Such were the counts palatine of the Rhine and Bavaria, who in the course of the thirteenth cen- tury became electoral princes of the Holy Roman Empire. One of their domains, the Rhenish Pala- tinate, of which Heidelberg in its peerless beauty is the crown and glory, has contributed, as We shall hereafter see, an element of no small im- portance to the population of the United States.
To return to William the Conqueror : in an age when the organization of society was so imperfect. and action at a distance so slow and difficult. the possession of quasi-regal powers by the
Changes in English rulers of the palatine counties made it palatinates. much easier for them to summon quickly their feudal forces in case of sudden invasion. In view of the frequency of quarrels and raids on the border, the quasi-regal authority was liable at any moment to be needed to prevent war from break- ing out, and the proper administration of justice demanded a short shrift and a sharp doom for evil- doers. The powers granted by William to the palatine counties resembled those wielded by the French dukedoms of the same period, but with admirable forethought he appointed to rule them priests who could not marry and found feud.i families. Durham and for a time Chester wer" ruled by their bishops, and over Kent as a secular jurisdiction William placed his own brother, Odo. Bishop of Bayeux. In course of time mans changes occurred. Kent soon lost its palatin- privileges, while those of Chester were exercis by its earls until the reign of Henry III., when the
259
THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
earldom lapsed to the crown. After the conquest of Wales the county of Pembroke on its south- western coast was made a palatinate, but its privi- leges were withdrawn by Henry VIII. For a time such privileges were enjoyed by Hexhamshire, between Durham and Northumberland, but under Elizabeth that little county was absorbed in Northumberland. One other northern shire, the duchy of Lancaster, was made a palatinate by Edward III., but that came to an end in 1399. when the Duke of Lancaster ascended the throne of England as Henry IV. Traces of its old pala- tinate jurisdiction. however, still survive. Until the Judicature Act of 1873 Lancaster and Dur- ham lad each its own distinct and independent court of common pleas, and the duchy of Lancas- ter has still its own chancellor and chancery court outside of the jurisdiction of the lord chancellor. As for the palatine authority of the bishops of Durham, it was vested in the crown in the year preceding the accession of Victoria.
From this survey it appears that by the end of the sixteenth century the bishoprie of Durham was left as the only complete instance of a palatinate, or kingdom within the kingdom. In the The bishop- northern marches the need for such a ric of Dur- buffer was longer felt than elsewhere, ham. and the old political structure remained very much as it had been created by William I., with the mitred bishop at its head. The great Norman cathedral, in its position of unequalled grandeur,
" Half house of God,
Half castle 'gainst the Scot,"
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260 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
still rears its towers in the blue sky to remind us of the stern days when tartan-clad thousands came swarming across the Tweed, to fall in heaps before the longbow at Halidon Hill and Neville's Cross and on many another field of blood. When the king of Scots came to be king of England, this principality of Durham afforded an instance of a dominion thoroughly English yet semi-independ- ent, unimpeachable for loyalty but distinct in its administration. It was not strange, therefore, that it should have served as a pattern for colonial governments to be set up in the New World. For snch governments virtual independence combined with hearty allegiance was the chief desideratum, a fact which in later days George III. unfortu- nately forgot. From the merely military point of view a colony in the American wilderness stood in at least as much need of palatine authority as any frontier district in the Old World. Accordingly, when it was decided to entrust the work of found- ing an American colony to a nobleman with his clientage of followers, an example of the needful organization was already furnished by the great northern bishopric. Calvert's province in New-
Avalon and foundland, which received the name of Durham. Avalon,1 was to be modelled after the palatinate of Durham, and the powers granted to its lord proprietor were perhaps the most exten- sive ever bestowed by the English crown upon any subject.
1 From the so-called isle of Avalon. in Somerset, reputed to be the place where Christianity was first preached in Britain; the site of the glorious minster of Glastonbury, where rest the asbez of Edgar the Peaceful and Edmund Ironside.
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THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
A party of colonists went at once to Newfound- land in 1623, but various affairs detained Baltimore's colony in Newtound- land. Lord Baltimore at home until 1627, when he came with his wife and children to dwell in this New World paradise of Avalon. The trail of the serpent was already there. A French fleet came to attack the colony, meditating revenge for Argall's treatment of the French at Mount Desert and Port Royal, but Baltimore's ships were heavily armed and well handled, and the French- men got the worst of it. Then a party of Puritans came to Avalon, and these unbidden guests were horrified at what they saw. The Rev. Erasmus Stourton returned to England with a shocking story of how Lord Baltimore not only had the mass performed every Sunday, but had even al- lowed a Presbyterian child to be baptized by a Romish priest. Then the climate of Avalon proved to be anything but what had been expected. One Captain Richard Whitbourne had published an enthusiastic book in which he recorded his memo- ries of June days in Newfoundland, with their delicious wild strawberries and cherries, the soft air redolent with the fragrance of red and white roses, the woods vocal with thrushes and other songsters that rivalled the nightingale ; of wild beasts there were none that were harmful, and "in St. John's harbour he once saw a mermaid." 1 Lord Baltimore learned that it was not always June in Avalon. He wrote to Charles I. in Au- gust, 1629, as follows: " I have met with diffi- culties and encumbrances here which in this place
1 Browne's Calverts, p. 17.
262 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
are no longer to be resisted, but enforce me pre- sently to quit my residence and to shift to some other warmer elimate of this New World. where the winters be shorter and less rigorous. For here your Majesty may please to understand that I have found by too dear-bought experience. which other men for their private interests always concealed from me, that from the middle of October to the middle of May there is a sad fare of winter upon all this land; both sea and land so frozen for the greater part of the time as they are not penetrable, no plant or vegetable thing appearing out of the earth until the beginning of May, nor fish in the sea : beside the air so intolerable cold as it is hardly to be endured. By means whereof, and of much salt meat, my house hath been an hospital all this winter; of a hundred persons fifty sick at a time, myself being one, and nine or ten of them died. Hereupon I have had strong temptations to leave all proceedings in plantations, and being much decayed in my strength, to retire myself to my former quiet : but my inclination carrying me naturally to these kind of works, and not knowing how better to employ the poor remainder of my days than . . . to further, the best I may. the enlarging your Majesty's empire in this part of the world, I am determined to commit this place to fishermen that are able to encounter storms and hard weather. and to remove myself with some forty persons to your Majesty's dominion Virginia; where, if your Majesty will please to grant me a precinct of land, with such privileges as the king your father . . . was pleased to grant me here, I
263
THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
shall endeavour to the utmost of my power, to deserve it." 1
To this letter the king returned a gracious re- ply, in which he advised Lord Baltimore, for the sake of his own comfort and peace of mind, to give up such arduous kind of work and return to Eng- land ; but before this reply reached Avalon, its proprietor had sailed for Virginia, with Baltimore's visit to Vir- gini ...
Lady Baltimore and the children, and a small retinue of servants and followers.
He wished to see that country with his own eyes and learn if it were really fit for his purposes. On the first day of October, 1629, he arrived at James- town, where he found the assembly in session. That versatile physician, Dr. Pott, so skilled in "epidemicals " and strong waters and afterward convicted of lifting cattle, was then acting as gov- ernor. The reception given to Lord Baltimore was anything but cordial. All good Virginians hated Papists, and this particular Papist was known to stand in high favour with the king, so that he might turn out to be dangerous. He had been one of the commissioners appointed by James I. to look into the affairs of Virginia; what if he were to persuade Charles I. to turn over the colony into his hands for safe - keeping ? There was really not the slightest danger of such a thing. Baltimore's wish was not to take possession of a colony already established, but to found one him- self in accordance with his own ideas. It was not his purpose to become lord over the Virginians, but their neighbour, who might dwell near them on
1 Browne's Calverts, p. 25.
264 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
amicable terms. But the Virginians did not wish to receive him in any capacity or on any terms, except as a transient guest. There was an obvi- ous and easy device for getting rid of him. Dr. Pott and the council tendered to him the oath of supremacy, which of course he could not take. This oath was a sworn recognition of the English sovereign as the only supreme authority through- out the British dominions in all matters ecclesias- tical and spiritual. No Catholic could take such an oath. Baltimore proposed an alternative decla- ration of allegiance to which he could swear, but such a compromise was of course refused. Even had Dr. Pott and the council felt authorized to assume such responsibility, accommodation was not what they desired, and the royal favourite was told that he must sail for England at once. It appears that he met with some very rude treatment at Jamestown, which does not seem to have been pub- liely rebuked until the arrival of the new royal governor, Sir John Harvey, in the following March; for on the records of the assembly for March 25, 1630, occurs the entry : "Thomas Tin- dall to be pilloried two hours, for giving my Lord Baltimore the lie and threatening to knock him down." It is evident, however, that such unseemly conduct could not have met with approval among respectable people at Jamestown, for when Balti- more sailed he left his wife and children there. It is clear that he intended soon to return, and wished to save them the discomforts and perils of the double voyage. He knew that Virginian hos- pitality could be relied on. His purpose of returu-
265
THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
ing must have been well known, for the secretary of the colony, William Claiborne, was sent to Lon- don to keep an eye upon him and thwart his schemes as far as possible. After arriving in Eng- land, Lord Baltimore found so many hindrances to be reckoned with that he sent for his family and they followed him by a later ship.
Baltimore's first request was for a tract of ter- ritory lying south of James River as far as the mouth of the Chowan (or Passamagnus) River in Albemarle Sound. This province was to be called Carolina, either in honour of Charles I., or because the name had been given by the Hugue- nots in 1562 in honour of Charles IX. of France to a point farther south on that coast and was vaguely applicable to territory between Virginia and Florida. A charter conveying this land to Lord Baltimore had already been made out when Claiborne appeared with his objections, which were supported by other persons in London who were entertaining sehemes for founding a sugar-plant- ing colony in Carolina. The matter was discussed in the Privy Council, and Baltimore's attention was called to the fact that the Dutch were taking possession of the country between the Hudson and Delaware rivers; would it not therefore be desirable to found a colony north of the Potomac, and squeeze these unwelcome intruders into as narrow a space as possible ? Baltimore accepted this suggestion, and a charter was drawn The charter
up, granting to him as lord proprietor of Maryland. the province which received the name of Mary- land, after Charles's Catholic queen, Henriette
266
OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
Marie, in England commonly called Queen Mary. The charter, which Baltimore drew up with his own hand, was in the main a copy of the Avalon charter ; but before it had received the royal seal he died, in April. 1632. In June the charter was issued to his eldest son Cecilius Calvert. second baron of Baltimore.
In obtaining this new grant of Maryland, the Calverts did not regard themselves as giving up their hold upon Newfoundland. Cecilins appointed a governor for Avalon as a fishing station, but in 1637, with characteristic recklessness. the king granted it to the Marquis of Hamilton and some other noblemen, on the ground that the
Fate of the
Avalon charter had been forfeited by disuse.
charter. More or less controversy went on until 1663, when in consequence of a judgment in the courts pronouncing the Hamilton grant void. Avalon was surrendered to Cecilius. But his de- scendants really neglected it, until in 1754 the charter was again declared forfeited, and the crown resumed its rights over the whole of that large island.
It seems to have been the physical hardships sustained in Newfoundland that cut off the first Lord Baltimore prematurely in his fifty-third year and prevented his witnessing the success of the enterprise which he had so much at heart. His plan was to found in the New World a com- monwealth where Catholics might find a welcome refuge from the oppressive legislation to which they were subjected in England. It was a plan that could be carried out only by adopting a policy
267
THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
of universal toleration utterly unknown in that age outside of the Netherlands. It called Character of the first Lord Balti- more. for the utmost sagacity and tact, and was likely to require on the part of the ruler all the well-nigh royal powers with which Lord Baltimore had been endowed. Though the scheme was left for the son to put into successful operation, it was devised by the father and stamps him as no ordinary man. It is right that he should be honoured as the first founder of Mary- land. His portrait, painted for Lord Bacon by the illustrious Daniel Mytens, is now in the gallery of the Earl of Verulam, and there is a fine copy of it in the state-house at Annapolis. The face. is courteous and amiable, albeit somewhat melan- choly, and shows refinement and intelligence, as well as the honesty for which he was noted. George Calvert's integrity was such that through- out his public life men respected and trusted him without distinction of party. Of the sincerity of his religious feelings one gets a glimpse in such characteristic passages as the following, from a letter to his friend, the great Earl of Strafford : " All things, my lord, in this world pass away ; wife, children, honours, wealth, friends, and what else is dear to flesh and blood. They are but lent us till God please to call for them back again, that we may not esteem anything our own, or set our hearts upon anything but Him alone, who only remains forever." 1
Of the early life of the son, Cecilius Calvert, very little is known. He was born in 1606 and
1 Browne's Calverts, p. 29.
268 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
more.
entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1621. but there is no record of his having taken a degree. He was hardly more than eighteen years old when he became the husband of Lady Anne Cecilins Cal- vert, second Lord Balti- Arundel, whose name is left upon one of the counties of Maryland, and whose portrait by Vandyck. preserved in Wardour Cas- tle, shows her to have been one of the most beauti- ful women of her time. An engraved portrait of Cecilius, made in 1657 and now in possession of the Maryland Historical Society, gives us the im- pression of great sagacity and power. with the repose that comes from undisturbed self-control. There is perhaps more astuteness than in the father's face. but the look is also frank, as well as lofty and refined. Through many difficulties the plan conceived by George Calvert was put into operation by Cecilius, who is to be regarded as preeminently the founder of Maryland. His strong personality is impressed upon the whole history of that interesting community ; yet singularly enough, the second Lord Baltimore never visited the col- ony to which the labours of his long life were devoted. He cherished at first an intention of going out with the first party of colonists, but finding that London fairly swarmed with enemies to the enterprise, he found it most prudent to stay there and contend with them. This was only the beginning of long years of arduous work in which the right time for leaving England never came. and the Moses of this new migration and fresh departure in the way of founding states was at last gathered unto his fathers without ever having set foot in the Promised Land.
269
THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
In two ways the founding of Maryland was a new departure in methods of colonization. In the first place, it introduced into America a new type of colonial government. The Spanish and French colonies were simple despotismns administered by viceroyal governors, sometimes with advisory coun- cils, sometimes partly held in check by an officer called the intendant, who was himself a A new type
counter-despot. The government of Vir- of colonial government.
ginia after the suppression of the Com-
pany was called a crown government because the governor and council were appointed by the king ; it was not a despotism, because there was an assem- bly elected by the people, without whose consent no taxes could be assessed or collected. The bond of connection with the mother country was loose but real. A contrast was afforded by Massachu- setts, which under its first charter, from 1629 to 1684, was a true republie, with governor, conneil, and assembly all elected within the colony, so that the administration could move on quite independ- ently of any action in England. In the proprie- tary governments, of which Maryland was the first example, the lord proprietor stepped into the place of the crown, while a charter, which might be forfeited in case of abuse, made it impossible for him to become an absolute monarch. The elective legislature of Maryland, which in point of seniority ranks third in America, next after Virginia and Massachusetts, was expressly pro- vided for in the charter. The lord proprietor's sovereignty was limited by this elected assembly of freemen, but his dependence upon the king of
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270 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
England was little more than nominal. In token of allegiance and homage he was to send to the king each year two Indian arrows. His rent was to be one fifth part of all gold or silver mined in Maryland, but as no precious metals were found there, this rent amounted to nothing. Moreover, whenever it might seem necessary, the oath of allegiance might be administered to any of the in- habitants. Saving this formal recognition of his overlord, the lord proprietor was virtually king in Maryland. Laws passed by the assembly be- came valid as soon as he had signed them, and did not need to be seen by the king. In case thie assembly could not conveniently be brought to- gether in an emergency, he could issue ordinances by himself, analogous to the orders of the Privy Council. He could ein money and grant titles of nobility, he could create courts, appoint judges, and pardon criminals. It was moreover expressly stipulated that within the limits of Maryland no taxes could be either assessed or collected by any British government. Finally the lord proprietor- ship was vested in Cecilius Calvert and his heirs. and in point of fact was exercised by them with some interruptions for five generations ; so that the government of colonial Maryland was really a hereditary constitutional monarchy.
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