USA > Virginia > Old Virginia and her neighbours > Part 19
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Thus Lord Baltimore introduced into America a new and quite remarkable type of colonial gov-
Ecclesiasti- ernment. But in the second place his at-
cal powers of
tire lord tempt to inaugurate a policy of complete proprietor. religious toleration was a still more mem- orable departure from familiar methods. Among
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THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
the express provisions of the charter there was nothing that looked toward such complete tolera- tion. Any express toleration of Catholics would have ruined the whole scheme at the start. The words of the charter were conveniently vague. Iu the original charter of Avalon the lord proprie- tor was entrusted with " the patronage and ad- vowsons of all churches which, with the increasing worship and religion of Christ within the said region, hereafter shall happen to be built ; together with license and faculty of erecting and founding churches, chapels, and places of worship, in con- venient and suitable places, within the premises, and of causing the same to be dedicated and con- secrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of England." This Avalon grant of 1623 was made when Sir George Calvert was still a member of the English church ; it empowered him to found Anglican churches, but did not expressly prohibit him from founding Romanist or Nonconformist places of worship along with the others if he should see fit. Now exactly the same words were repeated in the Maryland charter, although it was generally known that Lord Baltimore intended to make that colony an asylum for such English Catholics as wished to escape from their griev- ances at home. The fact that no prohibition was inserted shows that the king connived at Balti- more's scheme, perhaps through sympathy with his Catholic queen. None of the Stuarts were fierce Protestants, and it is worth noting that it was at the king's request that the colony was named Maryland. Mr. Gardiner's opinion seems
272 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
well sustained, that "the phrases of the charter were intended to cover a secret understanding be- tween Baltimore and the king." 1
Starting with such a charter. religious tolera- tion in Maryland was a happy product of circum- stances. In view of the regal powers wielded by Lord Baltimore it was not easy for the Protestant settlers to oppress the Catholics ; while, toleration in on the other hand, if the Catholic set- Religious Maryland.
tlers had been allowed to annoy the Protestants, it would forthwith have raised such a storm in England as would have overwhelmed the lord proprietor and blasted his enterprise. The situation thus created was improved to the best advantage by the strong common-sense and unfail- ing taet of Cecilius Calvert. It is not likely that he had arrived at such advanced views of the entire separation of church and state as those which were set forth with such luminous cogency by Roger Williams, but there was a statesmanlike instinct in him that led him in a similar direction. In point of religious toleration Rhode Island un- questionably holds the foremost place among the colonies, while next after it come Quaker Pennsyl- vania, with New Netherland, which for its brief season maintained the wholesome Dutch tradi- tions. There are some respects in which Mary- land's record may vie with the brightest, but her success was not attained without struggles. We shall presently have occasion to see how curiously her beginnings were complicated with the affairs of her elder sister Virginia and with some phases of the Puritan revolution,
1 Gardiner, History of England, viii. 179.
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THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
If Lord Baltimore felt obliged himself to stay in England, he was able to send excellent agents to America in the persons of his First settie- ment at St. Mary's. younger brothers, Leonard and George Calvert. The former he appointed governor of Maryland. The most important member of the council was Thomas Cornwallis, of an ancient and highly honourable London family, the same to which in later days belonged the Earl Cornwallis who surrendered an army to George Washington at Yorktown.1 Leonard Calvert's ships were the Ark, of 300 tons burthen, with its attendant pin- nace, the Dove, of 50 tons ; and his company com- prised 20 "gentlemen adventurers " with about 300 labourers. So alarmed were London people at the expedition that it took the ships a full month to get away from the Thames River. All kinds of rumours flew about. It was assumed that all Catholics must be in league with Spain and that these ships must be concerned in some foul conspiracy against the English colonies in America. At the last moment a great fuss was made in the Star Chamber, and Coke sent an order post-haste to Admiral Pennington command- ing the channel fleet to stop the ships at Dover. The oath of supremacy was administered, and we hear of 128 persons taking it at one time. It is generally believed that the majority of the com- pany were Protestants; the leaders were nearly all Catholics, including the amiable Jesuit, Fa- ther Andrew White, who has left us in quaint and very charming Latin a full narrative of the
1 .Neill's Virginia Carolorum, p. 99.
274 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
voyage.1 The ships finally started on the 22d of November, 1633, stopped for a while in Jan- uary at Barbadoes, and on the 27th of February reached Point Comfort, where a letter from the king ensured them courteous treatment at the hands of Governor Harvey. With a fresh stock of supplies they sailed up Chesapeake Bay and into the broad Potomac, and presently on a little wooded island which they called St. Clement's - since dwindled to the mere vestige of a sand-bank - they celebrated Mass for the first time in Eng- lish America on the 25th of March. 1634.
On a bluff overlooking the deep and broad St. Mary's River the settlers found an In-
Relations with the dian village, which they bought from its Indians. occupants with steel hatchets and hoes and pieces of cloth. These Indians were a tribe of Algonquins, who had been so persecuted by their terrible Iroquois neighbours, the Susquehannoeks, that they were already intending to move away to some safer region; so they welcomed the white purchasers and the chance for buying steel hatchets. Leonard Calvert was as serupulously just in his dealings with red men as William Penn in later days. and like Penn he was exceptionally favoured by the circumstances of his Indian neighbours. After the Algonquins had departed from St. Mary's, the fierce Susquehannoeks to the north- ward were so hard pressed by their hostile kins- men of the Five Nations, that they were only too glad to live on amicable terms with the settlers of Maryland. Thus one of the most formidable
1 White's Relatio Itineris, publ. by Maryland Hist. Soc.
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THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
difficulties in the way of American colonization was removed at the start.
At St. Mary's, moreover, there was no Starving Time. The land had so long been cleared by the Indians for their own cornfields Prosperity of the settle- ment. that Calvert's settlers at once began planting for themselves. Father White speaks with approval of two native dishes which the In- dians call " pone " and " hominy," and from their squaws the English women soon learned how to bake and fry these viands to perfection. In the course of the very first autumn the Marylanders were able to export a shipload of corn to New England in exchange for a cargo of salted cod- fish.1 Cattle and swine were obtained from Vir- ginia, and soon the neighbourhood of St. Mary's was covered with thrifty and smiling farms. New colonists came quite steadily, and presently from St. Mary's the plantations spread about the shores of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. The first assembly was convened and the first laws were enacted in 1635, and when Ceeilius, Lord Baltimore, died, just forty years afterward, his Maryland had grown to be a prosperous commu- nity of 20,000 souls.
Some of the more important details of this growth will form part of our story. At present we have to consider somewhat more closely the nature of this palatinate government, and the mod- ifications which it underwent in its transfer from England to America.
The Bishop of Durham was feudal landlord of
1 Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist. iii. 526.
276 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
the territory in his bishopric, and the most con- siderable part of his revenue came from rents.1 Until 1660 he also received a fluctuating but not insignificant income from such feudal incidents as escheats, forfeitures, and wardships. The rents and feudal dnes were collected by the bailiffs, each
Constitution in his bailiwick, and were by them paid
of Durham : over to the receiver-general, who was the receiver- general. the superintendent of the palatinate's finances. As for Durham's share of the national taxes, Parliament simply determined the amount ; the bishop's government decided how it should be raised and his constables collected it. The only taxes collected by the king's officers were the cus- toms.
After 1536 the militia force of Durham, like that of other counties, was commanded by an officer known as lord lieutenant. For-
Lord lieu-
tenant and high merly the command of the militia and sheriff. the collecting and disbursing of revenue were concentrated in the hands of the high sheriff, who continued to be nominally the superior officer over the lord lieutenant and receiver-general. while his actual duties were restricted, like those of sher- iffs in other counties. to enforcing the decisions of the courts. But whereas all other sheriffs were crown officers, the high sheriff of Durham was accountable only to the bishop.
1 There is an excellent summary of the institutions of Durham in Bassett's "Constitutional Beginnings of North Carolina, " Johus Hopkins University Studies, vol. xii. For fuller accounts see Sur- tees, History of' the County Palatine of Durham; also Surtces Str ciety Publications, vols. xxxii., lxxxii., lxxxiv.
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THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
The only officer of higher dignity than the high sheriff was the chancellor of temporalities, who exercised a twofold function. He was the bishop's chief minister and head of Chancellor of tempo- ralities. the civil government, and he presided over the bishop's high court of chancery. Below this high tribunal there were two kinds of courts. The one was like the ordinary courts of quarter sessions, composed of justices of the peace, save that these justices were appointed by the bishop and punished breaches not of the king's peace but of the bishop's peace. The other kind of court was one that could be held in any manor The
of the bishopric. It was the manorial halmote.
court or "halmote," the most interesting of these ancient institutions of Durham. The business of the halmote courts was to adjust all questions relating to the tenure of land, rights or easements in land, and such other matters as intimately con- cerned the little agricultural community of tenants of the manor. They could also issue injunctions and inflict sundry penalties. These courts were held by the seneschal, an officer charged The
with the general supervision of man- seneschal.
ors, but all the tenants of the manor in question could attend the halmote, and could speak and vote there, so that it was like a town-meeting. When we add that it could enact by-laws, thus combining legislative with judicial functions, we see its ancestry disclosed. This halmote in Dur- ham was a descendant of the ancient folkmote or primary assembly which our forefathers brought into Britain from their earlier home in the wilds
278 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
of northern Germany. In this assembly the peo- ple of Durham preserved their self-government in matters of local concern. But the circumstances in which the palatinate grew up seem to have retarded the development of representative gov- ernment. There was no shire-mote in Durham, attended by selected men from every manor or parish or township, as in the other counties of England. Instead of laws enacted by such a re- The bishop's presentative body, there were ordinances council. passed by the bishop in his council, which was composed of the principal magistrates already mentioned, and of such noblemen or other prominent persons as might choose to come or such as might be invited by the bishop. It thus resembled in miniature a witenagemote or house of lords. The bishops of Durham seem to have been in general responsive to public opinion in their little world, and it does not appear that the people fared worse than they would have done with a representative assembly. The bishop was not an autocrat, but a member of a great ecclesi- astical body, and if he made himself unpopular it was quite possible to take steps that would lead to his removal.
The lack of representative institutions in Dur- ham, coupled with its semi-independence, long
National retarded its participation in the work representa- tion. of national legislation. The bishop, of course, sat in the House of Lords. but not until the reign of Charles II. was this county palatine represented in the House of Commons, The change was inaugurated by Cromwell, under
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THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
whose protectorship the palatine privileges were taken away, and Durham, reduced to the likeness of other counties, elected its members of Parlia- ment. In 1660 the restored monarchy undid this change and replaced the bishop, although with his palatinate privileges slightly shorn. In 1675 Durham began to be regularly represented in the House of Commons, but that date was subsequent to the founding of the Maryland palatinate. At the time when Lord Baltimore's charter was issued, the bonds of connection between Durham and the rest of England were three : 1. the bishop was a tenant in capite of the crown, be- sides being an officer of the Church and Limitations upon autonomy. a member of the House of Lords; 2. the county regularly paid its share of the national taxes; and 3. cases in litigation between the bishop and his subjects could be appealed to the Court of Exchequer in London. Saving these important limitations, Durham was independent. The only way in which the king could act within its limits was by addressing the bishop, who by way of climax to his many attributes of sover- eignty was endowed with the powers of coining money, chartering towns, and exercising admiralty jurisdiction over his seacoast.
As I have already observed it was natural that in founding new governments in America, this familiar example of the Durham palati- nate should be made to serve as a model. The palati- nate type in America. In point of fact not only Maryland, but every colony afterwards founded, except in New England, was at first a palatinate, with either a
280 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
single lord proprietor or a board of proprietors at its head. Of the four colonies older than Mary- land, three - English Virginia and Massachu- setts, and Dutch New Netherland - were founded through the instrumentality of charters granted to joint-stock companies, organized really or ostensi- bly for commercial purposes ; one, Plymouth, was founded by the people and ignored by the crown until finally suppressed by it. Of the four New England colonies younger than Maryland, all were founded by the people themselves, one of them, New Haven, was soon suppressed. another, New Hampshire, was turned into a royal province, the other two, Connecticut and Rhode Island, were for the most part let alone. The governments of all the other colonies began as proprietary govern- ments. This was the case with New York and the two Jerseys after the English conquest of New Netherland; it was the case with Pennsylvania and Delaware, with the two Carolinas, and with Georgia. One and all of these were variations upon the theme first adopted in the founding of Maryland. All were based upon the palatinate principle, with divers modifications suggested by experience as likely to be more acceptable to the proprietors or to the crown. And just as the crown, for purposes of its own and without regard to the wishes of the people, changed the govern- ments of Virginia and New Hampshire and extin- guished those of New Haven and Plymouth ; ~ () in nearly every case we find the people becoming so dissatisfied with the proprietary governments that one after another they are overturned and the
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THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
palatinates become transformed into royal pro- vinces. We shall, therefore, find it profitable to trace the history of the palatinate principle in America through its initial theme and its subse- quent variations.
That initial theme was mainly an echo of the Old World music, but the differences were not without importance. In administrative Similarities between Durham and Maryland : the gov- ernor. machinery there was a strong resem- blanee between Maryland and Durham. The governor of Maryland was Lord Baltimore's chief minister, the head of the civil administration of the colony. He also presided over its court of chancery, and in this double capacity he resembled the chancellor of temporal- ities, But, as befitted the head of a community planted in a hostile wilderness, he added to these functions those of the lord lieutenant and was commander-in-chief of the militia. Laws passed by the assembly required his signature to make them val'd, and thus he possessed the power of veto ; but he could not assent to a law repealing any law to which the lord proprietor had as- sented. Such matters had to be referred to the lord proprietor, whose prerogatives were jealously guarded, while the extensive powers accorded to the governor were such as convenience dictated in view of the fact that the lord proprietor was absent in England. An instance of the principle and its limits is furnished by the governor's par- doning power, which extended to all offences except treason.1
1 For an account of the Maryland constitution, see Sparks,
282 OLD VIRGINIA AND HIER NEIGHBOURS.
The personage next in importance to the gov-
Secretary : ernor was the secretary, who as receiver
surveyor- and disburser of revenues resembled the general. receiver - general of Durham, but to these functions he added those of recorder and judge of probate, and sometimes also those of attorney - general. Next came the surveyor - gen- eral, whose functions in determining metes and bounds and in supervising manorial affairs, resem- bled those of the Durham seneschal. Then there was a lieutenant commander of militia known as
Muster master-general of the muster. In each
master-gen- county there was a sheriff, who, in addi- eral :
sheriffs. tion to such functions as we are familiar with. collected all taxes, held all elections, and made the returns. These four officers - the sec- retary, surveyor-general, muster master-general, and sheriff -were paid by fees, the amount of which was determined by the assembly, which thus exercised some control over them; but the governor received a salary from the lord proprie- tor, and was to that extent independent of the legislature.
Of courts there was one in each county, but besides this a considerable number of manors were created, and each manor had its court baron and The courts. court leet for the transaction of local
business. Small civil cases involving less than the worth of 1,200 pounds of tobacco, and criminal cases not involving the death penalty, were tried in the county courts. Above these was
"Causes of the Maryland Revolution of 1689," Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. xiv.
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THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
the provincial court, which dealt with common law, chancery, or admiralty, as the case might be. The juilges of this court were all members of the council, to which the secretary and other chief ex- ecutive officers belonged, while the governor pre- sided alike over the provincial court and over the council. Appeals could be taken from the pro- vincial court to the council sitting as the upper house in the assembly, after the analogy of the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords; but this virtually meant that a case once decided could be tried over again by the same judges with a few colleagues added.
The assembly, at the mention of which we have thus arrived, was the principal point of difference between the palatinate of Maryland and that of Durham. The governor of Mary- The primary assembly. land, like the bishop of Durham, had his council, consisting solely, as the other consisted chiefly, of high officials ; but in Maryland there was popular representation, while in Durham there was not. At first, however, the popular house was not a representative but a primary assembly, and its sittings were not separate from those of the coun- cil. In the first assembly, which met at St. Mary's in February, 1635, all the freemen, or all who chose to come, were gathered in the same room with Leonard Calvert and his council. They drew up a body of laws and sent it to England for the lord proprietor's assent, which was refused. The ground of the refusal was far more than the mere technicality which on a hasty glance it might seem to be. Cecilius refused because the
284 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
charter gave the lord proprietor the power of making laws with the assent of the freemen. but did not give sneh power to the freemen with the Initiative in assent of the lord proprietor. In other legislation. words, the initiative in legislation mist always come from above, not from below. Obvi- ously there could be no higher authority than Cecilius as to what the charter really intended. But the assembly of Maryland insisted upon the right of initiating legislation, and Cecilius was wise enough to yield the point gracefully. He consented. in view of the length of time required for crossing the ocean, that laws enacted by the assembly should at once become operative and so remain unless vetoed by him.' But he reserved to himself the right of veto without limitation in time. In other words. he could at any time annul a law, and this prerogative was one that might become dangerous.
In 1638 the primary assembly was abandoned as cumbrous. For purposes of the military levy
The repre- the province was divided into hundreds. and each hundred sent a representative
to the assembly at St. Mary's. At a later date the county came to be the basis of representation, as in Virginia. For some time the representatives sat with the council, as at first in Massachusetts and Virginia; but in 1650 the representatives began to sit as a lower house, while the council formed an upper house. 1. there was a tendency, which went on increasing. for the highest offices to be filled by Calverts and their kinsmen, the conditions were soon at hand
sentative assembly.
.
285
THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
for an interesting constitutional struggle between the two houses. It was to be seen whether the government was to be administered for the Cal- verts or for the people, and to the story of this struggle we shall presently come.
As a result of our survey it appears that Lord Baltimore occupied a far more independent posi- tion than any bishop of Durham. Not only was he exempt from imperial tax- Regal power of Lord Baltimore. ation, but in case of a controversy be- tween himself and his subjects no appeal could be taken to any British court. His power seemed to approach more nearly to despotism than that of any king of England, save perhaps Henry VIII. The one qualifying feature was the representative assembly, the effects of which time was to show in unsuspected ways. From various circumstances mentioned in the course of the present chapter there resulted a strange series of adventures, which will next claim our attention.
CHAPTER IX.
LEAH AND RACHEL.
WE have already had occasion to observe that, while from the outset Lord Baltimore's enterprise found many enemies in England, it was at the same time regarded with no friendly feelings in Virginia. We have seen the Virginians
William Claiborne sending to London their secretary of and his pro- jects. state, William Claiborne, to obstruct and thwart the Calverts in their attempt to obtain a grant of territory in America. For Claiborne there were interests of his own involved, besides those of the colony which he represented. This William Claiborne, younger son of an ancient and honour- able family in Westmoreland, had come to Vir- ginia in 1621 and prospered greatly, acquiring large estates and winning the respect and confi- denee of his fellow planters. By 1627 he had begun to engage in trade with the natives along the shores of Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac and Susquehanna rivers. Such traffic, if well managed, was lucrative, since with steel knives and hatehets, or with ribbons and beads, one could buy furs which would fetch high prices in England. To the enterprising Claiborne it seemed worth while to extend this trade far to the north. His speculative vision took in the Delaware and Hud-
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