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253
Growth of Virginia from 1624 to 1642 .
. 253, 254
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
The Irish village of Baltimore .
· . 255 ·
Early career of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore 255, 256 How James I. granted him a palatinate in Newfoundland . 256 Origin of palatinates . 256, 257
Changes in English palatinates . 258, 259
The bishopric of Durham . 259, 260
Durham and Avalon . 260
How Lord Baltimore fared in his colony of Avalon in New- foundland . 261
His letter to the king 262
How he visited Virginia but was not cordially received 263, 264 How a part of Virginia was granted to him and received the name of Maryland . . 235
Fate of the Avalon charter 266
Character of the first Lord Baltimore . 267
Early career of Cecilius Calvert. second Lord Baltimore 268
How the founding of Maryland introduced into America a new type of colonial government 269, 270
Ecclesiastical powers of the Lord Proprietor 271
Religie s toleration in Maryland . . 272
The first settlement at St. Mary's 273 Relations with the Indians . 274
XX
CONTENTS.
Prosperity of the settlement . 275
Comparison of the palatinate government of Maryland with
that of the bishopric of Durham
.
. 275-285
276 The constitution of Durham ; the receiver-general
Lord lieutenant and high sheriff . 276
Chancellor of temporalities
277
The ancient halmote and the seneschal
. 277
The bishop's council .
Durham not represented in the House of Commons until after 1660 . 278
Limitations upon Durham autonomy
279
The palatinate type in America
. 280
Similarities between Durham and Maryland ; the governor 281
Secretary; surveyor-general ; muster master-general ; sher- iffs 282
The courts . 282, 283
The primary assembly 283
Question as to the initiative in legislation . 284
284, 285
The representative assembly
Lord Baltimore's power more absolute than that of any king
of England save perhaps Henry VIII. ·
. 285
CHAPTER IX.
LEAH AND RACHEL.
William Claiborne and his projects . 286
Kent Island occupied by Claiborne 287
Conflicting grants . . 288
Star Chamber decision and Claiborne's resistance 289
Lord Baltimore's instructions . 290
The Virginia council supports Claiborne
290, 291
Complications with the Indians . 291, 292
293
Affairs in Virginia ; complaints against Governor Har-
vey . . 293, 204
Rage of Virginia against Maryland 294, 295
How Rev. Anthony Panton called Mr. Secretary Kemp a jackanapes . 295
Indignation meeting at the house of William Warren
296
Arrest of the principal speakers . 296
Scene in the council room . 296, 297
How Sir John Harvey was thrust out of the government . 297
278
Reprisals and skirmishes
xxi
CONTENTS.
How King Charles sent him back to Virginia . 29S
Downfall of Harvey . . 299
George Evelin sent to Kent Island 299
Kent Island seized by Leonard Calvert 300
The Lords of Trade decide against Claiborne . 301 Puritans in Virginia . 301, 302 The Act of Uniformity of 1631 . 303
Puritan ministers sent from New England to Virginia 303
The new Act of Uniformity. 1643 . 304
Expulsion of the New England ministers 304
Indian massacre of 1644 . 305
Conflicting views of theodicy 306
Invasion of Maryland by Claiborne and Ingle 306-308
Expulsion of Claiborne and Ingle from Maryland 30S
Lord Baltimore appoints William Stone as governor . 308
Toleration Act of 1649 309-311
Migration of Puritans from Virginia to Maryland . 312
Designs of the Puritans $13
Reluctant submission of Virginia to Cromwell . 314
Claiborne and Bennett undertake to settle the affairs of Maryland 315
Renewal of the troubles . 316
The Puritan Assembly and its notion of a toleration act 316 Civil war in Maryland; battle of the Severn, 1655 . 317
Lord Baltimore is sustained by Cromwell and peace reigns
once more
318
MAPS.
Tidewater Virginia, from a sketch by the author . Frontispiece Michael Lok's Map, 1582, from Hakluyt's Voyages to America 60 The Palatinate of Maryland, from a sketch by the author . . 274
OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
CHAPTER I.
THE SEA KINGS .-
WHEN one thinks of the resounding chorus of gratulations with which the four hundredth anni- versary of the Discovery of America was lately heralded to a listening world, it is curious and instructive to notice the sort of comment which that great event called forth upon the occasion of its third centenary, while the independence of the United States was as yet a novel and ill-appreciated fact. In America very little fuss was made. Rail- roads were as yet unknown, and the era of world's fairs had not begun. Of local celebrations there were two; one held in New York, the other in Boston ; and as in 1892, so in 1792, New York followed the Old Style date, the Tercente- nary of the Discovery of America, 1792. twelfth of October, while Boston under- took to correct the date for New Style.
This work was discreditably bungled. however, and the twenty-third of October was selected instead of the true date, the twenty-first. In New York the affair was conducted by the newly founded polit- ical society named for the Delaware chieftain Tam- many, in Boston by the Massachusetts Historical
2 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
Society, whose founder, Dr. Jeremy Belknap, deliv- ered a thoughtful and scholarly address upon the occasion. Both commemorations of the day were very quiet and modest.1
In Europe little heed was paid to America and its discovery, except in France, which, after taking part in our Revolutionary War, was at length embarking upon its own Revolution, so different in its character and fortunes. Without knowing much about America, the Frenehmen of that day were fond of using it to point a moral and adorn Abbé Ray- a tale. In 1770 the famous Abbe Ray-
nal.
nal had published his " Philosophical and Political History of the Establishments and Commerce of the Europeans in the Two Indies," a book in ten volumes, which for a time enjoyed immense popularity. Probably not less than one third of it was written by Diderot, and more than a dozen other writers contributed to its pages, while the abbe, in editing these various chapters and adding more from his own hand, showed him- self blissfully ignorant of the need for any such thing as critical judgment in writing history. In an indescribably airy and superficial manner the narrative flits over the whole vast field of the in- tercourse of Europeans with the outlying parts of the earth discovered since the days of Columbus and Gama : and at length, in the last chapter of the last volume, we are confronted with the ques- tion, What is all this worth ? Our author answers confidently, Nothing ! worse than nothing" the world would have been much better off if America
1 E. E. Hale, in Proc. Amer. Antig. Soc. N. S. viii. 100-212.
3
THE SEA KINGS.
had never been discovered and the ocean route to Asia had remained unknown !
This opinion seems to have been a favourite hobby with the worthy Raynal; for in 1787, in view of the approaching tercentenary, we find him proposing to the Academy of Lyons the offer of a prize of fifty louis for the best essay upon the question whether the discovery of Amer- Was the dis- covery of America a blessing or a curse to mankind ?
ica had been a blessing or a curse to mankind. It was furthermore suggested that the essay should discuss the most practicable methods of increasing the benefits and diminishing the ills that had flowed and continued to flow from that memorable event. The an- nouncement of the question aroused considerable interest, and a few essays were written, but the prize seems never to have been awarded. One of these essays was by the Marquis de Chastellux, who had served in America as major-general in the army of Count Rochambeau. The accomplished anthor maintains, chiefly on economic grounds, that the discovery has been beneficial to mankind ; in one place, mindful of the triumph of the Amer- ican cause in the grand march upon Yorktown wherein he had himself taken part, he exclaims, "O land of Washington and Franklin, of Hancock and Adams, who could ever wish thee non-existent for them and for us?" To this Baron Grimm 1 replied, " Perhaps he will wish it who reflects that the independence of the United States has cost France nearly two thousand million francs, and is hastening in Europe a revolutionary out-
1 Grimm et Diderot, Correspondance littéraire, tom. xv. p. 325.
.
4 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
break which had better be postponed or averted." To most of these philosophers no doubt Chastellux seemed far too much of an optimist. and the writer who best expressed their sentiments was Abbé Genty. the Abbe Genty, who published at Or- leans, in 1787, an elaborate essay, in two tiny vol- umes, entitled " The Influence of the Discovery of America upon the Happiness of the Human Race." Genty has no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that the influence has been chiefly for the bad. Think what a slaughter there had been of innocent and high-minded red men by brutal and ruthless whites! for the real horrors described by Las Casas were viewed a century ago in the light of Rousseau's droll notions as to the exalted virtues of the noble savage. Think, too, how most of the great European wars since the Peace of Westpha- lia had grown out of quarrels about colonial em- pire ! Clearly Columbus had come with a sword, not with an olive branch, and had but opened a new chapter in the long Iliad of human woe. Against such undeniable evils, what benefits could be alleged except the extension of commerce, and that, says Genty, means merely the multiplication of human wants, which is not in itself a thing to be desired.1 One unqualified benefit, however, Genty and all the other writers freely admit ; the introduction of quinine into Europe Quinine. and its use in averting fevers. That item of therapeutics is the one cheery note in the mournful chorus of disparagement, so long as our
1 Genty, L'influence de la découverte de l' Amérique, etc., 2e e.l., Orleans, 1789, tom. il. pp. 148-150.
5
THE SEA KINGS.
attention is confined to the past. In the future, perhaps, better things might be hoped for. Along the Atlantic coast of North America a narrow fringe of English-speaking colonies had lately established their political independence and suc- ceeded in setting on foot a federal government under the presidency of George Washington. The success of this enterprise might put a new face upon things and ultimately show that after all the discovery of the New World was a blessing to mankind.1 So says the Abbe Genty in his curi- ous little book, which even to-day is well worth reading.
If now, after the lapse of another century, we pause to ask the question why the world was so much more interested in the Western hemisphere in 1892 than in 1792, we may fairly say that it is because of the constructive work, political and social, that has been done here in the interval by men who speak English_ Surely, if there were nothing to show but the sort of work in coloniza- tion and nation-making that character- ized Spanish America under its Old Re- Spanish and English America. gime, there would be small reason for
celebrating the completion of another century of such performance. During the present century, indeed, various parts of Spanish America have begun to take on a fresh political and social life, so that in the future much may be hoped for them. But the ideas and methods which have guided this revival have been largely the ideas and methods of English-speaking people, however
1 Id. p. 102 ff.
6 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
imperfectly conceived and reproduced. The whole story of this western hemisphere since Genty wrote gives added point to his opinion that its value to mankind would be determined chiefly by what the people of the United States were likely to do.
The smile with which one regards the world- historie importance accorded to the discovery of quinine is an index of the feeling that there are broad ways and narrow ways of dealing with such questions. To one looking through a glass of small calibre a great historical problem may re- solve itself into a question of food and drugs. Your anti-tobacco fanatic might contend that civ- ilized men would have been much better off had they never become acquainted with the Indian weed. An economist might more reasonably point to potatoes and maize - to say nothing of many other products peculiar to the New World - as an acquisition of which the value can hardly be over- estimated. To reckon the importance of a new piece of territory from a survey of its material productions is of course the first and most natural method. The Spanish conquerors valued America
for its supply of precious metals and set
Precious
metals. little store by other things in compari-
soI. But for the discovery of gold mines in 1496 the Spanish colony founded by Columbus in His- paniola would probably have been abandoned. That was but the first step in the finding of gold and silver in enormous quantities, and thenceforth for a long time the Spanish crown regarded its transatlantic territories as an inexhaustible mine of wealth. But the value of money to mankind
7
THE SEA KINGS.
depends upon the uses to which it is put ; and here it is worth our while to notice the chief use to which Spain applied her American treasure during the sixteenth century.
The relief of the church from threatening dan- gers was in those days the noblest and most sacred function of wealth. When Columbus Aims of aimed his prow westward from the Cana- Columbus. ries, in quest of the treasures of Asia, its precious stones, its silk-stuffs, its rich shawls and rugs, its corals and dye-woods, its aromatic spices, he ex- pected to acquire vast wealth for the sovereigns who employed him and no mean fortune for himself. In all negotiations he insisted upon a good round percentage, and could no more be in- duced to budge from his price than the old Roman Sibyl with her books. Of petty self-seeking and avarice there was probably no more in this than in commercial transactions generally. The wealth thus sought by Columbus was not so much an end as a means. His spirit was that of a Crusader, and his aim was not to discover a New World (an idea which seems never once to have entered his head), but to acquire the means for driving the Turk from Europe and setting free the Holy Sepulchre. Had he been told upon his melan- choly death-bed that instead of finding a quick toute to Cathay he had only discovered a New World, it would probably have added fresh bitter- ness to death.
But if this lofty and ill-understood enthusiast failed in his search for the treasures of Cathay, it was at all events not long before Cortes and
8
OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
Pizarro succeeded in finding the treasures of Mexico and Peru, and the crusading scheme of Columbus descended as a kind of legacy to the successors of Ferdinand and Isabella, the mag- nanimous but sometimes misguided Charles, the sombre and terrible Philip. It remained a crusad- ing scheme, but, no longer patterned after that of Godfrey and Tancred, it imitated the mad folly which had once extinguished in southern Gaul the most promising civilization of its age. Instead of a Spanish crusade which might have expelled the most worthless and dangerous of barbarians from eastern Europe, it became a Spanish crusade against everything in the shape of political and Spain and religious freedom, whether at home or
the Protest- aut revolt. abroad. The year in which Spanish eyes first beheld the carved serpents on
Central American temples was the year in which Martin Luther nailed his defiance to the church door at Wittenberg. From the outworn crust of mediævalism the modern spirit of individual free- dom and individual responsibility was emerging, and for ninety years all Europe was rent with the convulsions that ensued. In the doubtful struggle Spain engaged herself further and further, until by 1570 she had begun to sacrifice to it all her energies. Whence did Philip II. get the sinews of war with which he supported Alva and Farnese, and built the Armada called Invincible ? Largely from America, partly also from the East Indies, since Portugal and her colonies were seized by Philip in 1580. Thus were the first-fruits of the heroic age of discovery, both to east and to west
9
THE SEA KINGS.
of Borgia's meridian, devoted to the service of the church with a vengeance, as one might say, a lurid vengeance withal and ruthless. By the year 1609, when Spain sullenly retired, baffled and brow- beaten, from the Dutch Netherlands, she had taken from America more gold and silver than would to-day be represented by five thousand mil- lion dollars, and most of this huge treasure she had employed in maintaining the gibbet for politi- cal reformers and the stake for hereties. In view of this grewsome fact, Mr. Charles Francis Adams has lately asked the question whether the discov- ery of America was not, after all. for at least a century, fraught with more evil than benefit to mankind. One certainly cannot help wondering what might have been the immediate result had such an immense revenue been at the disposal of William and Elizabeth rather than Philip.
Such questions are after all not so simple as they may seem. It is not altogether clear that such a reversal of the conditions from the start would have been of unmixed benefit to the English and Dutch. After the five Nations are made wealthy, not by inflation but by pro- duction. thousand millions had been scattered to the winds, altering the purchasing power of money in all directions, it was Spain that was impoverished while her adversaries were growing rich and strong. A century of such unproductive expenditure went far toward completing the in- dustrial ruin of Spain, already begun in the last Moorish wars, and afterward consummated by the expulsion of the Moriscos_ The Spanish discovery of America abundantly illustrates the truths that if
.
10 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
gold were to become as plentiful as iron it would be worth much less than iron, and that it is not inflation but production that makes a nation wealthy. In so far as the discovery of America turned men's minds from steady industry to gold- hunting, it was a dangerous source of weakness to Spain; and it was probably just as well for England that the work of Cortes and Pizarro was not done for her.
But the great historie fact, mnost conspicuous among the consequences of the discovery of America, is the fact that colonial empire, for Eng- land and for Holland, grew directly out of the long war in which Spain used American and East Indian treasure with which to subdue the English and Dutch peoples and to suppress the principles of civil and religious liberty which they repre- sented. The Dutch tore away from Spain the best part of her East Indian empire, and the glori- ous Elizabethan sea kings, who began the work of
Deepest sig- crippling Philip II. in America, led the nificance of way directly to the English colonization the discov- ery of of Virginia. Thus we are introduced to
America.
the most important aspect of the discov- ery of America. It opened up a fresh soil, enor- mous in extent and capacity, for the possession of which the lower and higher types of European civilization and social polity were to struggle. In this new arena the maritime peoples of western Europe fought for supremacy; and the conquest of so vast a field has given to the ideas of the vic- torious people, and to their type of social polity. an unprecedented opportunity for growth and de-
:
11
THE SEA KINGS.
velopment. Sundry sturdy European ideas, trans- planted into this western soil, have triumphed over all competitors and thriven so mightily as to reaet upon all parts of the Old World, some more, some less, and thus to modify the whole course of civilization. This is the deepest significance of the discovery of America ; and a due appreciation of it gives to our history from its earliest stages an epic grandeur, as the successive situations unfold themselves and events with unmistakable emphasis record their moral. In the conflict of Titans that absorbed the energies of the sixteenth century, the question whether it should be the world of Calderon or the world of Shakespeare that was to gain indefinite power of future ex- pansion was a question of incalculable importance to mankind.
The beginnings of the history of English-speak- ing America are thus to be sought in the history of the antagonism between Spain and England that grew out of the circumstances of the Protest- ant Reformation. It was as the storehouse of the enemy's treasure and the chief souree of his sup- plies that America first excited real interest among the English people ..
English ships had indeed crossed the Atlantic many years before this warfare broke out. The example set by Columbus had been promptly fol- lowed by John Cabot and his young son Sebastian, in the two memorable voyages of 1497 Voyages of
and 1498, but the interest aroused by the Cabots. those voyages was very short-lived. In later days it suited the convenience of England to cite them
12 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
in support of her claim to priority in the discovery of the continent of North America; but many years elapsed before the existence of any such continent was distinctly known and before Eng- land cared to put forth any such claim. All that contemporaries could see was that the Cabots had sailed westward in search of the boundless treas- ures of Cathay, and had come home empty-handed without finding any of the cities described by Marco Polo or meeting any eivilized men. So little work was found for Sebastian Cabot that he passed into the service of Spain, and turned his attention to voyages in the South Atlantic. Such scanty record was kept of the voyages of 1497 and 1498 that we cannot surely tell what land the Cabots first saw ; whether it was the bleak coast of northern Labrador or some point as far south as Cape Breton is still a matter of dispute. The case was almost the same as with the voyage of Pinzon and Vespucius, whose ships were off Cape Honduras within a day or two after Cabot's north- ern landfall, and who, after a sojourn at Tampico, passed between Cuba and Florida at the end of April, 1498. In the one case, as in the other, the expeditions sank into obscurity because they found no gold.
The triumphant return of Gama from Hindu- stan, in the summer of 1499, turned all men's eyes to southern routes, and little heed was paid to the wild inhospitable shores visited by John Cabot and his son. The sole exception to the general neglect was the case of the fisheries on the banks of Newfoundland. From the beginning of the
13
THE SEA KINGS.
sixteenth century European vessels came almost yearly to catch fish there, but at first The New- Englishmen took little or no part in foundland fisheries.
this, for they had long been wont to get their fish in the waters about Iceland, and it took them some years to make the change. On the bright August day of 1527 when Master John Rut sailed into the bay of St. John, in Newfoundland, he found two Portuguese, one Breton, and eleven Norman ships fishing there. Basques also came frequently to the spot. Down to that time it is not likely that the thought of the western shores of the Atlantic entered the heads of Englishmen more frequently than the thought of the Antarctic continent, discovered sixty years ago, enters the heads of men in Boston to-day.
The lack of general interest in maritime dis- covery is shown by the fact that down to 1576, so far as we can make out, only twelve books upon the subject had been published in England, and these were in great part translations of works published in other countries. The earliest indis- putable occurrence of the name America in any printed English document is in Farliest English ref- erences to America. a play called " A new interlude and a mery of the nature of the iiii elements," which was probably published in 1519.1 About the same time there appeared fiom an Antwerp press a sinall book entitled . Of the newe landes and of ye people found by the messengers of the Kynge of Portugal; " in it occurs the name Armenica, which is probably & misprint for America, since 1 Winsor, Varr. and Crit. Hist. iii. 19.
·
14 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
the account of it is evidently taken from the account which Vespucius gives of the natives of Brazil, and in its earliest use the name America was practically equivalent to Brazil. With the exception of a dim allusion to Columbus in Sebas- tian Brandt's "Ship of Fools," these are the only references to the New World that have been found in English literature previous to 1553.
The youthful Edward VI., who died that year, had succeeded in recalling Sebastian Cabot from Spain, and under the leadership of that navigator was formed the joint-stock company quaintly enti- tled, " The Mysterie and Companie of the Mer- chant Adventurers for the Discoverie of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places unknown." It was
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