DIVISION I.  

CHAPTER I.

THE CALVERT FAMILY— THE LORDS PROPRIETARIES — MOTIVES FOR FOUNDING A COLONY BY GEORGE CALVERT, THE FIRST LORD BALTIMORE— HIS NEWFOUNDLAND COLONY A FAILURE — HIS EFFORTS IN AMERICA — THE
LOSS OF HIS FAMILY AT SEA — THE PREPARATION OF THE MARYLAND CHARTER — CHARTER RIGHTS OF THE PROPRIETARY.

     "George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, was the son of Leonard Calvert and his wife, Alice Croxall, a cultivated Flemish yeomanry people, and was born at Kipling, in Yorkshire, northern part of England. When only eleven years of age he entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1593, and ir four years became Bachelor of Arts. Soon after leaving college he married Anne, daughter of George Mynne, and became the clerk of Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury.
     While in that capacity he attracted the notice of King James, who visited the University of Oxford in 1605, when young CaJvert was given the degree of Master of Arts.  * By royal influence he was made Clerk of the Privy Council in 1611, and in 1617 was sworn in as one of the Secretaries of State, and then knighted. For his valuable services to the government he was long a favorite of King James, though annoyed by the Duke of Buckingham and other jealous rivals at Court. In 1 61 3 he was a member of Parliament from Cornwall; in 1 62 1 for York, and in 1624 for Oxford.

     August 3, 1622, his wife died in childbirth. Ten children survived her. Their children were :
     Cecilius, the eldest, successor to the title.
     Leonard, Keeper of the Rolls of Connaught from 162 1 to 1626; captain of a privateer off the coast of Newfoundland in 1629; Governor of Maryland from 1634 to the year of his death at St. Mary's, June 9, 1647; was never married.
     George came to Maryland with Leonard; settled in Virginia, and died in 1667.
     Francis, died in youth.
     Henry, there is no published record.
     Anne, married William Peasley and lived in London.
     Dorothy, no record.
     Elizabeth, no record.
     Grace, married Sir Robert Talbott, Kildare, Ireland.
     Helen, no record*
     John, died in youth.
     Philip Calvert, by his second wife (?), was Governor of Maryland.

     About this time Lord Baltimore became interested in colonization, and was made a member of the Virginia Company and the New England Company, and was granted the territory of Newfoundland on March 30, 1623, which was incorporated into a province called Avalon. Before the patent was granted he had organized a little colony there in 1620.  In 1624 he was made Baron of Baltimore by King James, and granted in fee 2034 acres of arable land and 1605 acres of bog and woodland in Longford County, Ireland. Very soon after the receipt of these great honors. Lord Baltimore failed in health and lost favor with the King, who was also very ill at that time.  He proposed to resign, and, in six weeks before King James died, sold the Secretaryship to Sir Albert Morton for six thousand pounds sterling.  After the death of King James, Lord Baltimore was received with favor by the new King Charles I., who assisted him with government vessels to take a colony to Newfoundland.  One of the vessels was the "Ark of Avalon," which later, with the "Dove," brought the first colonists to Maryland. 

     The earliest accounts of man's origin and his habits of abode on the earth show him to have been then, as now, a creature naturally inclined to extend his jurisdiction over wide domains of land.  Hence, Lord Baltimore's ambition was to rule over a kingdom, be it Newfoundland or Maryland.  Others say the primary purpose of Lord Baltimore was to found a colony in America within a province which had been promised to him by Charles I. under special chartered rights, that he might offer his "Catholic friends a home where they could enjoy the privileges of religious liberty of conscience free and undisturbed from' royal decrees and persecuting laws."

     "Though Lord Baltimore was a highly honored man by the King of England, and an influential leader in public affairs and among men, yet he was the victim of serious misfortunes. First, was his costly effort in planting a colony in Newfoundland.'* This colony was abandoned by Lord Baltimore because of the severity of the climate. It had cost him thirty thousand pounds. In 1629, after having lived one winter in Newfoundland, where he and his family were much of the time sick, he abandoned his home to fishermen, sent a part of his family to England, and sailed with his wife, some
children and servants to the colony of Virginia, to look in that part of America for a better place to locate a new colony.

     While in Virginia he was unkindly treated and urged to take the oaths of "allegiance and supremacy,*' which he refused, and was obliged to leave the colony. For some unknown cause he left his family and personal property there.
     After his arrival in England, he petitioned the King to have his family brought home, which was first refused, but in 1631 his wife, several children and servants, with much valuable personal property, were permitted to embark on a vessel, the "St. Cloude' for England. This vessel and all on board were lost at sea on the homeward voyage. After the loss of his second wife and children by this disaster, in a letter of condolence written to the Earl of Stafford, he refers to his own misfortunes thus: "There are few, perhaps, can judge of it better than I, who have been a long time myself a man of sorrows. But all things, my Lord, in this world pass away; statum est, wife, children, honor, wealth, friends, and what else is dear to flesh and blood. They are but lent to us till God pleases 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."
     After Lord Baltimore had obtained consent from King Charles I. to settle a colony in America, adjacent to Virginia, he prepared the patent with his own hands in the Latin language; but before it received the royal signature he died — April 15, 1632, in the fifty-third year of his age, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, in London, and was buried in Saint Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street, London.

     In the charter Lord Baltimore had named the territory to be granted "Crescentia," but when it was passed to his son, Cecilius Calvert, the title name of the province was changed, by order of King Charles, to "Maryland," in honor of his wife.  Queen Henrietta Maria, daughter of King Henry IV. of France.

     The plans laid out by Lord Baltimore for planting a colony at his expense, where he expected to supremely govern, and where his friends and others hoped to enjoy civil and religious Liberty, were successfully started in operation by his eldest son, Cecilius (baptized Cecil) Calvert, but he and his successors of the Lords Baltimore met many disturbing political factors while trying to govern their province. Cecilius Calvert inherited his father's estates, baronial honors and titles, and thus became the second Lord Baron of Baltimore in the Kingdom of Ireland.
     The provincial charter, intended for his father, promptly passed the Great Seal, and was given the son, June 20, 1632, two months and five days after the death of Lord Baltimore the first.
     Cecilius Calvert inherited but little fortune from his father, George — Lord Baltimore — except titles of honor and unprofitable land estates. What revenues he could raise were spent towards the support of his infant colony in Maryland, which required aid for development before it brought revenues in return. He married the daughter of Earl Arundel, and resided with his father-in-law, who was rich in "ancestral associations," but poor in living resources. When eighty years old, in 1638, he wrote to the King of England: "Moneys I have none; no, not to pay the interest of the debts.
My plate is plagued at pawn. My son Baltimore is brought so low with his setting forward the plantation of Maryland, and* with the claims and oppositions which he has met with, that I do not see how he could subsist if I did not give him diet for himself, wife and children"

CHARTER RIGHTS OF PROPRIETARY.
(Scharf's History)

     In condensed form the Charter of Maryland invested the Proprietary with the following rights: 
     TERRITORIAL - All the land and water within the boundaries of the province, and islands within ten marine leagues of the shore, with mines and fisheries, in perpetual possession to himself and his heirs.
     LEGISLATIVE - The right to make all laws public or private, with the assent of the freemen of the province; and ordinances (not impairing life, limb or property), without their assent.
     JUDICIAL. - To establish courts of justice of various kinds, and appoint all judges, magistrates and civil officers; also to execute the laws even to the extent of taking life.
     REGAL. - To confer titles and dignities; to erect towns, boroughs and cities; and to make ports of entry and departure; also to pardon all offences.
     ECCLESIASTICAL. - To erect and found churches and chapels, and cause them to be consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of England; and to have the patronage and advowsons thereof.
     MILITARY. -  To call out and arm the whole fighting population, wage war, take prisoners, and slay alien enemies; also to exercise martial law in case of insurrection.
     FINANCIAL - To alienate, sell or rent land; to levy duties and toils on ships and merchandise.

[Pg. 18. ]

     THE PEOPLE'S RIGHTS. - The charter gave all settlers in the (Colony of England the privilege to remain English subjects.  To inherit, purchase or own land or other property; free trade with England; to help make the laws for the province, and not be taxed by the crown.  The proprietary had almost kingly control, and the people very restricted privileges, yet under the Calverts' rule civil and religious liberty was secured and enjoyed by the people for fifty years
     Of George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, Bancroft says:  "He deserves to be ranked among the most wise and benevolent lawgivers of all ages.  He was the first in the history of the Christian world to seek for religious security and  peace by the practice of justice, and not by the exercise of power."  The opinion of Bradley T. Johnson, author of The Foundation of Maryland," showing Lord Baltimore's purpose of planting the colony of Maryland, much deserves recognition, and is here partly quoted:  "Instead then of the foundations of Maryland having been laid on a policy of colonization and material development, or as the consequences of religious movement in England, or as the result of the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, the light now shed upon the contemporaneous actors, their motives and their acts, enables us to see that Lord Baltimore from the very initiation of his enterprise deliberately, maturely and wisely, upon consultation and advice, determined to devote his life and fortune to the work of founding a free English State, with its institutions deeply planted upon the ancient customs, rights and safeguards of free Englishmen, and which should be a sanctuary for all Christian people forever." "This purpose wisely conceived, maturely considered, and bravely i>ersisted in, through all obstacles, explains everything that has heretofore appeared ambiguous in the career of Lord Baltimore."
     The motives that influenced George Calvert to found a colony were liberally enlarged or modified by his son and successors to meet the political policies made by national changes in the government of England.

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