Founding of Annapolis.

First Lord Baltimore.

Exploration of the Chesapeake.

Maryland Charter

country, where almost every diversity of picturesque scenery is exhibited, except the grandeur of lofty mountains.

the

Annapolis was erected into a town, port, and place of trade in 1683, under the name of "Town land at Proctor's," or "The Town land at Severn." Eleven years afterward it received the name of "Anne Arundle Town," and was made the naval station of the infant colony, and the seat of government. It received the name of Annapolis (Anne's city) in 1703, which was given in honor of Queen Anne, the reigning sovereign of England. Before noticing the associations which give peculiar interest to the history of Annapolis, let us consult the chronicles of the state.

Maryland was settled at a little later period than New England. The London Company, of which Sir George Calvert (Lord Baltimore), the first proprietor of Maryland, was a member, claimed, under its charter, the whole of the vast region from the head of 1609. the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays-the boundary line of the Dutch settlements in New Netherlands-to an undefined boundary south and west. Calvert was a young man of good birth and fine talents. He attracted the attention and won the friendship of Sir Robert Cecil (afterward Earl of Salisbury), first lord of the Treasury under James the First. Calvert was appointed by Cecil his private secretary, a which office he held for several years.

a 1606.

Cecil died in 1612. Calvert appears to have won the esteem of his king, for, in 1617, James conferred the honor of knighthood upon him, appointed him clerk of the Privy Council, and, two years later, made him principal secretary of state, as successor to Sir Thomas Lake. In 1624, Calvert resigned his office, not, as Fuller says, because "he freely confessed himself to the king that he was become a Roman Catholic, so that he must be wanting to his trust, or violate his conscience in discharging his office," for he was doubtless a Roman Catholic from his earliest youth, if not born in the bosom of that Church, but probably for the purpose of giving his personal attention to schemes of foreign colonization, in which he was interested. On retiring from the secretary's office, the king continued him a privy counselor, granted him a tract of land in Longford, Ireland,b with a pen- b 1621. sion of one thousand pounds, and created him "Lord Baltimore, of Baltimore, Ireland." He already had a patent as absolute lord and proprietor of the province of Avalon, in Newfoundland. After the death of James, in 1625, Lord Baltimore went to Avalon, where, with his family, he resided for some time, and then returned to England. He visited Virginia in 1628; and, although a member of the London Company, and high in the confidence of Charles, the successor of James, he was required by the local authorities of that colony to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. Baltimore was offended, for he considered the requisition as an intended insult, he being a Roman Catholic. He refused to take the oaths himself, or allow his attendants to do so; and soon afterward departed from the James River, and made a voyage up the Chesapeake. He entered the Potomac, was pleased with the appearance of the country, projected a settlement upon the upper portions of the Chesapeake Bay, and then returned to England.

The London Company dissolved in the mean while. Baltimore successfully applied to Charles for a grant of the unoccupied land on the Chesapeake, and in 1632 the king gave him permission to frame a charter for a province, to suit himself. The grant included the present area of Maryland, notwithstanding the territory was clearly within the limits of the Virginia charter, and Kent Island, opposite the site of Annapolis, was already occupied. It is believed that the Maryland charter was penned by Lord Baltimore himself. passed the seals, Calvert died, leaving his son Cecil heir to his title and fortune. The charter was executed about two months afterward,d and signed by Cecil, with no alteration from the original except in the name of the province. It was called Maryland, in honor of Henrietta Maria, the queen of Charles the First, instead of Crescentia,

1 Fuller's Worthies of England.

с

Before it

© April 25,

1632.

d June 20.

* The Oath of Supremacy was one denying the supremacy of the pope in ecclesiastical or temporal affairs in England, which was required to be taken, along with the Oath of Allegiance, by persons, in order to qualify them for office.

Character of the first Maryland Charter

Toleration its chief Glory.

Baltimore's Policy

as the first Lord Baltimore named it. This charter was full of the ideas of absolutism and royal prerogatives which distinguished the character and career of James and his son Charles.

It made the proprietor absolute lord of the province "Absolutus Dominus et Proprietarius"-with the royalties of a count palatine. Theoretically, he was not inferior in rights and privileges to the king himself. He could make laws with the advice of the freemen, and withhold his assent from such as he did not approve. He claimed, and sometimes practiced, the right to dispense with the laws, in accordance with the princi ples and occasional practice of King James. He was authorized to create manorial lordships; to bestow titles upon the meritorious of his subjects; to summon, by writs, any freemen he chose, to take a seat in a legislative Assembly without election; to make ordinances of equal force with the laws without the confirmation of the Assembly; to declare martial law at his pleasure-for he had absolute control of the military and naval force of the colony-and to present ministers to the parishes. Such were the extensive powers which the charter of Maryland conferred upon the proprietor; yet the absolute authority of the Baron of Baltimore" was conceded rather with referenc to the crown than the colonists, for the char

66

ter contained concessions and grants to the people sufficient to guarantee them against op pression. The privileges, liberties, and franchises of liege subjects of England, born within the realm, were secured to them; they were protected against the operation of all laws repugnant to the statutes and customs of England; and they were forever exempted, by an express covenant in the charter, from all "impositions, customs, or other taxations, quotas, or contributions whatever," to be levied by the king or his successors. The sovereign did not reserve to himself even the right of superintendence of the affairs of the colony, or the power to interfere, in any way, with its laws. In fact, the province of Maryland was, by its royal charter, made independent of the crown from the beginning; it was what the pro prietor termed it, "a separate monarchy." The dependence was acknowledged only by the provision of the charter which obliged the proprietor to acknowledge fealty by paying a tribute to the king of two Indian arrows yearly, and a fifth of all gold or silver ore which might be found.

The true glory of the first Maryland charter consists in the religious freedom which it recognizes; a freedom reasserted and enforced by an act of the Assembly in 1649, seventeen years after the charter passed the seals, when the whole realm of England was in commotion on account of the execution of the king and establishment of the commonwealth under Cromwell. To Lord Baltimore belongs the honor of being the first lawgiver in Christendom who made freedom of conscience the basis of a state constitution. There seems to be something paradoxical in the fact that an absolutist in political affairs should have been so democratic in matters of religion. But Baltimore was a latitudinarian; sagacious, farsighted, and awake to the best temporal interests of himself and his successors. He clearly perceived that the growth of his colony depended greatly upon the extent of religious freedom which might be guaranteed to emigrants. Persecution was overturning many peaceful

Baltimore's Toleration.

First Settlers.

Leonard Calvert.

Settlement at St. Mary's

homes in Great Britain; and, to wherever the light of toleration was seen, thousands of the oppressed made their way. He was exceedingly tolerant himself, or he never would have retained the friendship of James; and therefore his feelings and interests were coincident. His Catholic brethren were more or less persecuted in England; while the Puritans, who were peopling the coasts of Massachusetts Bay, had also been "harried out of the land" by the hierarchy. Maryland was made the asylum for the persecuted; not for Roman Catholics alone, but for the English Puritans, and the equally harassed reformers of Virginia, under the administration of the bigoted Berkeley.

a 1633.

The first two hundred settlers, who came with Leonard Calverta (brother of Cecil, and first governor of the province), were principally Roman Catholics, but in a few years Protestants became almost as numerous as they. These settled upon the unoccupied territory north of the Patuxent, and formed a new county which they called Severn, or Anne Arundel, extending nearly to the present site of Baltimore. "All the world outside of these portals [St. Michael's and St. Joseph's, as the first emigrants denominated the two headlands at the mouth of the Potomac, now Point Lookout, and Smith's Point] was intolerant, proscriptive, vengeful against the children of a dissenting faith. Only in Maryland, throughout this wide world of Christendom, was there an altar erected, and truly dedicated to the freedom of Christian worship." Yet it must not be forgotten that, fifteen months before the charter of Maryland was executed, Roger Williams had sounded the trumpet of intellectual freedom in New England, and "it became his glory to found a state upon that principle, and to stamp himself upon its rising institutions, in characters so deep that the impress has remained to this day.2

It is not within the scope of my design to notice in detail the progress of the Maryland colony. The first settlement was made by Leonard Calvert, who, in February, 1634, arrived at Point Comfort, in Virginia, with about two hundred Roman Catholics. The Virginians had remonstrated against the grant to Baltimore, but, by express commands of the king, Harvey, then governor, received Calvert with courtesy. Early in March he sailed up the Potomac, and, casting anchor under an island which he called St. Clement, he fired his first cannon, erected a cross, and took possession "in the name of the Savior of the world and the King of Great Britain." He then proceeded up the Potomac to the mouth of the Piscataway Creek, opposite Mount Vernon, and near the site of the present Fort Washington, fifteen miles south of Washington City. The chief of the Indian village at that place was friendly; but Calvert, deeming it unsafe to settle so high up the river, returned, and entered the stream now called St. Mary's. He purchased a village of the Indians, and commenced a settlement.b Founded upon religious toleration and the practice of justice, the colony rapidly increased in population and resources; and peace, except

b April, 1634.

1 Kennedy's Discourse on the Life and Character of George Calvert, before the Maryland Historical Society, 1845, page 43. 2 Bancroft, i., 375. 3 Belknap. 4 As an instance of the determination to preserve peace within his borders, Leonard Calvert issued a proclamation in 1638, to prohibit “all unreasonable disputations in point of religion tending to the disturbance of the public peace and quiet of the colony, and to the opening of faction in religion." A Catholic gentleman (Captain Cornwaleys) had two Protestant servants. They were one day reading aloud, together, Smith's Sermons, and were overheard by Cornwaleys's overseer, a Roman Catholic, while reading a passage in which the pope was called anti-Christ, and the Jesuits anti-Christian ministers. The overseer abused them, and ordered them to read no more. The servants preferred a formal complaint against the overseer, and submitted it to the governor and council. Of the latter, Cornwaleys was one. The parties were heard, and the overseer was fined five hundred pounds of tobacco, and ordered to remain in prison until he should find sureties for his good behavior in future. This case shows the tolerant spirit of a Catholic administration. Kennedy's Discourse, page 45.

The act for religious liberty, passed in 1649, contained a clause authorizing the imposition of a fine of ten shillings for abusive expressions between the parties; such as idolater, popish priest, Jesuit, and Jesuited papist, on the one side, and, on the other, heretic, schismatic, round-head, and similar epithets.-Langford, page 29.

The clause for religious freedom in the act of 1649 extended only to Christians. It was introduced by the proviso that, "whatsoever person shall blaspheme God, or shall deny or reproach the Holy Trinity, or any of the three persons thereof, shall be punished with death."

First Legislative Assembly.

Religious Animosity.

Toleration of the Roman Catholics.

Civil Commotions.

during the troubles arising from the refusal of Clayborne, an original settler, to acknowledge the authority of the governor, reigned within its borders until 1642, when petty hostilities were carried on against the Indians. Leonard Calvert was appointed governor' of the prov ince, as the proprietor's lieutenant; and in 1635 the first Legislative Assembly convened at St. Mary's. A representative government was established in 1639, the people being allowed to send as many delegates to the General Assembly as they pleased. At the same time, a declaration of rights was adopted, the powers of the proprietor were defined, and all the privileges enjoyed by English subjects were confirmed to the colonists. The Indian hostilities closed in 1644, and the next year a rebellion under Clayborne involved the province in a civil war. The revolt was suppressed in August the following year.

Religious animosity between the Protestants and Roman Catholics finally became a source of great trouble, and in 1649 the Assembly adopted the Toleration Act. This allayed party strife for a while. At this time Charles the First was beheaded, and Cromwell became the chief magistrate of Great Britain. Lord Baltimore, who was warm in his professions of attachment to the king while his affairs were prosperous, when he saw the downfall of royalty inevitable, was equally loud in proclaiming his attachment to the Republicans. Thomas Green, his governor, who had hastily proclaimed Charles the Second, on hearing of the execution of his father, was removed, and his place was filled by William Stone, a Protestant, who "was always zealously affected to the Parliament.”

In 1650, the legislative body was first divided into two branches, an Upper and a Lower House; the former consisting of the governor and his council, appointed by the proprietor, and the latter of the representatives chosen by the people. At that session, all taxes were prohibited except by the consent of the freemen.

In 1651, the Long Parliament, which had established its supremacy in England, appointed commissioners to govern Maryland. Stone, Lord Baltimore's lieutenant, was removed; but, on the dissolution of that Parliament by Cromwell in 1654, he was restored to his full powers. The commissioners, however (who had retired to Virginia), entered Maryland, and compelled Stone to surrender his warrant into their hands. The Protestants. who acknowledged the authority of Cromwell, and had the power, by majority, in their own hands, questioned the rights and privileges of an hereditary proprietor. They stoutly contended for religious liberty, yet they actually disfranchised those who differed from them in religious opinions. Roman Catholics were excluded from the Assembly; and an act was passed toward the close of 1654, declaring that they were not entitled to the protection of the laws of Maryland!

Early in 1655, Stone, with greater loyalty to his master, the proprietor, than to his religious profession, organized an armed body of Catholics, and seized the provincial records. Civil war raged with fury, and was intensified by the heat of religious acrimony. The Catholics were finally defeated, Stone was made prisoner, and four of the principal men of the province, attached to Baltimore's party, were executed.

Josiah Fendall, who had actively supported Stone, and headed an insurrection, was appointed governor, by Lord Baltimore, in 1656, but he was soon arrested by the Protestant party. He was a man of good address, and finally succeeded in having himself acknowledged as governor. a The proprietor was restored to all his rights, but he did not long enjoy them, for, on the restoration of Charles the Second, the Assembly, knowing the animosity of the king against Lord Baltimore, dissolved the Upper House, and assumed to

a 1658.

1 Clayborne having obtained a royal license in 1631 to traffic with the Indians, had established two settlements, one on the island of Kent, and one other near the mouth of the Susquehanna. Clayborne not only refused to acknowledge the authority of Baltimore, but sought to maintain his own claims by force of arms. He was defeated, and fled to Virginia, whence he was sent to England for trial as a traitor. He applied to the king for a redress of grievances, but, after a full hearing, the charter of Lord Baltimore was declared valid, against the earlier license of Clayborne. The latter returned to Maryland, got up a rebellion in 1645. and drove Governor Calvert into Virginia. For a year and a half the insurgents held the reins of government, and the horrors of civil war brooded over the infant colony. Clayborne afterward became one of the commissioners appointed by Parliament, under the Protectorate, to govern Maryland.

Baltimore a Courtier.

Civil War.

Maryland a Royal Province.

Republican Constitution.

Annapolis

a March, 1660.

itself the whole legislative power of the state.a They declared that no power should be recognized in Maryland except their own and the king's. Fendall then surrendered his trust to Lord Baltimore, and accepted from the Assembly a new commission as governor. Charles, however, forgave Baltimore for his homage to the Republicans, for he was assured by that eourtier that his partialities had always been really in favor of the royal cause. The same year the rights of the proprietor were restored, and Philip Calvert appointed governor. Fendall was arrested upon a charge of treason, was tried, and found guilty, but, under a general pardon to political offenders, wisely proclaimed by Lord Baltimore, he escaped death. He was only fined a trifling sum, and declared ineligible for office forever.'

Cecil, Lord Baltimore, died in 1675, and was succeeded in title and fortune by his son Charles, who had been his lieutenant in Maryland from 1662 to 1668. The new propri

etor caused the government to be administered by Thomas Notley, who governed with equity, and he became very popular with all parties. Tranquillity prevailed in the province untilthe Revolution in England in 1688, which drove James the Second from the throne, and shook every colony in America. False rumors, alleging that the Catholics and Indians had coalesced for the purpose of massacreing the Protestants, aroused all the fire of religious animosity which had been slumbering for years, and caused the formation of an armed association for the alleged defense of the Protestant faith, and of the rights of William and Mary, the successors of James. A compromise was finally effected, and the Catholic party surrendered the powers of government to the association, by capitulation. A convention of the associates assumed the government, and exercised its functions until 1691, when the king, by an arbitrary act, deprived Charles, Lord Baltimore, of his political rights as proprietor, and constituted Maryland, for the first time, a royal government. Sir Lionel Copley was appointed governor, and, on his arrival,b the principles of the proprietary gov- b 1692. ernment were overturned; religious toleration, so freely conceded and so firmly maintained when the Catholic proprietors held sway, was abolished, and the Church of England was established as the religion of the state, and demanding support from general taxation. Maryland continued a royal province under the successive administrations of Copley, Nichɔlson, Blackstone, Seymore, Lloyd, and Hart, until 1720, and tranquillity prevailed. The inheritance of the proprietorship having fallen to Charles, infant heir of Lord Baltimore, who, on attaining his majority,d professed the Protestant faith, George the First restored the patent to the family. It remained a proprietary government until our Revolution, when, as an independent state, it adopted a constitution,e and e August 14, took its place (the fourth in the point of time) in the confederation of states. A large number of Presbyterians from the north of Ireland had settled in the province, and the principles of their ecclesiastical polity being favorable to republicanism, they exerted a powerful influence in casting off the royal yoke.

c 1716.

d 1720.

1776.

Annapolis being the capital of the province, it was the heart of political action. In common with the people of the other colonies, Maryland took a bold stand against the oppressive measures of the mother government, commencing with the Stamp Act. On the 27th of August, 1765, a meeting of "Assertors of British American privileges" met at Annapolis, "to show their detestation of and abhorrence to some late tremendous attacks on liberty, and their dislike to a certain late arrived officer, a native of this province."3 The

Fendall afterward became concerned in a rebellious movement, with an accomplice named Coode. He was arrested, fined four thousand pounds of tobacco, imprisoned for non-payment, and banished from the province.

2 The successive governors were Charles and Benedict Leonard Calvert; Samuel Ogle; Lord Baltimore; Ogle again; Thomas Bladen; Ogle again; Benjamin Tasker, acting governor; Horatio Sharpe, and Robert Eden. Thomas Johnson was the first republican governor.

This was a Mr. Hood, who had been appointed stamp-master, while in England, on the recommendation of Dr. Franklin. Such was the indignation of the people against him, that no one would purchase goods of him, though offered at a very low price. Just before the burning of his effigy he escaped to New York, in time to save himself from being presented with a coat of tar and feathers.