CHAPTER of his exclusive rights of trade, with orders, it was said, VIII. - to capture all water craft belonging to the Maryland col625 onists. This cruiser was pursued by two armed boats from St. Mary's, and a miniature naval engagement followed, in which several men were killed and the officers of the pinnace made prisoners. The Isle of Kent was taken possession of by the victorious Marylanders. Clayborne, who escaped to Virginia, was claimed by Calvert as a fugitive from justice; but Harvey thought proper to send him to England. The Virginians looked upon the Maryland colonists as intruders, and the grant of that province as an encroachment. They were inclined, therefore, to take sides with Clayborne. Harvey, the governor, was unpopular on other accounts, especially by reason of certain grants of land, as to which he was accused of favoritism. He was suspended from office by the council, and, on April 28. petition of many inhabitants, an assembly was called to receive complaints against him. Harvey agreed to go to England to answer such charges as might be laid before the king, and John West was appointed by the council to act as governor in the interval. The persons sent home to accuse Harvey were not even admitted to a 1636. hearing, and the deposed governor returned to Virginia with a new commission, under which he remained in office three or four years longer, till at length he was 1639. superseded by Sir Francis Wyatt. Maryland, meanwhile, continued to receive additional settlers, though not in any considerable numbers. Besides liberal grants to those already there, the proprietary promised to all new comers a thousand acres of land for every five men transported to the colony, these grants to be erected into manors, to be held at a yearly rent of twenty shillings for every thousand acres, payable in VIII. commodities. Immigrants of less means were promised CHAPTER a hundred acres for themselves, as many more for their wives, a hundred for each man servant, fifty for each 1636. child, and the same for each maid servant, to be held at a like rent. Through these quit-rents the proprietor hoped to derive some return for his heavy outlays, which amounted in the two first years of the colony to £40,000, or about $192,000. Already an assembly had been held, and a body of 1635. laws had been enacted; but these the proprietary had rejected on the ground that, under the charter, the initiative in legislation belonged to him, He presently sent over a set of statutes drawn up by himself, to be laid before a second assembly; but that body declined 1638. to admit the initiative claimed by the proprietary, or to sanction his proposed laws. Clayborne's officers, captured in the sea-fight, were tried before this assembly for murder, and found guilty. Clayborne himself was attainted, and his property at Kent Island confiscated. Lord Baltimore having yielded the disputed point of the initiative, a third assembly was held, at which the 1639. first statutes of Maryland were enacted. This assembly was composed partly of deputies from the several hundreds into which the colony had been divided, and partly of individuals specially summoned by the governor. The first business was an act "establishing the House of Assembly," which confirmed the constitution of that body as above described-a constitution which remained in force as long as Maryland continued a colony, except that subsequently those called by special summons sat apart as an upper house, with a negative on the deputies. Yet the individual right of each freeman to be present in the assembly was but gradually disused. At this very session, and also in subsequent assemblies, individuals were CHAPTER admitted to take their seats in person, on the ground of VIII. non-assent on their part to the appointment of burgesses 1639. from those hundreds to which they belonged. After thus legalizing its own Constitution, and adopt ing certain rules of proceeding, the assembly took in hand a number of bills establishing a system of municipal law These bills were carried forward to their last stage, but, for some reason which does not appear, they did not receive the final assent of the assembly. An act was passed instead, in sixteen short sections, a sort of recapitulation of those bills, but less precise and exact. Among these unpassed bills was one relating to crimes and punishments, which deserves notice, as throwing some light on the manners and opinions of the colonists. This bill created, besides treasons, which were very comprehensive, fourteen felonies punishable with death. Among them, assault upon the governor, or any judge, attended with bloodshed; giving or selling guns or powder to the Indians, or teaching them their use; polyg amy; sacrilege; idolatry; sorcery and blasphemy, defined to be "a cursing or wicked speaking of God:" the punishment in the last three cases to be by burning. Seven other felonies were enumerated, for which the offender was to suffer death by hanging, "except he can read clerk-like, and then he shall lose his hand, or be buined in the hand or forehead with a red-hot iron, and forfeit his land and goods." This was "the benefit of clergy" borrowed from the English law. One of these felonies to which "book was allowed" was "stealth of one's self, which is the unlawful departure of a servant out of service, or out of the colony, without the privity or consent of the master or mistress." The act of a subsequent assembly made this offense capital on the first conviction. Among the inferior offenses enumerated in VIII. these bills, and made punishable by imprisonment, fine, CHAPTER or whipping, were "withdrawing one's self out of the province to reside among any Indians not Christianized;" 1639. fornication; adultery; not making proper provision of food, lodging, or clothing, for servants, or not fulfilling contracts with them; disobedience or neglect on the part of servants; working on the Lord's day, or other holy days; eating flesh in Lent, or on other days wherein it is prohibited by the law of England; giving false alarms, or not answering an alarm. The law actually passed made no such specific provisions. For crimes extending to life or member, the offender was to be first indicted, and then tried by a jury of "twelve freemen at the least;" the court, which consisted of the governor and council, to inflict such punishment as they might think the offense deserved. In civil cases the governor was sole judge, with the assistance, however, of such counselors as he saw fit to call in. He was to do justice according to the laws and "laudable usages" of the province; and when other rule was wanting, the law of England was to govern. For the convenience of the people at the Isle of Kent, the commander there was authorized to hold civil and criminal courts in the governor's stead; and monthly or county courts, like those of Virginia, were presently established for the benefit of the rest of the province. The probate of wills and granting of administrations was given to the secretary. The assembly itself, as in Virginia and New England, remained the final court of appeal. When the goods of a creditor were not sufficient to pay his debts, they were to be sold "at an outcry," and the proceeds to be distributed, in the ratio of their respective claims, among the creditors "inhabiting within the province." This exclusion of foreign creditors was borrowed from CHAPTER Virginia, in which province they could not even sue exVIII. cept for the price of goods sold to be transported thither. 1639. Debts due the proprietary, and fees of public officers, were entitled, however, to priority of payment; but those contracted for "wines and strong waters" were only to come in after all others were fully paid. Every person employed in planting tobacco was required to plant and tend two acres of corn. Provision was made for building a water-mill at the public expense. It was provided in this same act, in the words of Magna Charta, that "Holy Church within this province shall have all her rights and liberties." As the proprietor and most of the colonists were Catholics, it must have been the Catholic Church that was meant. Yet it was no part of Lord Baltimore's plan to establish an exclusive Catholic colony. A proclamation of the governor had expressly prohibited "all unseasonable 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 ;" and under this proclamation one William Lewis, a zealous Catholic, for his abuse of a book of Protestant sermons, which certain indented servants delighted to read, and forbidding them to read it, had been fined, and obliged to give security to keep the peace. It was quite as much as the state of feeling in England would permit that the public exercise of the Catholic religion should be allowed in the colony; it never would have been endured that Protestantism should be excluded. Baltimore was no zealot; his great object was to procure settlers, and he presently sent agents for that purpose, though without success, even to Puritan New England. The large quantities of tobacco produced in Barbadoes, Antigua, and the other English settlements in the West |