Settlement of Maryland 1634
Only the personal friendship of England's King and the tact and suave
sagacity of the Proprietary himself could have procured the signing of
this charter, since it was known -- as it was to all who cared to busy
themselves with the matter -- that here was a Catholic meaning to take
other Catholics, together with other scarcely less abominable sectaries,
out of the reach of Recusancy Acts and religious pains and penalties, to
set them free in England-in-America; and, raising there a state on the
novel basis of free religion, perhaps to convert the heathen to all manner
of errors, and embark on mischief far too large for definition. Taking
things as they were in the world, remembering acts of the Catholic Church
in the not distant past, the ill-disposed might find some color for the
agitation which presently did arise. Baltimore was known to be in
correspondence with English Jesuits, and it soon appeared that Jesuit
priests were to accompany the first colonists. At that time the Society of
Jesus loomed large both politically and educationally. Many may have
thought that there threatened a Rome in America. But, however that may
have been, there was small chance for any successful opposition to the
charter, since Parliament had been dissolved by the King, not to be
summoned again for eleven years. The Privy Council was subservient, and,
as the Sovereign was his friend, Baltimore saw the signing of the charter
assured and began to gather together his first colonists. Then, somewhat
suddenly, in April, 1632, he sickened, and died at the age of fifty-three.
His son, Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, took up his father's
work. This young man, likewise able and sagacious, and at every step in
his father's confidence, could and did proceed even in detail according to
what had been planned. All his father's rights had descended to him; in
Maryland he was Proprietary with as ample power as ever a Count Palatine
had enjoyed. He took up the advantage and the burden.
The father's idea had been to go with his colonists to Maryland, and
this it seems that the son also meant to do. But now, in London, there
deepened a clamor against such Catholic enterprise. Once he were away,
lips would be at the King's ear. And with England so restless, in a
turmoil of new thought, it might even arise that King and Privy Council
would find trouble in acting after their will, good though that might be.
The second Baltimore therefore remained in England to safeguard his
charter and his interests.
The family of Baltimore was an able one. Cecil Calvert had two
brothers, Leonard and George, and these would go to Maryland in his place.
Leonard he made Governor and Lieutenant-general, and appointed him
councilor. Ships were made ready -- the Ark of three hundred tons and the
Dove of fifty. The colonists went aboard at Gravesend, where these ships
rode at anchor. Of the company a great number were Protestants, willing to
take land, if their condition were bettered so, with Catholics.
Difficulties of many kinds kept them all long at the mouth of the Thames,
but at last, late in November, 1633, the Ark and the Dove set sail.
Touching at the Isle of Wight, they took aboard two Jesuit priests, Father
White and Father Altham, and a number of other colonists. Baltimore
reported that the expedition consisted of "two of my brothers with very
near twenty other gentlemen of very good fashion, and three hundred
labouring men well provided in all things."
These ships, with the first Marylanders, went by the old West Indies
sea route. We find them resting at Barbados; then they swung to the north
and, in February, 1634, came to Point Comfort in Virginia. Here they took
supplies, being treated by Sir John Harvey (who had received a letter from
the King) with "courtesy and humanity." Without long tarrying, for they
were sick now for land of their own, they sailed on up the great bay, the
Chesapeake.
Soon they reached the mouth of the Potomac -- a river much greater
than any of them, save shipmasters and mariners, had ever seen -- and into
this turned the Ark and the Dove. After a few leagues of sailing up the
wide stream, they came upon an islet covered with trees, leafless, for
spring had hardly broken. The ships dropped anchor; the boats were
lowered; the people went ashore. Here the Calverts claimed Maryland "for
our Savior and for our Sovereign Lord the King of England," and here they
heard Mass. St. Clement's they called the island.
But it was too small for a home. The Ark was left at anchor, while
Leonard Calvert went exploring with the Dove. Up the Potomac some distance
he went, but at the last he wisely determined to choose for their first
town a site nearer the sea. The Dove turned and came back to the Ark, and
both sailed on down the stream from St. Clement's Isle. Before long they
came to the mouth of a tributary stream flowing in from the north. The
Dove, going forth again, entered this river, which presently the party
named the River St. George. Soon they came to a high bank with trees
tinged with the foliage of advancing spring. Here upon this bank the
English found an Indian village and a small Algonquin group, in the course
of extinction by their formidable Iroquois neighbors, the giant
Susquehannocks. The white men landed, bearing a store of hatchets,
gewgaws, and colored cloth. The first Lord Baltimore, having had
opportunity enough for observing savages, had probably handed on to his
sagacious sons his conclusions as to ways of dealing with the natives of
the forest. And the undeniable logic of events was at last teaching the
English how to colonize. Englishmen on Roanoke Island, Englishmen on the
banks of the James, Englishmen in that first New England colony, had borne
the weight of early inexperience and all the catalogue of woes that follow
ignorance. All these early colonists alike had been quickly entangled in
strife with the people whom they found in the land.
First they fell on their knees, And then on the Aborigines.
But by now much water had passed the mill. The thinking kind, the
wiser sort, might perceive more things than one, and among these the fact
that savages had a sense of justice and would even fight against
injustice, real or fancied.
The Calverts, through their interpreter, conferred with the
inhabitants of this Indian village. Would they sell lands where the white
men might peaceably settle, under their given word to deal in friendly
wise with the red men? Many hatchets and axes and much cloth would be
given in return.
To a sylvan people store of hatchets and axes had a value beyond
many fields of the boundless earth. The Dove appeared before them, too, at
the psychological moment. They had just discussed removing, bag and
baggage, from the proximity of the Iroquois. In the end, these Indians
sold to the English their village huts, their cleared and planted fields,
and miles of surrounding forest. Moreover they stayed long enough in
friendship with the newcomers to teach them many things of value. Then
they departed, leaving with the English a clear title to as much land as
they could handle, at least for some time to come. Later, with other
Indians, as with these, the Calverts pursued a conciliatory policy. They
were aided by the fact that the Susquehannocks to the north, who might
have given trouble, were involved in war with yet more northerly tribes,
and could pay scant attention to the incoming white men. But even so, the
Calverts proved, as William Penn proved later, that men may live at peace
with men, honestly and honorably, even though hue of skin and plane of
development differ.
Now the Ark joins the Dove in the River St. George. The pieces of
ordnance are fired; the colonists disembark; and on the 27th of March,
1634, the Indian village, now English, becomes St. Mary's.
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