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009 - Chapter 9 · Chronicles of America Volume 05 - Pioneers of the Old South

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Speaker 1: Chapter nine of Pioneers of the Old South by Mary Johnston.
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Speaker 1: His LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter nine Maryland.
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Speaker 1: There now enters upon the scene in Virginia. A man
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Speaker 1: of middle age, not without experience in planting colonies. By
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Speaker 1: name George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore of Flemish ancestry, born
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Speaker 1: in Yorkshire, Scholar at Oxford, traveler, clerk of the Privy Council,
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Speaker 1: a Secretary of State under James, member of the House
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Speaker 1: of Commons, member of the Virginia Company. He knew many
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Speaker 1: of the ramifications of life. A man of worth and weight,
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Speaker 1: he was placed, by temperament and education upon the side
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Speaker 1: of the Court party and the Crown in the growing
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Speaker 1: contest over rights about the year sixteen twenty five. Under
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Speaker 1: what influence is not known. He'd openly professed the Roman
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Speaker 1: Catholic faith, and that took courage. In the seventeenth century
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Speaker 1: in England, some years before, Calvert had obtained from the
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Speaker 1: Crown a grant of a part of Newfoundland, had named
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Speaker 1: it Avalon, and had built great hopes upon its settlement.
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Speaker 1: But the northern winter had worked against him. He knew,
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Speaker 1: for he had resided there himself with his family in
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Speaker 1: that harsh clime from the middle of October to the
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Speaker 1: middle of May, there is a sad fare of winter
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Speaker 1: on all this land. He is writing to King Charles,
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Speaker 1: and he goes on to say, I've had strong temptations
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Speaker 1: to leave all proceedings in plantations, but my inclination carrying
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Speaker 1: me naturally to these kind of works. I am determined
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Speaker 1: to commit this place to fishermen that are able to
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Speaker 1: encounter storms and hard weather, and to remove myself with
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Speaker 1: some forty persons to your Majesty's dominion of Virginia, where
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Speaker 1: if your Majesty will please to grant me a precinct
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Speaker 1: of land, I shall endeavor to the utmost of my
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Speaker 1: power to deserve it. With his immediate following, he thereupon
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Speaker 1: does sail far southward. In October sixteen twenty nine, he
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Speaker 1: comes in between the capes past Point Comfort and sew
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Speaker 1: up to Jamestown, to the embarrassment of that capital. As
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Speaker 1: will soon be evident here in Church of England, Virginia
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Speaker 1: was a popeys recusant. He was an old court party man,
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Speaker 1: one of James's commissioners, a person of rank and prestige
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Speaker 1: known for all his recusancy to be in favor with
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Speaker 1: the present king. Here was the proprietary of Avalon guests
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Speaker 1: to be dissatisfied with his chilly holding on the scent.
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Speaker 1: Perhaps the ballmere ease your things. The Assembly was in
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Speaker 1: session when Lord Baltimore came to Jamestown. All arrivors in
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Speaker 1: Virginia must take the oath of supremacy. The Assembly proposed
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Speaker 1: this to the visitor, who a Roman Catholic, could not
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Speaker 1: take it, and said as much, but offered his own
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Speaker 1: declaration of friendliness to the powers that were This was declined.
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Speaker 1: Debate followed, ending with a request from the Assembly that
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Speaker 1: the visitor depart from Virginia. Some harshnesses of speech ensued,
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Speaker 1: but hospitality and the amenities fairly saved the situation. When
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Speaker 1: Thomas Tindall was pilloried for giving my Lord Baltimore the
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Speaker 1: lie and threatening to knock him down, Baltimore thereupon set sail,
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Speaker 1: but not perhaps until he had gained that knowledge of
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Speaker 1: conditions which he desired. In England. He found the King
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Speaker 1: willing to make him a large grant, with no less
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Speaker 1: powers than had clothed him in Avalon. Territories should be
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Speaker 1: taken from the old Virginia. It must be of unsettled
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Speaker 1: land Indians, of course, not counting. Baltimore first thought of
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Speaker 1: the stretch south of the River James, between Virginia and
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Speaker 1: Spanish Florida, a fair land of woods and streams, of
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Speaker 1: good harbors and summer weather. But suddenly William Clayborne was
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Speaker 1: found to be in London, sent thereby the Virginians with
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Speaker 1: representations in his pocket. Virginia was already settled and had
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Speaker 1: the intention herself of expanding to the south. Baltimore, the King,
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Speaker 1: and the Privy Council weighed the matter. Westward, the Blue
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Speaker 1: Mountains closed the prospect. Was the South Sea just beyond
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Speaker 1: their sunset slopes, or was it much farther away over
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Speaker 1: unknown lands than the first adventurers had guessed. Either way,
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Speaker 1: two rugged hardship marked the west, east rolled the ocean north.
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Speaker 1: Then it were well to step in before those Hollanders
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Speaker 1: about the mouth of the Hudson should cast nets to
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Speaker 1: the south. Baltimore accordingly asked for a grant north of
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Speaker 1: the Potomac. He received a huge territory stretching over what
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Speaker 1: is now Maryland, Delaware, and a part of Pennsylvania. The
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Speaker 1: Potomac from source to mouth, with a line across Chesapeake
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Speaker 1: and the eastern shore to the ocean formed his southern frontier.
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Speaker 1: His northern was the fortieth parallel from the ocean across
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Speaker 1: country to the due point about the springs of the Potomac.
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Speaker 1: Over this great expense he became true and absolute lord
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Speaker 1: and proprietary holding fealty to England, but otherwise at liberty
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Speaker 1: to rule in his own domain with every power of
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Speaker 1: feudal duke or prince. The king had his allegiance likewise
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Speaker 1: a fifth part of gold or silver found within his lands.
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Speaker 1: All persons going to dwell in his palatinate were to
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Speaker 1: have rights and liberties of Englishmen, but this society was
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Speaker 1: lord paramount. The new country received the name Tera Mary Maryland,
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Speaker 1: for Henrietta Maria, then Queen of England. Here was a
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Speaker 1: new land and lord proprietar with kingly powers. Virginians seated
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Speaker 1: on the James promptly petition King Charles not to do
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Speaker 1: them wrong by so dividing their portion of the earth.
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Speaker 1: But King in Privy Council answered only that Virginia and
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Speaker 1: Maryland must assist each other on all occasions as become
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Speaker 1: of fellow subjects. William Clayborne indeed continued with a determined
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Speaker 1: voice to cry out that lands given to Baltimore were
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Speaker 1: not as had been claimed, unsettled, seeing that he himself
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Speaker 1: had under patent a town on Kent Island and another
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Speaker 1: at the mouth of the Susquehanna. Baltimore was a reflective man,
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Speaker 1: a dreamer in the good sense of the term, and
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Speaker 1: religiously minded. At the height of seeming good fortune, he
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Speaker 1: could write, all things, my Lord in this world pass away.
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Speaker 1: They are but lent us till God pleased to call
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Speaker 1: for them back again, that we may not esteem anything
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Speaker 1: our own or set our hearts upon anything but Him alone,
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Speaker 1: who only remains forever. Like his King, Baltimore could carry
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Speaker 1: far his progative and privilege, maintaining the while not a
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Speaker 1: few degrees of inner freedom. Like all men, here he
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Speaker 1: was bound, and here he was free. Baltimore's desire was
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Speaker 1: for enlarging his Majesty's empire, and at the same time
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Speaker 1: to provide in Maryland a refuge for his fellow Catholics.
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Speaker 1: These were now in England so disabled and limited that
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Speaker 1: their status might barely be called that of a persecuted people.
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Speaker 1: The mounting Puritanism promised no improvement. The king himself had
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Speaker 1: no fierce antagonism to the old religion, but it was
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Speaker 1: beginning to be seen that Charles and Charles's Realm were
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Speaker 1: two different things. A haven should be provided before the
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Speaker 1: storm blackened further. Baltimore thus saw put into his hands
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Speaker 1: a high and holy opportunity, and made no doubt that
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Speaker 1: it was God given his charge. Indeed seemed to contemplate
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Speaker 1: and establish church, for it gave to Baltimore the patronage
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Speaker 1: of all churches and chapels which were to be consecrated
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Speaker 1: according to the ecclesiastical laws of our Kingdom of England. Nevertheless,
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Speaker 1: no interpretation of the Charter was to be made prejudicial
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Speaker 1: to God's holy and true Christian religion. What was Christian
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Speaker 1: and what was prejudicial was, fortunately for him, left undefined.
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Speaker 1: No obstacles were placed before a Catholic emigration. Baltimore had
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Speaker 1: this idea, and perhaps a still wider one, a land
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Speaker 1: Mary's Land, where all Christians might foregather brothers and sisters
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Speaker 1: in one home. Religious tolerance, practical separation of church and state.
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Speaker 1: That was a broad idea for his age, a generous
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Speaker 1: idea for a Roman Catholic of a time not so
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Speaker 1: far removed from the medieval true. Wherever he went, and
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Speaker 1: whatever it might be his own thought and feeling, he
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Speaker 1: would still have for overlord a Protestant sovereign, and the
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Speaker 1: words of his charter forbad him to make laws repugnant
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Speaker 1: to the laws of England. But Maryland was distant, and
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Speaker 1: wise management might do much. Catholics, Anglicans, Puritans, dissidents, and
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Speaker 1: nonconformists of almost any physiognomy might come and be at
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Speaker 1: home unpunished for variations in belief. Only the personal friendship
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Speaker 1: of England's king and the tact and suave sagacity of
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Speaker 1: the proprietary himself could have procured the signing of this charter,
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Speaker 1: since it was known, as it was to all who
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Speaker 1: cared to busy themselves with the matter that here was
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Speaker 1: a Catholic meaning to take other Catholics, together with others
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Speaker 1: scarcely less abominable sectaries, out of the reach of recusancy
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Speaker 1: acts and religious pains and penalties, to set them free
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Speaker 1: in England in America, and raising there a state on
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Speaker 1: the novel basis of free religion, perhaps to convert the
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Speaker 1: Heathen to all manner of errors and embark on mischiefs
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Speaker 1: far to large for definition. Taking things as they were
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Speaker 1: in the world, remembering acts of the Catholic Church in
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Speaker 1: the not distant past, the ill disposed might find some
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Speaker 1: color for the agitation which presently did arise. Baltimore was
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Speaker 1: known to be in correspondence with English Jesuits, and it
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Speaker 1: soon appeared that Jesuit priests were to accompany the first Colonists.
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Speaker 1: At that time, the Society of Jesus loomed large, both
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Speaker 1: politically and adjucationally. Many may have thought that they are
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Speaker 1: threatened to Rome in America, but however that have been
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Speaker 1: There was small chance for any successful opposition to the Charter.
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Speaker 1: Since Parliament had been dissolved by the King, not to
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Speaker 1: be summoned again for eleven years. The Privy Council was subservient,
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Speaker 1: and as the Sovereign was his friend, Baltimore saw the
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Speaker 1: signing of the Charter assured and began to gather together
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Speaker 1: his first colonists. Then, somewhat suddenly, in April sixteen thirty two,
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Speaker 1: he sickened and died at the age of fifty three.
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Speaker 1: His son, Cecil Colbert, second Lord Baltimore, took up his
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Speaker 1: father's work. This young man, likewise able and sagacious, and
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Speaker 1: at every step in his father's confidence, could and did proceed,
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Speaker 1: even in detail, according to what had been planned. All
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Speaker 1: his father's rights had descended to him. In Maryland, he
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Speaker 1: was proprietary, with as ample power as ever a count
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Speaker 1: Palatine had enjoyed. He took up the advantage and the burden.
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Speaker 1: The father's idea had been to go with his colonists
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Speaker 1: to Maryland, and this it seems that the son also
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Speaker 1: meant to do. But now in London there deepened a
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Speaker 1: clamor against such Catholic enterprise. Once he were away, Lips
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Speaker 1: would be at the King's ear, and with England so
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Speaker 1: restless in a turmoil of new thought, it might even
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Speaker 1: arise that King and Privy Council would find trouble in
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Speaker 1: acting after their will. Good though that might be the
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Speaker 1: Second Baltimore therefore remained in England to safeguard his charter
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Speaker 1: and his interests. The family of Baltimore was an able one.
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Speaker 1: Cecil Calvert had two brothers, Leonard and George, and these
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Speaker 1: would go to Maryland in his place. Leonard he made
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Speaker 1: governor and Lieutenant General, and appointed him counselor. Ships were
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Speaker 1: made ready, the Art of three hundred tons and the
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Speaker 1: Dove of fifty. The colonists went aboard at Gravesend, where
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Speaker 1: these ships road at anchor of the company. A great
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Speaker 1: number were Protestants, willing to take land if their condition
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Speaker 1: were bettered, so with Catholics. Difficulties of many kinds kept
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Speaker 1: them all long at the mouth of the Thames. But
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Speaker 1: at last, late in November sixteen thirty three, the Ark
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Speaker 1: and the Dove set sail, touching at the Isle of Wight.
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Speaker 1: They took a board to Jesuit priests, Father White and
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Speaker 1: Father Alpham, and a number of other colonists. Baltimore reported
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Speaker 1: that the expedition consisted of two of my brothers, with
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Speaker 1: very near twenty other gentlemen of very good fashion, and
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Speaker 1: three hundred laboring men. Well provided in all things. These ships,
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Speaker 1: with the first Merrylanders, went by the old West Indies
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Speaker 1: Sea route. We find them rest at Barbados. Then they
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Speaker 1: swung to the north, and in February sixteen thirty four
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Speaker 1: came to Point Comfort in Virginia. Here they took supplies,
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Speaker 1: being treated by Sir John Harvey, who had received a
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Speaker 1: letter from the King with courtesy and humanity, without long tearying,
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Speaker 1: for they were sick now for land of their own.
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Speaker 1: They sailed on up the great Bay, the Chesapeake. Soon
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Speaker 1: they reached the mouth of the Potomac, a river much
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Speaker 1: greater than any of them, save shipmasters and mariners, had
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Speaker 1: ever seen, And into this turned the ark in the dow.
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Speaker 1: After a few leagues of sailing up the wide stream,
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Speaker 1: they came upon an islet covered with trees, leafless, for
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Speaker 1: spring had hardly broken. The ship's dropped anchor, the boats
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Speaker 1: were lowered, the people went ashore. Here the Calverts claimed
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Speaker 1: Maryland for our savior and for our sovereign lord, the
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Speaker 1: u S King of England. And here they heard mass
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Speaker 1: Saint Clement's they called the island, but it was too
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Speaker 1: small for home. The ark was left at anchor, while
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Speaker 1: Leonard Calvert went exploring with the dove up the Potomac.
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Speaker 1: Some distance he went, but at the last he wisely
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Speaker 1: determined to choose for their first town a site near
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Speaker 1: the sea. The dove turned and came back to the ark,
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Speaker 1: and both sailed on down the stream from Saint Clement's Isle.
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Speaker 1: Before long they came to the mouth of a tributary
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Speaker 1: stream flowing in from the north. The dove, going forth again,
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Speaker 1: entered this river, which presently the party named the River
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Speaker 1: Saint George. Soon they came to a high bank with
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Speaker 1: trees tinged with the foliage of advancing spring. Here upon
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Speaker 1: this bank the English found an Indian village and a
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Speaker 1: small Algonquin group in the course of extinction by their
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Speaker 1: former Iroquois neighbours, the giant Susquehannocks. The white men landed
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Speaker 1: bearing a store of hatchets, jew jaws and colored cloth.
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Speaker 1: The first Lord Baltimore, having had opportunity enough for observing savages,
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Speaker 1: had probably handed on to his sagacious sons his conclusions
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Speaker 1: as to ways of dealing with the natives of the forest,
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Speaker 1: and the undeniable logic of events was at last teaching
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Speaker 1: the English how to colonize Englishmen on Roanoke Island, Englishmen
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Speaker 1: on the banks of the James. Englishmen in that first
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Speaker 1: New England colony had borne the weight of early inexperience
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Speaker 1: and all the catalog of woes that follow ignorance. All
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Speaker 1: these early colonists alike had been quickly entangled in strife
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Speaker 1: with the people whom they found in the land. First
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Speaker 1: they fell on their knees, and then on the Aborigines.
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Speaker 1: But by now much water had passed the mill. The
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Speaker 1: thinking kind, the wiser sort, might perceive more things than one,
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Speaker 1: and among these the fact that savages had a sense
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Speaker 1: of justice and would even fight against injustice real or fancied.
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Speaker 1: The Coverts, through their interpreter, conferred with the inhabitants of
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Speaker 1: this Indian village. Would they sell lands where the white
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Speaker 1: men might peaceably settle under their given word to deal
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Speaker 1: in friendly wise with the red men, Many hatchets and
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Speaker 1: axes and much cloth would be given in return. Two
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Speaker 1: a Sylvan people store of hatchets and axes had a
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Speaker 1: value beyond many fields of the boundless earth. The deve
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Speaker 1: appeared before them too, at the psychological moment they had
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Speaker 1: just discussed removing bag and baggage from the proximity of
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Speaker 1: the Iroquois. In the end, these Indian soul to the English,
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Speaker 1: their village huts, their cleared and planted fields, and miles
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Speaker 1: of surrounding forest. Moreover, they stayed long enough in friendship
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Speaker 1: with the newcomers to teach them many things of value.
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Speaker 1: Then they departed, leaving with the English a clear title
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Speaker 1: to as much land as they could handle, at least
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Speaker 1: for some time to come. Later. With other Indians, as
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Speaker 1: with these, the Coverts pursued a conciliatory policy. They were
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Speaker 1: aided by the fact that the Susquehannocks to the north,
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Speaker 1: who might have given trouble, were involved in war with
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Speaker 1: yet more northerly tribes and could pay scant attention to
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Speaker 1: the incoming white men. But even so the Calverts proved,
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Speaker 1: as William Penn proved later, that men may live at
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Speaker 1: peace with men honestly and honorably, even though hue of
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Speaker 1: skin and plane of development differ. Now the ark joins
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Speaker 1: the dove in the river Saint George. The pieces of
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Speaker 1: ordnance are fired, the colony disembarking on the twenty seventh
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Speaker 1: of March sixteen thirty four. The Indian village, now English,
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Speaker 1: becomes Saint Mary's. On the whole, how advantageously are they placed,
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Speaker 1: There is peace with the Indians. Huts lodges are already built,
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Speaker 1: fields already cleared or planted. The site is high and healthful.
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Speaker 1: They have at first few dissensions among themselves, nor are
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Speaker 1: they entirely alone or isolated in the new World. There
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Speaker 1: is a new England to the north of them, and
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Speaker 1: the Virginia to the south. From the one they get
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Speaker 1: in the autumn salted fish from the other store of
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Speaker 1: swine and cattle. Famine and pestilence are far from them.
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Speaker 1: They build a fort and perhaps the stockade, but there
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Speaker 1: are none of the stealthy deaths given by Arrow and
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Speaker 1: Tomahawk in the north, nor are there any of the
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Speaker 1: Spanish alarms that terrified the south from the first. Have
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Speaker 1: with them women and children. They know that their settlement
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Speaker 1: is home. Soon other ships and colonists followed the Ark
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Speaker 1: and the Dove to Saint Mary's, and the history of
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Speaker 1: this Middle Colony is well begun. In Virginia. Meantime, there
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Speaker 1: was jealousy enough of the new colony, taking as it
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Speaker 1: did territory held to be Virginian, and renaming it not
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Speaker 1: for the old independent Protestant virgin queen, but for a
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Speaker 1: French Catholic queen consort, even settling it with believers in
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Speaker 1: the Mass and bringing in Jesuits. It was, says Jamestown settler,
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Speaker 1: accounted a crime almost as heinous as treason to favor,
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Speaker 1: nay to speak well of that colony, besides the Virginian
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Speaker 1: folk as a whole. One man, in particular, William Claiborne
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Speaker 1: nursed an individual grievance. He had it from Governor Calvert
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Speaker 1: that he might dwell on in Kent Island, trading from there,
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Speaker 1: but only under a license from the Lord Proprietor, and
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Speaker 1: as an inhabitant of Maryland, not of Virginia. Claybourne, with
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Speaker 1: the Assembly at Jamestown secretly on his side, resisted this
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Speaker 1: interference with his rights, and as he continued to trade
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Speaker 1: with a high hand, he soon fell under suspicion of
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Speaker 1: stirring up the Indians against the Marylanders. At the time
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Speaker 1: this quarrel rang loud through Maryland and Virginia and even
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Speaker 1: echoed across the Atlantic. Leonard Calvert had a trading boat
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Speaker 1: of Clayburn's seized in the Patuxant River. Thereupon, Clayburn's meant
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Speaker 1: with the Shallop Cacktris, in retaliation, attacked Maryland pinnaces and
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Speaker 1: lost both their lives and their boat. For several years,
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Speaker 1: Maryland and Kent Island continued intermittently to make petty war
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Speaker 1: on each other. At last, in sixteen thirty eight, Calvert
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Speaker 1: took the Island by force and hanged for piracy a
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Speaker 1: captain of Claiborne's. The Maryland Assembly brought the traitor under
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Speaker 1: a bill of attainder, and a little later in England,
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Speaker 1: the Lord's Commissioners of Foreign Plantations formerly awarded Kent Island
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Speaker 1: to the Lord Proprietor, thus defeated. Claiborne, nursing his wrath,
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Speaker 1: moved down the Bay to Virginia end of chapter nine