The History of Maryland

THE PROVINCE OF MARYLAND, 1608-1776.

Geography of Maryland.

HALFWAY up the Atlantic coast of the United States lies the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, almost as much a river as bay, and from it, on either side, branch off tidal estuaries, almost as much bays as rivers, which give navigable access to the country to a considerable distance. The coastal plain, through which these rivers take their course, is level and productive of cereals and vegetables, while the waters of bay and river teem with fish, crabs, and oysters. West of this plain lies the rolling country which the geologists call the Piedmont Plateau, because it lies at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. This Piedmont region is a broken, hilly country, crossed by the Potomac River and by the Patapsco, which runs with rapid current down through the land. West of the Catoctin Mountain we find the Appalachian Mountain Region, filled with mineral wealth, and subdivided into three parts, with fertile valleys between them. The three parts are the Blue Ridge, the Appalachian mountains proper in Alleghany county, and the Alleghany chain in Garrett county. Some of the streams in the last county are a part of the Mississippi Valley system, but by far the greater part of the state lies on the Atlantic side of the watershed.

Prior to the attainment of independence by Maryland, the Appalachian region had only begun to be settled and we shall find our chief interest to lie in the tidewater counties of the Chesapeake. At present the state has an area of 12,210 square miles, of which 9,860 are land, the greater part of this land lying on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, upon which portion of the state over five-sixths of its inhabitants live ; but originally the area of Maryland was considerably greater than it is at present. When Charles I., king of England and husband of Henrietta Maria, from whom Terra Mariae, or Maryland, took its name, gave to Cecil Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore in the Peerage of Ireland, a patent, or charter, for this new province of his realm, much more ample bounds were conferred upon the Proprietary of the Palatinate than either he or his successors ever reduced to their possession. The limits of the domain began at Watkins' Point, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, and ran thence due east to the Atlantic ocean. North of this line should be Maryland's territory, south of it should remain part of Virginia, from which Maryland was carved. The boundary of Baltimore's province then ran along the Delaware Bay to the fortieth degree of north latitude, and westward along that parallel to the meridian of longitude which passed through the first fountain of the Potomac River. Descending that meridian to the river, the line runs along the farther or south side of the river to a place called Cinquack, near the mouth of the Potomac, whence a straight line to Watkins' Point completed the provincial limits.

Lord Baltimore's Grant.

Into this princely heritage, George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, had looked, after he had been discouraged by his unsuccessful effort to found the colony of Avalon on the bleak and forbidding shores of Newfoundland. He had found the unoccupied shores of the Chesapeake so attractive that he asked the king that they be granted him and, receiving the royal favor, would himself have been the first Lord Proprietary had he not died shortly before the royal charter was ready to pass the seals. Spaniards had probably entered the Bay a century and more before the settlement of Maryland, but the first satisfactory account of its shores and map of the country are those prepared by Captain John Smith, who explored the waters of the Chesapeake in 1608, the year after the settlement of Jamestown. He found here and there a small village of Indians of the Algonquin stock, who hunted in the forests and cultivated maize, tobacco and potatoes on little clearings along the river banks. In their bark houses, good stores of furs were kept, which the Indians willingly bartered for manufactured wares offered by the English. In general, it may be said that the Indians of Maryland received fair treatment from the English, and this was especially so of the Piscataways and the Nanticokes, the chief Algonquin tribes on the two shores of the Bay. The difficulties and wars which occurred were chiefly with the stalwart and fierce Susquehannocks who lived in the northern part of the province, on the banks of the river which bears their name. These Indians were of the Iroquois stock, and, after they were subjugated and incorporated with the Five Nations, they induced the Senecas to come down in raids against the frontier settlements and against the peaceable Patuxents and Piscataways. Gradually the Indian inhabitants of the province disappeared, and but few were left after the migration to the north of the Nanticokes about the year 1750.

After Smith's expeditions, other ones followed, and the fur trade from the north to Virginia became a well-established enterprise. The Indians also sold their surplus stock of maize to the Virginians. The timber of the land was early found useful for pipe staves and other purposes. Foremost among the traders on the Chesapeake was William Claiborne, Baltimore's life-long enemy, who struggled against the effectiveness of the Maryland charter for over forty years after it was granted. After Claiborne had been in Virginia for eight years or so, engaged in trading with the Indians, he associated himself with a firm of London merchants, and later, in May, 1631, he obtained from the Secretary of State for Scotland a commission, authorizing him and his associates to trade in all parts of New England and Nova Scotia wherein no trading monopoly had been granted. Sailing up the Chesapeake with this commission, Claiborne planted the Isle of Kent on the eastern shore, placing there, on Aug. 17, 1631, a trading factory with about twenty or thirty men. From Chisquack, in the Northern Neck of Virginia, and Kent Island, a delegate sat in the Virginia House of Burgesses, and Claiborne was a member of the Virginia Council. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Virginians opposed the Maryland charter, which gave Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, two-thirds of their fine bay and cut them off from the profitable Indian trade to the north, which they were carrying on.

Navigation was slow and uncertain in the Seventeenth century, when it took from a month to three months for a sailing vessel to cross the Atlantic, and it was some time after Baltimore had received the patent for his province (on June 20, 1632), that news of this event reached America. Not until Nov. 21, 1633, did the Proprietary's first expedition set forth under the command of his young brother, Leonard, to settle the new province. The fact that Maryland bore from the first the dignified title of province has always been a source of pride to its inhabitants. The charter was modelled on that of Avalon, granted to the first Lord Baltimore some years before, and gave Cecil Calvert a country hitherto uncultivated in the parts of America partly occupied by savages.

Over that country, which he was destined never to behold, he should rule with as extensive privileges as the Bishop of Durham held within the limits of his see, and for the province, which he held in free and common socage, Baltimore paid yearly two Indian arrows. He was given power to make laws "with the advice, assent, and approbation of the freemen, or of their delegates." At the first, he tried to use this power in its highest form, by submitting laws to a mass-meeting of freemen coming together in person, or by proxy, and by rejecting those in the enactment of which the freemen had taken the initiative but gradually the freemen grew too numerous, too widely scattered and too powerful for this arrangement to continue. So, after about the year 1650, a delegated body of freemen and the Governor's Council, as bicameral legislature, took the place of the primary assembly, while even as early as 1638 the Proprietary gave up the claim of the right to initiate legislation. All Englishmen were permitted by the charter to emigrate to Maryland, and after their arrival there, both they and their descendants had the right to enjoy all the privileges of Englishmen.

Religious Toleration.

The Virginians tried to prevent Baltimore from taking possession of the country granted him, and the expense of the early expeditions nearly impoverished the Proprietary, but neither then, nor in later years, when deprived of his province by force, did Cecil Calvert deviate from his persistent effort to secure for his posterity so valuable a possession. He had to remain in England to the end of his life, so as to ward off one threatened danger after another, and his policy, as shown by his letters, was that of a calm, shrewd, unenthusiastic, fair-minded, far-seeing man. He was a faithful member of the Catholic Church, which his father had joined, and he wished to provide an asylum for his coreligionists in his Palatinate, but he was so wise that he foresaw that a grant of any especial privileges to Catholics, or any establishment of that church in the province, would lead to a speedy forfeiture of the patent. He clearly wished the establishment of no other church. So from the first embarking in the enterprise of the settlement of Maryland, he gave the world the example of a ruler who separated church from state, and directed his colonists to show toleration to all Christians, allowing freedom of worship in any Christian form. That these colonists might have religious counsel and leadership, he sent two Jesuit priests with the first expedition, to one of whom, Father Andrew White, a man of marked devotion to his work, we owe our knowledge of the voyage of these first adventurers. The Jesuit order continued in Maryland during the whole of the provincial period as the chief religious agency of the Catholic Church, and their conscientious zeal and fidelity make the Maryland mission's history one of the finest in the records of the order. Their chief service was in rearing a number of native Jesuit priests, who were largely responsible for the American character of their church in the United States.

Leonard Calvert, the first Lieutenant-General and Governor of Maryland, was only twenty-eight years old when he set sail for the province. He was a sincere, straightforward man, of some ability; but with the fatal failing of his family of being unable to read men and to choose the proper agents to carry out his purposes. With him, as commissioners, came Jerome Hawley, who soon left Maryland for Virginia, and Thomas Cornwallis, who was to be the military leader of the new colony, while among a number of gentlemen in the expedition was George Calvert, another younger brother of Baltimore, who, like many others, was unable to stand the seasoning process of acclimatization and soon died. Most of the gentlemen were Roman Catholics ; but many of the yeomen and servants were Protestants, and it is probable that from the beginning the majority of the settlers in Maryland paid no religious allegiance to the Pope.

Settlement of Maryland.

The expedition sailed in two vessels, the Ark and the Dove, names of good omen to those who were to settle a new world, and took the usual southern course through the West Indies, which made the voyage so long that they did not arrive in Virginia until Feb. 24, 1633. There the governor was friendly, but the settlers were so hostile that they soon afterwards revolted, seized him and sent him to England, largely because of his friendliness to Calvert. The tiresome voyage was over and the settlers saw the "most delightful water between two sweet lands." From the enthusiastic reports sent him, Baltimore caused to be prepared in England in 1634 and 1635, two pamphlets, in the nature of prospectuses to invite settlers, which Relations are the earliest printed accounts of the province.

Leonard Calvert remembered his brother's wise injunction to have as little as possible to do with the Virginians during the first year, and soon sailed up the bay and entered the Potomac River. Landing on St. Clement's, now called Blackiston's Island, on "Our Blessed Lady's Day in Lent," March 25, 1634, the new year's day of the calendar then used, he "took solemn possession of the country for our Saviour and for our sovereign Lord, the King of England." Calvert then pacified the fears of the aborigines and bought from them, through the advice of Captain Fleet, an old Indian trader, the Indian town of Yaocomico, which was renamed St. Mary's. A Dutch settlement on the Delaware had been destroyed by Indians, and Claiborne's factory on Kent Island seems to have been the only other one within the province at this time. Calvert had instructions to use Claiborne courteously and permit him to proceed in his plantation, if he would acknowledge that he owed fidelity to Baltimore; but this acknowledgment was sturdily refused, while Claiborne's difficulties increased through differences with his London partners. Thus petty warfare existed between the settlers of Kent Island and those of St. Mary's for three years, and led to a sort of naval battle on the Pocomoke in 1635. Finally, Claiborne went to England in 1637, leaving the island in charge of Capt. George Evelin. The latter was friendly to Baltimore and, unsuccessfully, endeavored to induce the settlers on the island to accept Baltimore as their ruler. Finally, in February, 1638, Governor Calvert led an expedition in person against Kent Island and overcame the opposition there without much difficulty.

Government of the Province.

After the settlers had been in Maryland nearly a year, Calvert called an assembly of the people, which met in February, 1635, but its proceedings are lost and its acts were vetoed by the Proprietary, so that the second assembly, in January, 1638, is the first one of which we have definite information. None of the bills introduced therein were placed upon the statute book, except one for the attainder of Claiborne, who shortly thereafter failed in England, in an attempt to secure restitution of Kent Island. The Assembly also acted as a court of law and tried and condemned to death for piracy Thomas Smith, one of Claiborne's followers. Towards the close of 1638, Leonard Calvert received a letter from his brother, yielding his claim to the legislative initiative and authorizing the governor to assent to such laws as he "shall think fit and necessary and as shall be approved by the major part of the freemen, or their deputies." As a result, a representative assembly of one house was held in February, 1639, which adopted a comprehensive temporary act to "endure to the end of the next General Assembly, or for three years, if there be no Assembly within that time." This policy of temporary statute making was followed throughout the whole provincial period and, although it involved much expenditure of time and caused a bulky statute book, it ensured fairly frequent sessions of the Assembly and, in such matters as the payment of officers whose remuneration was in the shape of fees, it also ensured a readjustment of the rates from time to time.

By New Year's Day, Old Style, 1639, the province had been governed for five years by Leonard Calvert. He had settled St. Mary's and had seen the settlers spreading out into various hundreds, while some men had established manors under grants from the Lord Proprietary. Indentured white servants were cultivating most of the land which the Proprietary's Conditions of Plantations had granted to the settlers on payment of an annual quit rent, but negro slaves had been introduced, and the colonists, ceasing to be dependent upon the Indians for maize, which was beginning to be raised in considerable quantity by the English, were also ceasing to be dependent upon the fur trade, and were taking up the cultivation of tobacco, which became the great staple product of the province and the medium of exchange in all transactions between man and man. The tobacco period lasted until Maryland became a state, but the cereal products, wheat and corn, were gradually thrusting tobacco from its predominance during the last years of provincial history. Calvert had also subdued Kent Island and established amicable relations with the Indians and the Virginians, and Claiborne's pretensions to any part of the province had been disallowed. Though the beginnings of Maryland were complete, the troubles of the Proprietary's officers were far from ended, and a period is now approached in which there were troubles with the Jesuits, who vainly claimed from Baltimore that same liberty of being governed by canon law only, usual in other countries with Roman Catholic lords, and to be freed from taxes, which claims led Baltimore to send out secular priests for a time and to stand firmly for the supremacy of the civil power in the state.

Leonard Calvert went to England in 1642, leaving Giles Brent in his room, and came back two years later with a royal commission empowering him to seize ships of the London merchants who adhered to the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War. Although he seems not to have used the commission, it gave the opposition an excuse for action, and turbulent times were felt in Maryland. Claiborne came back and tried to recover Kent Island. Richard Ingle, a pronounced parliamentarian, who had previously visited the province several times, and had been accused of making treasonable speeches, came to Virginia with his ship in February, 1645, seized a Dutch merchantman in the Chesapeake, and with the two vessels terrorized the province so that Calvert fled to Virginia. During this "plundering year" Ingle ranged about the province, ungratefully robbed Cornwallis, seized the property of the Jesuits and carried them to England when he returned thither. Calvert was not restored in the control of the province until the autumn of 1646, and Kent Island did not return to its allegiance to the Proprietary until April, 1647.

Shortly afterwards, on June 9, 1647, Governor Calvert died, making Mrs. Margaret Brent, a woman of strong mind, his executrix, with the injunction, "take all and pay all." He named Thomas Greene as governor, but the Proprietary a year later substituted William Stone, a Protestant, who brought into Maryland, as immigrants, a considerable number of Puritans from Virginia, in which province they had failed to find religious freedom. With the commission for Stone, the Proprietary sent a brief code of sixteen laws, which he desired the General Assembly to enact for the province. There was opposition to some of these laws, but the most famous of them, the "Act concerning religion," was amended and then passed in April, 1649. In later years, Charles, third Lord Baltimore, stated the purpose and content of this famous statute to be that the province might "have a general toleration settled there by a law, by which all of all sorts, who professed Christianity in general, might be at liberty to worship God in such manner as was most agreeable to their respective judgments and consciences, without being subject to any penalties whatsoever for their doing so, provided the civil peace were preserved. And, that for the securing the civil peace and preventing all heats and feuds, which were, generally, observed to happen amongst such as differ in opinions, upon occasion of reproachful nicknames and reflecting upon each other's opinions, it might, by the same law, be made penal to give any offense in that kind." The practice of the province was even more liberal than the statute, for Jews dwelt there without serious molestation. The Puritans made their settlement about the banks of the Severn River near where Annapolis now stands, and their coming caused the erection of a third county for them, under the name of Anne Arundel, the wife of the Proprietary. In the same year the coming of the Brooke family led to the establishment of a fourth county on the Patuxent, which, with a change of name and of boundaries, became Calvert county in 1654.

Maryland, 1654-1676.

After the establishment of the Commonwealth in England, five Parliamentary Commissioners were appointed to reduce Virginia from her allegiance to the crown, and their commission, by craft or accident, was extended to "all the plantations within Chesapeake Bay." Two of these commissioners were Claiborne and Bennett, the head of the Puritan party in Virginia ; the other three were Englishmen. Only one of the latter, however, arrived in America, and he, with the two Virginians, came to Maryland and seized the government in 1652. So great had been Baltimore's hatred for Claiborne that he had exempted him and Ingle from the general pardoning power conferred on Stone in his gubernatorial commission. It is not surprising, therefore, that the commissioners insisted, in a highhanded and illegal manner, that writs should henceforth run in the name of the keepers of the liberty of England, although the charter provided that writs should run in the name of the Lord Proprietary. Stone refused to obey these orders and was removed from office, but yielded three months later and was restored. For two years this modus vivendi continued. Then Stone again ordered the writs to run in the Proprietary's name, and the Puritans of Providence, as they called their settlement on the Severn, rose in revolt and compelled Stone to resign. Rebuked by Baltimore for yielding so easily, Stone gathered a force of men and a battle between the two parties took place in March, 1655, in which the Proprietary's party was routed and Stone taken prisoner. From July, 1654, to 1657, the provincial government was carried on by a body of commissioners, appointed by Bennett and Claiborne, acting under that commission to which reference has been made. These commissioners served as executive, council, provincial court and Upper House of Assembly. In 1656, the English authorities confirmed Baltimore's rights to his province, and after some delay and negotiation with the Puritan leaders, his authority was restored on March 23, 1657, with a general amnesty and a confirmation of the toleration act which the Puritans had repealed. So complete was the pacification that some of the Puritan commissioners sat in the General Assembly of 1659. The restored Proprietary government was under the direction of Capt. Josias Fendall, an energetic man, who proceeded to organize the militia and thus came into conflict with the Quakers, who were becoming an important element in the province, and whose religious principles would not allow them to bear arms. Under the preaching of George Fox and other itinerant evangelists, aided by permanent ministers of the Society of Friends, a number of their meetings were established in Maryland, and their influence has always been a noteworthy one. Fendall had been governor for two years only when he proved himself unfaithful to the Proprietary, and, surrendering his commission as governor, accepted a new one from the Assembly, which claimed the right to make laws without Baltimore's consent. When news of these measures reached England, Baltimore dismissed Fendall and appointed his half brother, Philip Calvert, as governor, sending with him an amnesty. As soon as Calvert arrived in Maryland, the plot of Fendall collapsed, and fines, with perpetual disfranchisement for a few men, were the only penalties which the lenient governor inflicted. In 1661, the Proprietor substituted his only son, Charles Calvert, who should succeed him as Lord Baltimore, in place of his brother, Philip, who was solaced with the Chancellorship of Maryland. Shortly thereafter, Leonard Calvert's son, William, was made provincial secretary, and a period of family government began which lasted for nearly thirty years, as there were frequently other relatives of Baltimore in the council.

Meanwhile the Swedes had founded a colony on the Delaware in 1638, and the Dutch had reduced this New Sweden to New Netherland in 1655. Maryland's representative had been sent to notify the Dutch that they were within her limits, and must either acknowledge her jurisdiction or leave the province. Stuyvesant sent two envoys on this matter to St. Mary's, so that his side of the controversy might be strongly presented. One of these was Augustine Herman, who was so attracted by the province that he removed into it and took up a manor in its northeastern part, which he called Bohemia from his native land, and for which he paid by executing the first well surveyed map of Maryland. Other Dutch and Swedish settlers came across into the lands of the Chesapeake and trade sprang up between the two bays. This trade with the Dutch was lucrative and was illicit under the English navigation laws. Its profitable character seems to have been partly the cause why the provincial authorities hesitated to take decided action to reduce the Dutch until it was too late, and the Delaware settlements had fallen before the English fleet in 1664. Seizing them by right of conquest, the King granted them to his brother, the Duke of York, as part of his province of New York, and for nearly twenty years there was considerable friction between the two provinces through Calvert's sending his officers, from time to time, to summon the Delawareans to admit his overlordship and through his granting lands in that region. Cecil Calvert died in 1675. During the latter years of his life matters were relatively quiet in Maryland, although we read of Indian difficulties and of occasional differences between governor and Assembly. The boundary between Maryland and Virginia on the eastern shore was run, with some loss to our province through imperfect surveying. The tobacco trade flourished and settlements spread along the shores of the Bay so that Baltimore and Cecil counties were erected near the head of the Chesapeake, and Talbot, Somerset and Dorchester counties on the eastern shore.

The Proprietary rule of Charles Lord Baltimore was fully as disturbed as his father's had been. The Indian troubles caused a joint expedition by Maryland and Virginia forces against the Susquehannocks in 1675. Before the Indian fort, in shameful violation of a safe conduct, the Maryland commander weakly yielded to the Virginians' clamor and five of the chiefs were wickedly put to death. He was impeached by the Maryland Assembly, but escaped punishment through disagreement of the Houses. After a month's siege, the Indians fled from the fort. Some of them went southward and began that course of rapine in Virginia which led to Bacon's rebellion; while others, fleeing northward, joined themselves to the tribes of their Iroquois kindred and brought Senecas and Onondagas repeatedly into Maryland in hostile incursions against the white settlers and the friendly tribes, toward whom their hatred was even greater.
The rebellion of 1676 in Virginia had a lesser counterpart in Maryland, which was easily quelled; but, four years later, a more serious disturbance arose, headed by Fendall and one John Coode, a renegade Anglican clergyman. This led to the banishment of Fendall, but the discontent, though repressed at the time, was destined to grow, and the "Popish plot" in England, with the fear which the people there had for the overthrow of their religion, found reflection in Maryland in the suspicion felt by many towards a Roman Catholic Proprietary.

Relations With Penn.

A worse danger yet for the province arose in 1681, when William Penn, the true evil genius of Maryland, obtained a patent from the King for a large tract of land, bounded on the south by a "circle drawn at twelve miles distance from New Castle, northward and westward to the beginning of the fortieth degree of north latitude, and thence by a straight line westward." To this grant he added a further one, from the Duke of York, of Newcastle with a territory of twelve miles around it, and the lands bounding on the Delaware southward to Cape Henlopen. Penn began, at once, to colonize his province and territories, which, respectively, took the names of Pennsylvania and Delaware, and endeavored to gain over the frontier inhabitants of Maryland. His great object was to obtain access to the waters of the upper Chesapeake. Baltimore struggled on the other hand to preserve his province intact, and so wished, at once, to fix the fortieth parallel. The two Proprietors met several times, but Penn would not make direct observations of latitude, although he suggested that measurements be made from the Capes of the Chesapeake, by which means he thought Baltimore would gain from Virginia as much as he would lose to the north.

While Penn delayed a decision of the fortieth parallel and placed his city of Philadelphia just south of it, to obtain the advantage of possession and to manifest his brotherly love for the rightful owner of the land by wresting his territory from him, he pressed hard for a determination of his claim to Delaware. The death of Charles II. aided him in this, since it placed Penn's patron on the throne as James IT., and it is not surprising that the Privy Council, on Nov. 7, 1685, reported that the peninsula should be divided between the claimants by a meridian line running north from the latitude of Cape Henlopen. This decision was based on a mistaken and highly technical application of the clause in the Maryland charter, by which Baltimore was granted territory "hitherto uncultivated." These words were, in any case, words of description and not of limitation. At the time the charter was granted, the only Europeans within the province were such fur traders as Claiborne, whose claims had been disallowed. The alleged Dutch settlers had been regarded as "lawless interlopers, and, as such, they were forcibly reduced by the English," yet, "when it was a question of robbing Baltimore to gratify a royal favorite, they, the Dutch, were settlers and their occupation valid."

Internal Disturbances.

James II. went further and talked of having the charter of Maryland forfeited and the Proprietary's position was weakened by the unfortunate killing of an obnoxious revenue officer by a hot-headed Irish relative of Baltimore, who was a member of the Council. Before Baltimore had gone to England in 1684 to look after his affairs, leaving the Council in charge. Four years later he sent out a conceited, wordy, unpractical lawyer, who had high notions of prerogative and was a strong partisan of King James. There were Indian troubles and rumors of strange alliances between the Roman Catholics in Maryland and in Canada. The messenger sent by Baltimore to order the proclamation of William and Mary died, and the Council refused to proclaim the new sovereign without orders from the Proprietary. In July, 1689, Nehemiah Blakiston, collector of royal customs and an old enemy of Baltimore, with Coode, and other Protestants rose in revolt. Not all of the Protestant settlers were with them, but the agitators were in such earnest and Baltimore's supporters were so lukewarm that, within a month, the Protestant Association was supreme and the Proprietary government was overthrown. The new rulers asked the crown to administer Maryland as a royal province, and, their request being granted, the first royal governor came over in 1692. The charter was not forfeited, however, nor was the title to the land or his other private rights taken from Baltimore.

Annapolis and the Church Establishment.

The royal governors brought a greater regularity and formality into the proceedings of the government. We find the development of a highly trained and able body of lawyers, who gave the Maryland bar its first renown. Under Francis Nicholson, the capital was transferred from St. Mary's City to a site further north on the Severn River, where the new town of Annapolis was founded and named in honor of the Queen, who, with her husband, is also commemorated in the counties of Queen Anne's and Prince George's, the latter the first inland county on the western shore. Nicholson's administration is also remarkable for the establishment of the Church of England and the levy for its support of tobacco from every taxable person, which condition continued until Maryland ceased to be a province. About the same time the beginning of the educational system was made by the establishment of King William's School at Annapolis in 1696. The Bishop of London had control of ecclesiastical matters in the colonies, and he appointed, as his commissary in Maryland, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Bray, the founder of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Dr. Bray came to Maryland in 1700 for a few months only, but his influence upon the province was important. Feeling that good men must be procured for the Anglican Church's ministry in Maryland, and finding that such men were deterred from coming hither because of a lack of books, he conceived the idea of a system of parochial libraries for the use of the clergy. When he attempted to establish these, he felt that more was needed and that there should be a Provincial Lending Library at the capital for the use of the clergy and gentry. The project was accomplished and the first library system in America was established, while the Annapolitan library of nearly 1,100 volumes was the first free public circulating library in the country, and was a remarkably complete one for the time. The early part of the Eighteenth century saw the establishment of Presbyterianism in the province through the efforts of Francis Makemie in the lower part of the eastern shore.

Annapolis was the first town of any importance in the province, and after it was founded, St. Mary's City disappeared. The possibility of reaching nearly every planter's wharf by the shipping, which carried away his tobacco or wheat, rendered towns less necessary, so that the frequent attempts to establish them were nearly always fruitless during the provincial period, and Annapolis itself, although boasting of a remarkably cultured and attractive society, and possessing some fine town houses of the wealthy planters, had but little trade. The indentured white servants had been the main labor supply in the Seventeenth century; in the Eighteenth century we find the negro slaves appearing in large numbers, especially after the Treaty of Utrecht placed an important part of the African slave trade in English hands.

The Proprietors from 1715 to 1776.

The repressive laws of the province under royal government refused liberty to the Roman Catholics. The death of Charles, Lord Baltimore, in 1715, caused the proprietaryship to descend upon his son, Benedict Leonard Calvert. He had become a Protestant, so there was no longer left the pretext that it would be unsafe to permit the government to be carried on under Roman Catholic influences, and it was restored to the Calverts. Benedict Leonard Calvert died two months after his father and was succeeded by his son, Charles, the Fifth Lord Baltimore, who was still a minor. The new Lord was a skillful yachtsman, a dissolute, unlovely man. He was a friend and admirer of Frederick, the Prince of Wales, after whom lie named his only son Frederick, the last and worst of the Calverts, who was Proprietary from 1751 to 1771. Frederick, Lord Baltimore, was a rake, who never visited his province, though he was fond of traveling through Europe, and who left the province to Henry Harford, his illegitimate son. The title of Lord Baltimore died with Frederick, that of Lord Proprietary was wrested from Harford by the American Revolution. After that war Harford, who had just attained manhood, visited the state for the first time, in the vain endeavor to obtain some reimbursement for his losses of revenues and of land, all of which had been confiscated to the state.

While the province was under royal rule, the Proprietary had an agent in Maryland to attend to his private affairs and watch that the governor and Assembly did not encroach upon his lands and revenues. To fill that post he sent over from Europe Charles Carroll, an Irish Roman Catholic, the founder of an important family. On the other hand, the Assembly was represented in England by its agent appointed to watch after provincial interests there. At the time of the Proprietary's restoration, the governor of Maryland was Capt. John Hart, a man of infirm health, a hot-blooded, capable, Protestant Irishman, who was continued in office by the guardian of the young Proprietary. Theoretically, the second Charles Lord Baltimore had the same rights as the first; practically, the twenty-five years of royal rule had made a vast difference. An unknown youth was at the head of affairs, and, henceforth, the Proprietary seems to have been regarded as an absentee landlord. The people seemed to have cared but little for the change and the Proprietaries made little use of their power, except as a means of appointing relatives and friends to office. Hart's administration saw the preparation of a comprehensive code by a committee of the Assembly, whose chairman was Andrew Hamilton. Shortly afterwards Hamilton removed to Philadelphia, and was the first American lawyer to gain continental reputation. From Philadelphia he went to New York to defend John Peter Zenger, whom he had known long before, when both were neighbors in Chestertown on the eastern shore. The Protestants knew that the Calverts were of their faith, and soon found no ground for apprehension that they might lean too much towards the adherents of their ancestors' religion. The Catholics hoped, at first, that they might regain a part, at least, of their old influence and position, but were soon rudely disillusioned and were even disfranchised as a result of a violent contention between Carroll and Hart, who was backed by the Assembly. Some little suspicion of Jacobitism made the Catholics still more unpopular, and the repressive laws against them were continued throughout the provincial period.

Charles Calvert, a relative of the Proprietary, became governor in 1720, and his seven years of administration saw two noteworthy events. In 1723 the General Assembly passed a law for the establishment of a free school in each county. This system of academies was the only provision made for education by the province during the provincial period, but the benevolence of the friends of Rev. Thomas Bacon enabled him to establish a "charity working school" in Talbot county in 1750, in which manual training and the education of negroes were noteworthy features. Private schools and private tutors also gave education to the gentry, whose sons were frequently sent to Europe for the completion of their training.

The second notable occurrence of Charles Calvert's administration was a controversy, which lasted for several years, between the legislature and the Proprietary, as to whether the English laws extended to Maryland. The provincials won in the struggle, and their bold resolutions were long remembered: "that this province hath always hitherto had the common law and such general statutes of England, as are not restrained by words of local limitation, and such acts of Assembly as were made in the province to suit its particular constitution, as the rule and standard of its government and judicature." Those who maintain the contrary "intend to infringe our English liberties and to frustrate the intent of the crown in the original grant of this province."

Benedict Leonard Calvert, younger brother of Lord Baltimore, came out to Maryland as governor in 1727, and died of consumption on his way home in 1731. He is a pathetic figure, for the promise of his high-minded, lovable, scholarly nature had not time for fulfilment. He had studied in Oxford and traveled in Italy, and, in his time, Ebenezer Cook, who styled himself "laureate of Maryland," published in Annapolis the first poem printed in Maryland, the second part of that satire on Maryland manners, of which the first part, called the Sot weed Factor, had appeared in England twenty years before. The first printing press in Maryland had been set up about 1690, the first extant imprint dates from 1700, but the first newspaper was published at Annapolis in 1728, in which year, also, Governor Calvert received the dedication of a little book prepared by R. Lewis, a master of King William's School, who had edited Holdsworth's Muscipula, and made a metrical translation of it.

Calvert's administration was also the period when the two events occurred which caused Maryland to cease to be entirely a Southern colony, and to begin that career which made her a border state. In 1729 Baltimore Town was laid out on the Patapsco and, about this time, the first German settlers came from Pennsylvania into the fertile valleys of Western Maryland. Thus the province founded its great commercial city and gained a band of sturdy, God-fearing, hard-working men, whose ties were with the Pennsylvanians rather than with the Virginians. The opening of the back country gave Maryland an opportunity to seek western trade, and started that struggle between Baltimore and Philadelphia to obtain that trade, which led Braddock, influenced by the settlers in Maryland and Virginia, to make his road through Maryland, and Forbes, influenced by the settlers in Pennsylvania, in his more successful expedition against Fort Du Quesne, to make his road through the latter colony. The Germans in Maryland were not slaveholders, had few servants, and cultivated little tobacco, but devoted their chief attention to cereals. They also began small manufactures and thus diversified the industry of the palatinate.

In 1732 Charles, Lord Baltimore, came to the province in an attempt to settle the boundary dispute on the north with Penn's sons, who were joint proprietors there. By some unexplained means, in this year Baltimore had yielded to them all that they had demanded, and presented them several millions of acres of land to which they had no right. Although the Pennsylvanians had settled Philadelphia and Chester south of the fortieth parallel, they had no settlements as far west as the Susquehanna, beyond which river Marylanders were already building cabins near the north boundary. But Baltimore agreed to run a line fifteen miles south of Philadelphia, due west, so far as the provinces were coterminous. When he found his mistake, he applied to the English courts and refused to run the boundary, about which a petty warfare was carried on by the settlers. The case dragged on until 1760, when it was finally settled by an acceptance of the line of 1732, and three years later Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two excellent English surveyors, were sent out and spent four years in marking the boundary between the Penn's possessions and those of Baltimore.

Maryland, 1765 to 1776.

During the years of the Eighteenth century, the province grew in population and in culture. Worcester county on the eastern shore was established in 1742, and Frederick on the western in 1748. Dr. Richard Brooke, physician and politician, sent the results of his scientific observations to the English magazines, and the Annapolis Gazette, established in 1752, published graceful and correct poems written by the colonial gentlemen. Horatio Sharpe came over as governor in 1753, and continued in that office until relieved in 1768 by the Proprietary's brother-in-law, Capt. Robert Eden, the last provincial governor. A wise and popular man, Sharpe had a difficult position during the French and Indian War, in which Maryland played no very creditable part, owing to a niggardly Proprietary and a narrow-minded, unpatriotic General Assembly.

Like the other colonies, Maryland repudiated the Stamp Act, and forced the stamp distributor to flee the province and to resign his office. The General Assembly passed bold resolves, standing for a refusal of taxation without representation and claiming that the provincial legislature had the "sole right to lay taxes or impositions on the inhabitants of this province, or their property and effects." The day came on which the act was to go into operation, and there were no stamps in the province. How should business be transacted if unstamped paper was illegal? The Frederick county court took the sensible course and declared that its business should be carried on without stamps, and the other courts of the province followed.

Maryland was represented in the Continental Stamp Act Congress, and took part in the non-importation agreement and in the correspondence with the other colonies, so as to present a united front against British action. Yet she was conservative, and, in Sharpe and Eden, she had two governors of rare popularity. Eden had not only the British revenue acts to cause him difficulty, but also two local troubles. A strong party in the province declared that the act, which provided for the support of the clergy, had not been properly passed and was void, while the struggle over officers' fees was one which involved great excitement. Most officers were paid by fees, and the acts fixing these fees had been made temporary, so that the amounts might be readjusted at each passage. The chief offices were held by the Councillors, who naturally wished large fees, and when the act expired in 1770, dissensions between the two houses of the Assembly had caused all attempts to pass a new law to fail. What should be done? Eden issued a proclamation forbidding any officer to take a greater fee than allowed by the old law. This, of course, virtually authorized him to take fees at the old rate, and so fixed the fees. Had the governor a right to do this? A fierce controversy in the newspaper followed between Daniel Dulany, who defended the governor, and Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, who attacked him. While the majority of the people undoubtedly sided with Carroll, the governor held the whip hand, and fees were collected at the old rate till independence came. In Eden's administration, two new counties, Caroline and Harford, were established. In 1774, Eden went to England for a few months and, while he was away, in June, there met at Annapolis "a general congress of deputies from all the counties" to consider measures of opposition to England. This body was the first of a series of conventions which chose delegates to Continental Congress and Committees of Safety, to act as executives during the periods between conventions ; which sent troops to fight the British at the north and directed the choice of Committees of Observation in the counties to care for local matters; and which by the Association, a document offered in 1775 for subscription to the freemen of the province, approved of the measures adopted by the Continental Congress in opposition to Great Britain, and united the people "in maintenance of good order and the public peace." Though Eden's influence could not prevent acts of lawlessness from time to time, his tact and good-fellowship with the provincial leaders and the conservatism which showed itself generally in the province kept the "ostensible form of government" intact until the middle of 1776, and led the Provincial Convention, on May 17th, to deny that it was necessary to suppress the royal government and, on May 21st, to express the hope for a "reunion with Great Britain on constitutional principles." Eden saw, however, that "they will not long be able to stem the torrent which, in several provinces, runs strongly toward independence," and declined to accept the convention's proposition that he remain as governor, and promise to take "no active hostile part, nor to correspond with the British government." Accordingly, he embarked on a British man-of-war on June 23d and sailed for England, where, in August, for his skillful administration of the affairs of the province, he was created Baronet of Maryland, an honor still worn by his descendant.

Matthew Tilghman, William Paca and the two Carrolls were urging independence, Baltimore Town and Frederick county were wild for it, Samuel Chase, like a flame of fire, had preached it throughout Maryland, and on June 21st, the convention voted to allow its deputies in the Continental Congress to unite with those of the other colonies in declaring independence and forming a confederation. On July 3d the convention adopted her own declaration of independence, and thereafter began the task of preparing a permanent constitution for the new state, which showed herself behind no other one of the thirteen in her zeal and fidelity to the common cause. The history of the province is the history of those beginnings which caused the state's later career to be a successful one, and which explain the direction which the later history has taken.

BIBLIOGRAPHY - Allen, Ethan: The Garrison Church (1898); Alsop, George: Character of the Province of Maryland (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.); Baldwin, Jane: Maryland Calendar of Wills (1901-07); Bowen, L. P.: Days o f Makemie (1885); Bowie, W. W.: Bowies and their Kindred (1899) ; Brantly, W. T.: The English in Maryland (In Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 4); Brackett, J. R.: The Negro in Maryland (Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies); Black, J. Wm.: Maryland's Attitude in the Struggle for Canada (Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, 10th Series); Bozman, John L.: History of Maryland to 1658 (2 v. 1837); Browne, Wm. Hand: Maryland, the History o f a Palatinate (Am. Commonwealths) 1884; George and Cecilius Calvert (Makers of America) 1890; Ed. Calvert Papers Nos. 1 and 2 (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.); Ed. Maryland Archives (Md. His. Soc.); Ed. Maryland Historical Magazine, 1906-1908; Dennis, Alfred P.: Lord Baltimore's Struggle with the Jesuits (1900); Davis, G. L. L.: The Day Star of American Freedom (1855); Doyle, J. A.: The English in America, Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas (1882); Griffith, T. W.: Early History of Maryland (1821); Annals of Baltimore (1824); Gambrall, T. C.: Studies in the Colonial History of Maryland (1893); Church Life in Colonial Maryland (1885); Hall, C. C.: Great Seal of Maryland (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.); Ed. Calvert Papers No. 3, Hanson, Geo. A.: Old Kent (1876); Hawks, F. L.: Rise and Progress of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland (1839); Hughes, Rev. Thomas: History of the Society of Jesus in North America, attacks Lord Baltimore and supports the Jesuits (vol. 1 text and vol. 1 documents 1907); Ingle, Edward: Parish Institutions of Maryland (Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, 1st Series); Capt. Richard Ingle (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.); James, B. B.: The Labadist Colony; Johnson, B. T.: Foundation of Maryland (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.); Johnson, J. H.: Old Maryland Manors (Johns Hop. His. Studies, 1st series); Johnston, George: History of Cecil County (1881); Kilty, John: Landholder's Assistant (1808); Latane, J. H.: Early Relations of Maryland and Virginia (Johns Hop. His. Studies, 13th series); Lowdermilk, W. H.: History of Cumberland (1878); Morris, Rev. J. G.: Lords Baltimore (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.); McCormac, E. L: White Servitude in Maryland (Johns Hop. His. Studies, 22d series); McMahon, J. V. L.: History of Maryland (Chiefly Constitutional to 1776) (1831); McSherry, James: History of Maryland to 1848-49 (continued by B. B. James to 1900); Mallery, C. P.: Ancient Families of Bohemia Manor (1858); Mereness, N. D.: Maryland as a Proprietary Province (1901); Mayer, B.: Logan and Cresap; Neill, F. D.: Founders of Maryland (1876); Terra Mariae (1887); Petrie, George: Church and State in Maryland (Johns Hop. His. Studies, 10th series); Russell, Rev. W. W.: Land of the Sanctuary (Gives Roman Catholic view); Riley, E. S.: Legislative History of Maryland (1906); The Ancient City (Annapolis) (18S9); Ed. Celebration of the 200th Anniversary of Removal of the Capital of Maryland (1894); Ridgeley, D.: Annals of Annapolis (1841); Streeter, S. F.: First Commander of Kent Island (Md. Hist. S. F. Pubs.); Papers Relating to the Early History of Maryland (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.); Stockbridge, H., Sr.: Archives of Maryland (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.); Steiner, Bernard C.: Maryland during the English Civil Wars, Pts. 1 and 2 (Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies); Western Maryland in the Revolution (1902); Restoration of the Proprietary (1899); Maryland's First Courts (1901); The First Lord Baltimore (1905); Protestant Revolution of 1689 in Maryland (Am. His. Asso. Reports, 1897); History of Education in Maryland; Beginnings of Maryland and Descriptions of Maryland (Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, 21st and 22d Series); Ed. Early Maryland Poetry (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.): Ed. Life and Works of Rev. Thomas Bray; Citizenship and Suffrage in Maryland (1895); Life of Robert Eden (Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies); Sparks, F. E.: Causes of the Maryland Revolution; Schultz, E. S.: First Settlement of the Germans in Maryland (1894); Scharf, J. T.: History of Maryland to 1880 (3 Vols. 1879); Chronicles of Baltimore (1874); History of Western Maryland (1882); Baltimore City and County (1881); Sioussat, St. G. L.: Economics and Politics in Maryland (Johns Hopkins His. Studies, 21st series); Silver, J. A.: Provisional Government of Maryland (Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, 13th series); Thomas, J. T.: Chronicles of Colonial Maryland (1900) (especially good for St. Mary's County); White, Rev. A.: Narrative of the Voyage to Maryland (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.); Wilhelm, L. W.: Sir George Calvert (Md. His. S. F. Pubs.); Maryland Local Institutions (Johns Hop. His. Studies, 2d series). Proceedings of the General Assembly 1637-1710 (9 vols.); Proceedings of the Council 1636-1752 (9 Vols.); Judicial and Testamentary Business of the Provincial Court 1637-1657 (2 Vols.); Correspondence of Gov. Sharpe, 1753-71 (3 Vols.); Journal and Correspondence of the Council of Safety, 1735-1776 (2 Vols.); The Reports of the Maryland State Weather Service and of the Geological Survey (especially those articles by Edward B. Mathews on the Cartography of the State in Vol. I, and on the County boundaries in Vol. 6, and by St. G. L. Sioussat on the Highways in Vol. 2 and the various county volumes.

BERNARD C. STEINER,
Librarian The Enoch Pratt Free Library; Associate in History, Johns Hopkins University.