The Beginners of a Nation Part 24

Calvert had staked his hopes for himself and for English Catholicism on the Spanish match. This otherwise pliant courtier was intractable where his religious convictions were concerned. He scrupled to draw back at the bidding of Charles and Buckingham, when drawing back involved a violation of the treaty oath of the king and council, the plunging of England into a Spanish war, the sacrifice of the interests of the Catholic church, and a fresh exposure of his co-religionists in England to a harsh persecution. Calvert was one of that party in the junta for Spanish affairs which was unwilling to break a solemn treaty in order to gratify the wounded vanity of Buckingham and Charles, and he paid dearly for his firmness. To bring about his resignation, his antagonists diverted business from his office, thus reducing his fees and subjecting his pride to mortification. Under this treatment it was noted by a letter writer of the time that Mr. Secretary Calvert "droops and keeps out of the way." It was reported that he was ill, and then that he had been rebuked by the king and the prince, and it was known that he wished to sell his office to some one acceptable to Buckingham. Calvert's cleverness as a courtier did not fail him in his fall. He succeeded at the last in mollifying Buckingham, whose consent he gained to the sale of the secretarys.h.i.+p. After nearly a year of the prolonged agony of holding office in disfavor, he resigned in February, 1625, receiving six thousand pounds for his office, which was worth to the inc.u.mbent two thousand a year. He was at the same time raised to the Irish peerage as Baron Baltimore. He made his religious scruples the ostensible reason for his resignation, and he was already known to be "infinitely addicted to the Catholic faith."

He made no secret of his proscribed religion; he exposed to visitors the altar, chalice, and candlesticks in his best room; and he catechised his children a.s.siduously in the doctrines of the ancient church. At the accession of Charles he retired from the Privy Council rather than take an oath offensive to his conscience.

VII.

[Sidenote: Calvert deserts Newfoundland.]

[Sidenote: Letters of Wynne, Daniel, and Hoskins, in Whitbourne's second ed.]

[Sidenote: Note 7.]

During the period of his decline from court favor Calvert's colony of Avalon probably suffered from neglect. He now gave his new leisure to the work of rescuing it. In 1627 he made a voyage to Newfoundland, taking a company of Catholic settlers and two priests. He went again in 1628. From Newfoundland he wrote to one of the Jesuits in England a letter of affection, declaring his readiness to divide with him "the last bit" he had in the world. In Avalon began the long chapter of the troubles of the Baltimores with the Puritan opposition. Besides his contentions with Puritan settlers, who abhorred the ma.s.s as a Jewish prophet did idolatry, he found it necessary to fight with French privateers bent on plunder. By the time the almost interminable Newfoundland winter had begun, he discovered that Avalon was not the earthly paradise it appeared in the writings of pamphleteers and in the letters of his own officeholders interested only in the continuance of their salaries. The icy Bay of Plesaunce and the bleak Bay of Flowers mocked him with their names of delight; of little avail was the fast-bound River of Bonaventure to its unlucky lord, or the Harbor of Heartsease to him who had sunk a fortune of thirty thousand pounds in the fruitless attempt to plant a settlement on a coast so cold. Ill himself, and with half his company down with scurvy, some of them dying, Baltimore turned his thoughts toward Virginia, now, after all its trials, prosperous under a genial sun.

[Sidenote: Sails to Virginia.]

[Sidenote: Rymer's Foedera, tom. vii, iv, 147.]

He knew the conditions of that colony and the opportunities it afforded. A member of the Virginia Company during nearly all the years of its stormy existence, he had been made one of the fifty-six councilors that took over its effects at its demise, and he was one of the eight who const.i.tuted the quorum, and who probably transacted the business of this Council for Virginia. Even under the government of the Company there had been precedents for the establishment of a "precinct" within Virginia independent of the Jamestown government.

Such a plantation had been that of Captain Martin and that proposed by Rich and Argall, and a charter for such had been given to the Leyden pilgrims. Baltimore wrote to ask for a precinct, pleading the king's promise already made that he might choose a part of Virginia. Here he would still be the head of a little independent state--a state in which the ma.s.s might be said without molestation. Before another winter set in he abandoned Avalon to fishermen and such hardy folk, and took s.h.i.+p for the James River, where he arrived in October, 1629.

VIII.

[Sidenote: Virginia antagonism.]

[Sidenote: Note 8.]

[Sidenote: Note 9.]

Baltimore's reception in Virginia was most inhospitable. He had perhaps counted on his former relation to the colony as a councilor to a.s.sure him a welcome. But the Virginians of that time were Sandys and Southampton men. They may have remembered that Calvert had been Sandys's enemy and political rival, and that he belonged to the faction of Sir Thomas Smyth in the company. The members of that faction had been the executioners of the company when they could no longer control it. Calvert was one of the later council, which had tried to take away insidiously the privileges granted to Virginians by their charter from the Virginia Company. This attack on their liberties they had stoutly resisted, even to cutting off a piece of one of the ears of the clerk of their own a.s.sembly for abetting it.

Now a n.o.bleman of the detested faction, an advocate of absolute government and a close friend of the king, had come among them.

Baltimore might easily expect to secure the governors.h.i.+p of Virginia itself. Perhaps it is hardly necessary to go even so far afield for a motive. The prospect of a settlement of Roman Catholics within the limits of the colony was in itself enough to excite the opposition of the Virginia churchmen. Baltimore's party of Catholics was not the only one repelled from Virginia about this time. Soon after Lord Baltimore's visit, perhaps, or just before, the Virginians refused permission to a company of Irish Catholics to settle within their bounds. These appear to have gone afterward to the island of St.

Christopher's, where again Protestant fellow-colonists fell out with them about religion, so that they were finally sent to settle the neighboring island of Montserrat.

[Sidenote: Character of the early Virginians.]

[Sidenote: Leah and Rachel, and De Vries Voyages, _pa.s.sim_.]

The Virginians, after all their sufferings, were now prosperous in a gross way, reaping large profits from tobacco, and living in riotous profusion after the manner of men beginning to emerge from the hards.h.i.+ps and perils of a pioneer condition into sudden opulence.

Their rude living did not at all prevent the colonists from being fastidious about their religion--it was the seventeenth century. Most of the Virginia clergy at this period were as reckless in life as the people, but the Protestantism of the colony was incorruptible. Some of the rabble even showed their piety by railing at the newly arrived papist n.o.bleman.

[Sidenote: Expulsion of Baltimore.]

[Sidenote: MS. Book of Instructions, Library of Congress, folio 136.]

A weapon of defense against Baltimore was ready to hand. Three years before his coming instructions had been sent from England to Yeardley to proffer the oath of supremacy "to all such as come thither with an intention to plant and reside, which, if any shall refuse, he is to be retorned or s.h.i.+pped from thence home." This order may not have been intended for so great a personage as a n.o.bleman of the Court. It may have been meant only to head off humble Irishmen like those who settled Montserrat, or it may have been merely a fence against Separatists. But it served the turn of the alarmed colonists. Pott and Mathews, Claiborne and Roger Smyth, who led the opposition, offered the oath to Baltimore. Baltimore had sacrificed his place in the Privy Council rather than take this oath so contrary to his conscience, and he now again stood by his religious convictions, and took s.h.i.+p for England as ordered by the Virginia Council. He was disappointed and already shaken in health. The members of the council, appalled at their own boldness, perhaps, wrote to the king in self-defense. There is still extant an old ma.n.u.script record book of the seventeenth century which contains the instructions to Yeardley. Immediately following, as if to put it under the shelter of royal authority, is the report of the council, without date or signature, that the oath had been offered to Baltimore and refused.

IX.

[Sidenote: Baltimore's seal.]

Baltimore's hards.h.i.+ps during two voyages to Newfoundland, and a winter in the rude abodes of pioneers there, his illness during that winter, the constant spectacle of sickness and death about him, and the disappointment caused by his rude reception in Virginia, were enough, one would think, to have broken his resolution. He went back to England "much decayed in his strength," as he confessed; but, strangely enough, this accomplished man of the world, whose career had been that of a courtier, was far from living in ease and quietness as his friends had expected him to do. He was possessed of a pa.s.sion for peopling the wilderness. He had written to the king from America that he was resolved to spend "the poore remaynder" of his days in colony-planting, his "inclinations carrying him naturally" to such work. To what extent he was prompted by a desire to leave to his heir the semi-sovereignty of a princ.i.p.ality, and how far he was carried by a naturally adventurous temper hitherto latent, we have no means of deciding; but one can hardly resist the conclusion that a fervent religious zeal was the underlying spring of a resolution so indomitable. Like many another man of that time, Calvert was lifted from worldliness to high endeavor by religious enthusiasm. The king felt obliged to interpose his authority; he forbade Baltimore's risking his life in another voyage, but he granted him a charter for a new palatinate on the north side of the Potomac.

[Sidenote: Death of the first Lord Baltimore.]

Lord Baltimore was doomed never to see the desire of his eyes. He died on the 15th of April, 1632, before the charter had pa.s.sed, leaving the planting of Maryland to be carried forward by his son and heir, Cecilius. The charter of Maryland pa.s.sed the seals on the 22d of the following June in favor of Cecilius, the second Lord Baltimore.

X.

[Sidenote: The charter of Maryland.]

[Sidenote: Note 10.]

[Sidenote: Rushworth, Part I, vol. i, 141, 1623.]

[Sidenote: Note 11.]

[Sidenote: Note 12.]

The Maryland charter was no doubt the work of George Calvert's own hand. Its main provisions are identical with those of Avalon; but it put the proprietary in a still better position. He held Avalon by knight's service, Maryland in free and common soccage, and the holdings of Maryland settlers would be under the proprietary, not under the crown. In fact, the crown retained practically no rights of value in Maryland beyond the bare allegiance of the settlers. Larger privileges of trade were conceded to Maryland than had been given to Avalon. In one respect the liberties of the future settlers were apparently better guarded in the Maryland charter, for there is a faint promise of a representative government in its phraseology. But even this was not definitely a.s.sured. In a single regard the charter of Maryland appears less favorable to the Catholic religion than its predecessors. Historic specialists with a religious bias, doing their small best to render the current of history turbid, have not failed to convince themselves by means of the new clause that Maryland was a Protestant colony. The patronage and advowsons of all churches had been conferred on the proprietary in the Avalon charter, and a like concession is made in the Maryland grant; but to this, in the Maryland charter, is attached a sort of "lean-to"--a qualifying clause that appears to limit the ecclesiastical organization of the colony to Anglican forms. "Together with license and power," runs the charter, "to build and found Churches, Chapels and Oratories in convenient and fit places within the premises, and to cause them to be dedicated and consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of our kingdom of England." In 1632 the Baltimore family was openly Catholic. The Puritans were raging against every indulgence shown by the court to Romanists. The clamor of the Catholic-baiters did not stop with a demand that Romanists should be expelled from England. The Commons had a few years earlier pet.i.tioned the King that they be excluded from "all other Your Highness's dominions." The founding of an English colony that might make a home for English and Irish Romanists was a more difficult project in the reign of Charles than it had been in the time of James when Avalon was granted. The clause which allowed Baltimore to dedicate his churches according to the ecclesiastical laws of England excites admiration. It graciously permitted an Anglican establishment in Maryland; it did not oblige Baltimore to do anything at all, nor did it, in fact, put any constraint whatever on his actions in this regard. The impotent clause which seemed to limit, but did not limit, the ecclesiastical organization was breathlessly followed by one far from impotent--a masterpiece of George Calvert's skill. It gave to the proprietary the legal power exercised from ancient times by the Bishops of Durham as counts-palatine. The regalities of Durham having been pared down by Henry VIII, the charter somewhat furtively reached back after the local absolutism of the middle ages by giving Baltimore all the temporal power ever possessed by any Bishop of Durham. But if alarm should be taken at the giving of powers so vast to a Roman Catholic subject, there might be rea.s.surance for timid souls in a clause in imitation of older charters than Calvert's, which stipulated that no interpretation should be put upon the charter by which G.o.d's holy and true Christian religion might be prejudiced. Ambiguity spread from the charter to some of the early Maryland laws, which wore a Protestant or a Catholic face according to the side from which they were approached.

XI.

[Sidenote: Condition of English Catholics.]

[Sidenote: An act for the better discovering and repressing of popish recusants. Also, An act to prevent, etc., 3 Jac. I, chaps. iv and v.]

When George Calvert projected his new southern colony he had every reason to suppose that it would be quickly supplied with settlers from the discontented English and Irish Catholics. The statute enacted in the third year of James, soon after the Gunpowder Plot, put those who adhered to the Roman communion in a precarious and exasperating situation. For the first year that a Catholic wholly neglected the sacraments of the English church he must pay twenty pounds. This was raised to forty the second year, and to sixty for every year of conscientious abstention thereafter. If he did not attend the parish church at all, the luxury of a conscience cost him twenty pounds a month, which, as money then went, was a large sum. If he were a rich landholder, the king might take the use or rentals of two thirds of his land until he should conform. The oath of allegiance by which he was to be tested was made ingeniously offensive to a Catholic conscience. If a Romanist should persuade a Protestant to accept his own faith he was guilty of treason, as was also his convert. The man who harbored a Roman Catholic neglecting to attend the parish church was to be fined ten pounds a month. Marriage by a Romish priest invalidated accruing land tenures. The Catholic was not suffered to send his children beyond seas for an education, nor yet to keep a schoolmaster of his own faith; he could not serve as an executor; he might not have the charge of any child; his house might be searched for Catholic books; he was not allowed to keep weapons; and when at last his vexed and troubled life was over, his dead body might not be buried among the graves of his forefathers in the parish churchyard.

[Sidenote: Administration of the law.]

[Sidenote: Lingard, viii, 189, cites Rymer, xxii, 13; Hardwicke Papers, 1446, and a private letter.]

The administration of this law was attended by many aggravations. The pursuivants took the very cattle and household goods of the poor; from the rich they exacted large payments, failing which, they pounced on valuable plate and jewels, which they seized under pretense that these were articles of superst.i.tion or the concealed property of Jesuits.

It is said that James derived a revenue of thirty-six thousand pounds a year from the fines of lay Catholics. To the several Scotch favorites of the king were a.s.signed certain rich recusants from whom they might squeeze whatever could be got by the leverage of the law.

[Sidenote: Influence of foreign policy.]

[Sidenote: 1583, reprinted 1688.]

[Sidenote: 1609, sm. 4to, pp. 112.]

[Sidenote: Ellis Collection, first series, iii, 128.]

[Sidenote: Neal, ii, ch. ii. Rapin, 215, 2d ed.]