ATTACK ON THE PROPRIETOR'S AUTHORITY.

tween the

and the

313

Authority thus recovered was little likely to be abused, and for two years Maryland enjoyed tranquillity. This was first broken. Dispute be- by a dispute between the Proprietor and the Assembly.1 Proprietor This, however, does not seem to have sprung out of the relations between Baltimore and the defeated Assembly. party. It was rather a revival of the earlier conflicts as to the limits of the Proprietor's authority. The Burgesses put forward a claim to legislative power, independent of the Governor and Council. The latter body naturally disputed this view. The Burgesses then contended that the Council might sit with the Lower House as a single chamber. A more short-sighted and suicidal contention could hardly have been urged, since for the sake of a temporary victory it would have enabled the Proprietor at a later date to swamp the Assembly with his own creatures. Fendall, however, as Governor, together with his only two Councilors, accepted the position. The Assembly then put forward demands which were practically a rejection of the Proprietor's authority. It claimed independent legislative power, formally repealing all existing Acts and granting commissions. It also published a declaration forbidding all persons within the colony to acknowledge any authority save that which issued from the crown and itself. Fendall, too, notified his acquiescence in this position by accepting a commission from the Assembly.

Fortunately, however, for the Proprietor, his interests were in more trustworthy hands than those of Fendall. Baltimore's brother, Philip Calvert, apparently acting under direct orders from the Proprietor, held a provincial court, and the heads of the opposition were tried as rebels by a grand jury, and found guilty. All, however, were pardoned, save Fendall and one of the two Councilors; they were punished by a fine and disfranchisement.

The details of these proceedings and the motives of the actors are obscure, nor are the events themselves of much moment. Yet they are of some importance as marking the last of those struggles by which the constitution of Maryland was shaped, and thus as forming a step in that process by which the different colonies were assimilated to the model of the mother country.

1 The whole history of this dispute is confused and obscure. Unluckily, we have lost the guidance of Bozman. Our only authority on the subject consists in the various documents given in Bacon. I have based my account entirely on these.

CHAPTER XI.

THE REVOLUTION IN MARYLAND.1

The Restoration brought less change to Maryland, with its peculiar and almost independent constitution, than to any other of

the Resto

State of the the more important colonies. The position of the Procolony after prietor remained unaltered. The nature of that posiration. tion as estimated by Baltimore himself is well shown in the commission issued by him in 1666 appointing his son, Charles Calvert, Governor. Baltimore herein formally describes himself as the absolute Lord and Proprietor of the Province of Maryland. His assent is required to give validity to laws. Of the crown not a word is said, and the only reservation in his sovereignty which the Proprietor acknowledges is the law passed in 1650, which forbade any interference with religion. But though the Restoration brought about no formal alteration in the constitution of Maryland, yet the change of system which accompanied the Restoration made its influence felt. That event, as we have already seen, marked the beginning of a definite and connected. policy, which aimed at treating the colonies, not as isolated provinces to be dealt with in a spirit of capricious favor, but as a connected whole to be administered on fixed principles. The existence of such an anomaly as the independent sovereignty of Lord Baltimore was a hinderance to such a system, and every step which brought the colonies nearer to unity served to endanger his position.

This change, however, did not begin to operate during the remaining years of Cecilius Calvert. The economical and social

life of the colony flowed on evenly.

In its early days Maryland

1 Our *nowledge of this period of Maryland history is almost exclusively derived from the Colonia Papers.

Cial Papers, 1666, February 13.

RELIGIOUS PARTIES.

315

had bidden fair to outstrip Virginia in the race of prosperity. The disturbances of the civil war had turned the balance. The life of the Maryland planter resembled that of the Virginian, but on a poorer and meaner scale. In each colony the yeoman and the free peasant dwindled under the baneful shade of slavery. The abundance of rich soil and navigable rivers checked the growth of towns. The so-called capital, St. Mary's, consisted of some thirty houses straggling along the river at intervals of three hundred yards. The best house in the colony would have been but a poor abode for an English farmer.1 No schools or manufactures kindled higher aspirations or satisfied more refined wants than those of the farmer and huntsman.

In 1675 Cecilius Calvert died. His son Charles who succeeded him was a man of weaker nature and endowed with less State of statecraft and less tenacity of purpose. Yet in him religious parties. we see something of the same flexible and cautious temper, ever ready to make the best of defeat, kindling no enthusiasm, but turning the edge of hostility. His career as Proprietor was a troubled one, yet this was mainly due to causes in which his own character and conduct had no part.

During his lifetime a change went on in the composition of the colony which had begun even in his father's days. Maryland, founded by a member of the most aggressive and proselytizing of all creeds, became, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the one colony where all sects seem to have lived together, if not in harmony, at least without open and avowed discord. The Quaker there found that security which was denied him among the Independents of New England. The Puritans at Ann Arundel throve and increased in wealth and prosperity, till their county became the richest in the colony, and, what is stranger, the most loyal to the Proprietor. The disciples of Labadie came from France and lived, as it would seem, peaceably and soberly in Maryland, while cherishing theories of faith and morals as dangerous as those of any Antinomian.2 There is doubtless much that is attractive in this spectacle of religious equality and mutual toleration. Yet a state which has no common creed to which many of its members belong and most approximate, lacks one of the strongest bonds of citizenship.

1 These facts are stated in a report by Lord Baltimore. Colonial Entry Book, No. liii. 'An account of the Labadists in Maryland may be found in a paper by H. C. Murphy in the Long Island Historical Collection.

So far as Maryland had a state creed it was a cause of division rather than of union. There is nothing to show that the third Lord Baltimore was a more zealous Papist than his father. But it is at least clear that he was in some degree allied with the most dangerous members of the Church of Rome, with the unscrupulous Irish Papists who at a later day were the chosen instruments of James II. in his misdeeds.

There were other reasons which might well justify the Marylanders in looking with peculiar suspicion and dread on the encroachments of Popery. That motive was now beginning to operate which for more than a century determined the policy and shaped the common destinies of our American colonies. France had now become a formidable neighbor on the northwest frontier of the English settlements. Her power, strengthened by the sagacious despotism of Richelieu, and wielded by the restless ambition of Lewis, threatened to overwhelm our struggling and disunited colonies. The danger indeed was distant, yet it was clearly foreseen. The efficiency of the French missions, the dauntless heroism with which the Jesuits bore the gospel into the Indian villages, the readiness with which both they and the traders and explorers of their race adapted themselves to the wild life of their savage neighbors, might well strike terror into the English settlers. They seemed to be threatened by one of the most awful of dangers, the united onslaught of a savage horde directed by the intelligence and definite purpose of a civilized power. From the great majority of the colonies there was at least the certainty of united and determined resistance. Whatever strides Popery might make in England, there was little fear of any wavering among the Puritans of New England or the stubborn, selfwilled Protestants of Virginia. The Dutch settlers in New York and the Quakers of the middle colonies would at worst be lukewarm. Only among the Romanists of Maryland would the French find allies and supporters; if it came to a choice between their loyalty to England and their loyalty to Rome, there could be little doubt which would carry the day. Moreover, in the Society of Jesus France possessed, ready to hand, a secret service of diplomatists trained and organized to the highest pitch of efficiency.

In Maryland, indeed, that order had won no marked success. In 1670 the Jesuit mission there only consisted of three priests and three lay helpers, and in the next year it was reduced to two

ELEMENTS OF DISSENSION.

317

of each. Nor were the results of their labors among the Indians worthy to be compared with those achieved by their heroic brethren who spread Christianity along the lakes and through the forests of Canada. But about 1675 there are traces of increased activity sufficient to explain the alarm of the Protestant settlers. Thus the conflict of the Exclusion Bill and the coming struggle between Papist and Protestant in the mother country found a ready echo in Maryland.2

elements of

Other circumstances served to stimulate this state of division and disaffection towards the Proprietor. The resolute and not Other wholly unsuccessful efforts of the Virginians against the dissension. tyranny and incompetence of Berkeley had awakened a kindred spirit in their neighbors. There is indeed no proof of any actual alliance or intended co-operation between the two parties. But the leading Protestants in Maryland echoed the charges brought against Berkeley and the Proprietor,3 and his supporters retaliated on them with the title of Baconists.1

The colonization of Pennsylvania had also a detrimental influence on the position of Baltimore. Boundary disputes sprang up in which he was necessarily opposed to Penn. This told against Baltimore in more ways than one. In the first place, it cannot have failed to alienate from him the Quaker settlers in his own colony. Again, strange as it might seem, the Quaker Proprietor of Pennsylvania enjoyed a higher degree of court favor than the Roman Catholic Proprietor of Maryland. Moreover, the recklessness with which the chartered rights of English corporations and cities had been swept away showed how little security Baltimore's legal position offered him in any conflict with the crown.

There was also now a special clause of dispute which tended to bring Baltimore into collision with the English government. The Assembly of Maryland, in 1671, laid a tax of two Rousby, shillings a hogshead on exported tobacco. Of this

The

murder of

1 The history of the Jesuit mission is to be found in the reports appended to White's Nar rative.

2 There is a long account of one such dispute in the Colonial Papers.

The Protestant side of the case is well set forth in a remarkable pamphlet among the CoJonial Papers, evidently drawn up by a Maryland Puritan. It is addressed to the English public, and specially appeals to the "magnificent Lord Mayor and Aldermen." It begins with a narrative of the Virginian troubles, in which the corruption and greed of Berkeley and his young wife are severely handled.

♦ Baltimore, in a letter to Lord Anglesey, calls Fendall and Coode "two rank Baconists." Colonial Papers, July, 1681.

The case of Rousby is very fully set forth in the Colonial Papers.