Chapter 5 A FRAGMENT OF HISTORY.

Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, the son of Cecilius, was, according to the testimony of all our annalists, a worthy gentleman and an upright ruler. He was governor of Maryland, by the appointment of his father, from 1662 to 1675, and after that became the Lord Proprietary by inheritance, and administered the public affairs in person. His prudence and judgment won him the esteem of the best portion of his people, and the Province prospered in his hands.

All our histories tell of the troubles that beset the closing years of his residence in Maryland. They arose partly out of his religion, and in part out of the jealousy of the crown concerning the privileges of his charter.

He was a Roman Catholic; but, like his father, liberal and tolerant in opinion, and free from sectarian bias in the administration of his government. Apart from the influence of his father's example, the training of his education, his real attachment to the interests of the Province, and his own natural inclination,--all of which pointed out to him the duty as well as the advantage of affording the utmost security to the freedom of religious opinion,--the conditions under which he held his proprietary rights rendered a departure from this policy the most improbable accusation that could be made against him. The public mind of England at that period was fevered to a state of madness by the domestic quarrel that raged within the kingdom against the Catholics. The people were distracted with constant alarms of Popish plots for the overthrow of the government. The King, a heartless profligate, absorbed in frivolous pleasures, scarcely entertained any grave question of state affairs that had not some connection with his hatreds and his fears of Catholics and Dissenters. Then, also, the Province itself was composed, in far the greater part, of a Protestant population,--computed by some contemporary writers at the proportion of thirty to one,--a population who were guarantied freedom of conscience by the Charter, and who possessed all necessary power both legal and physical to enforce it.

Under such circumstances as these, how is it possible to impute designs against the old established toleration, which had marked the history of Maryland from its first settlement to that day, to so prudent and careful a ruler as Charles Calvert, without imputing to him, at the same time, a folly so absurd as to belie every opinion that has ever been uttered to his advantage?

Yet, notwithstanding these improbabilities, the accusation was made and affected to be believed by the King and his Council; the result of which was that a royal order was sent to the Proprietary, commanding him to dismiss every Catholic from employment in the Province, and to supply their places by the appointment of Protestants.

The most plausible theory upon which I can account for this harsh proceeding is suggested by the fact that parties in the Province took the same complexion with those in the mother country and ran parallel with them,--that the same excitements which agitated the minds of the people in England were industriously fomented here, where no similar reason for them existed, as the volunteer work of demagogues who saw in them the means of promoting their own interest,--that, in fact, this opposition to the Proprietary grew out of a failing in our ancestors which has not yet been cured in their descendants, a weakness in favor of the loaves and fishes. The party in the majority carried the elections, and felt, of course, as all parties do who perform such an exploit, that they had made a very gigantic sacrifice for the good of the country and deserved to be remunerated for such an act of heroism, and thereupon set up and asserted that venerable doctrine which has been erroneously and somewhat vaingloriously claimed as the conception of a modern statesman, namely,--"that to the victors belong the spoils." I rejoice in the discovery that a dogma so profound and so convenient has the sanction of antiquity to commend it to the platform of the patriots of our own time.

I must in a few words notice another charge against Lord Baltimore, which was even more serious than the first, and to which the cupidity of the King lent a willing ear. Parliament had passed an act for levying certain duties on the trade of the Southern Colonies, which were very oppressive to the commerce of Maryland. These duties were gathered by Collectors specially appointed for the occasion, who held their commissions from the Crown, and who were stationed at the several ports of entry of the Province. The frequent evasion of these duties gave rise to much ill-will between the Collectors and the people. Lord Baltimore was charged with having connived at these evasions, and with obstructing the collection of the royal revenue. His chief accusers were the Collectors, who, being Crown officers, seemed naturally to array themselves against him. Although there was really no foundation for this complaint, yet the King, who never threw away a chance to replenish his purse, compelled the Proprietary to pay by way of retribution a large sum into the Exchequer.

I have no need to dwell upon this subject, and have referred to it only because it explains the relation between Lord Baltimore and Christopher Rousby, and has therefore some connection with my story. Rousby was an enemy to the Proprietary; and from a letter preserved by Chalmers it appears there was no love lost between them. Lord Baltimore writes to the Earl of Anglesey, the President of the King's Council, in 1681,--"I have already written twice to your Lordship about Christopher Rousby, who I desired might be removed from his place of Collector of his Majesty's Customs,--he having been a great knave, and a disturber of the trade and peace of the Province"; which letter, it seems, had no effect,--as Christopher Rousby was continued in his post. He was doubtless emboldened by the failure of this remonstrance against him to exhibit his ill- will towards the Proprietary in more open and more vexatious modes of annoyance.

All these embarrassments threw a heavy shadow over the latter years of Lord Baltimore's life, and now drove him to the necessity of making a visit to England for the purpose of personal explanation and defence before the King. He accordingly took his departure in the month of June, 1684, intending to return in a few months; but a tide of misfortune that now set in upon him prevented that wish, and he never saw Maryland again.

In about half a year after Calvert's arrival in England, King Charles the Second was gathered to his fathers, and his brother, the Duke of York, a worse man, a greater hypocrite, and a more crafty despot, reigned in his stead.

James the Second was a Roman Catholic, and Calvert, on that score alone, might have expected some sympathy and favor: he might, at least, have expected justice. But James was heartless and selfish. The Proprietary found nothing but cold neglect, and a contemptible jealousy of the prerogatives and power conferred by his charter. James himself claimed to be a proprietary on this continent by virtue of extensive royal grants, and was directly interested with William Penn in defeating the claims of the Baltimore family to the country upon the Delaware; he was, therefore, in fact, the secret and prepossessed enemy of Calvert. Instead of protection from the Crown, Calvert found proceedings instituted in the King's Bench to annul his charter, which, but for the abrupt termination of this short, disgraceful reign in abdication and flight, would have been consummated under James's own direction. The Revolution of 1688 brought up other influences more hostile still to the Proprietary; and the Province, which was always sedulous to follow the fashions of London, was not behindhand on this occasion, but made, also, its revolution, in imitation of the great one. The end of all was the utter subversion of the Charter, and a new government of Maryland under a royal commission. How this was accomplished our historians are not able to tell. From 1688 to 1692 is one of our dark intervals of which I have spoken. It begins with a domestic revolution and ends with the appointment of a Royal Governor, and that is pretty nearly all we know about it. After this, there was no Proprietary dominion in Maryland, until it was restored upon the accession of George the First in 1715, when it reappears in the second Charles Calvert, a minor, the grandson of the late Proprietary. This gentleman was the son of Benedict Leonard Calvert, and was educated in the Protestant faith, which his father had adopted as more consonant with the prosperity of the family and the hopes of the Province.

Before Lord Baltimore took his departure, he made all necessary arrangements for the administration of the government during his absence. The chief authority he invested in his son Benedict Leonard, to whom I referred just now,--at that time a youth of twelve or fourteen years of age. My old record contains the commission issued on this occasion, which is of the most stately and royal breadth of phrase, and occupies paper enough to make a deed for the route of the Pacific Railroad. In this document "our dearly beloved son Benedict Leonard Calvert" is ordained and appointed to be "Lieutenant General, Chief Captain, Chief Governor and Commander, Chief Admiral both by sea and land, of our Province of Maryland, and of all our Islands, Territories, and Dominions whatsoever, and of all and singular our Castles, Forts, Fortresses, Fortifications, Munitions, Ships, and Navies in our said Province, Islands, Territories, and Dominions aforesaid."

I hope to be excused for the particularity of my quotation of this young gentleman's titles, which I have given at full length only by way of demonstration of the magnificence of our old Palatine Province of Maryland, and to excite in the present generation a becoming pride at having fallen heirs to such a principality; albeit Benedict Leonard's more recent successors to these princely prerogatives may have reason to complain of that relentless spirit of democracy which has shorn them of so many worshipful honors. But we republicans are philosophical, and can make sacrifices with a good grace.

As it was quite impossible for this young Lieutenant General to go alone under such a staggering weight of dignities, the same commission puts him in leading-strings by the appointment of nine Deputy or Lieutenant Governors who are charged with the execution of all his duties. The first-named of these deputies is "our dearly beloved Cousin," Colonel George Talbot, who is associated with "our well-beloved Counsellor," Thomas Tailler, Colonel Vincent Low, Colonel Henry Darnall, Colonel William Digges, Colonel William Stevens, Colonel William Burgess, Major Nicholas Sewall, and John Darnall, Esquire. These same gentlemen, with Edward Pye and Thomas Truman, are also commissioned to be of the Privy Council, "for and in relation to all matters of State."

These appointments being made and other matters disposed of, Charles Calvert took leave of his beautiful and favorite Maryland, never to see this fair land again.