had obtained a special patent for the southern promontory of Newfoundland, named Avalon, after the fabled isle from which King Arthur was to return alive. How zealous he was in selecting suitable emigrants, how earnest to promote order and industry, how lavishly he expended his estate in advancing the interests of his settlement-is related by those who have written of his life. He desired, as a founder of a colony, not present profit, but a reasonable expectation; and, avoiding the evils of a common stock, he left each one to enjoy the results of his own industry. Twice did he, in person, inspect his settlement. In 1629, on his second visit, with ships manned at his own charge he repelled the French, who were hovering round the coast to annoy English fishermen; and, having taken sixty of them prisoners, he secured temporary tranquillity to his countrymen and his colonists.

Notwithstanding this success, he wrote to the king from his province that the difficulties he had encountered in that place were no longer to be resisted; that from October to May both land and sea were frozen the greater part of the time; that he was forced to shift to some warmer climate of the New World; that, though his strength was much decayed, his inclination carried him naturally to "proceedings in plantations.” He therefore desired the grant of a precinct of land in Virginia, with the same privileges which King James had conceded to him in Newfoundland.

Despatching this petition to Charles I., he embarked for Virginia, and arrived there in October, the season in which the country on the Chesapeake arrays itself in its most attractive brightness. The governor and council forthwith ordered the oaths of allegiance and supremacy to be tendered him. It was in vain that he proposed a form which he was willing to subscribe; they insisted upon that which had been chosen by the English statutes, and which was purposely framed in such language as no Catholic could adopt. An explanatory letter was transmitted from the Virginia government to the privy council, with the prayer that no papists might be suffered to settle among them.

Almost at the time when this report was written, the king at Whitehall, weighing that men of Lord Baltimore's condi

tion and breeding were unfit for the rugged and laborious beginnings of new plantations, advised him to desist from further prosecuting his designs, and to return to his native country. He came back; but it was "to extol Virginia to the skies," and to persist in his entreaties. It was represented that on the north of the Potomac there lay a country inhabited only by native tribes. The French, the Dutch, and the Swedes were preparing to occupy it; and a grant seemed the readiest mode of securing it by an English settlement. The cancelling of the Virginia patents had restored to the monarch his prerogative over the soil; and it was not difficult for Calvert -a man of such moderation that all parties were taken with him, sincere in his character, disengaged from all interests, and a favorite with the royal family-to obtain a charter for uncultivated domains in that happy clime. The conditions of the grant conformed to the wishes, it may be to the suggestions, of the first Lord Baltimore himself, although it was finally issued for the benefit of his son.

The ocean, the fortieth parallel of latitude, the meridian of the western fountain of the Potomac, the river itself from its source to its mouth, and a line drawn due east from Watkin's Point to the Atlantic-these were the limits of the province, which, by the king's command, took the name of Maryland, from the queen, Henrietta Maria. The country thus described was given to Lord Baltimore, his heirs and assigns, as to its absolute lord and proprietary, to be holden by the tenure of fealty only, paying a yearly rent of two Indian arrows, and a fifth of all gold and silver ore which might be found. Yet authority was conceded to him rather with reference to the crown than the colonists. The charter, like the constitution of Virginia of July, 1621, provided for a resident council of state; and, like his patent, which, in April, 1623, had passed the great seal for Avalon, required for acts of legislation the advice and approbation of the majority of the freemen or their deputies. Authority was intrusted to the proprietary from time to time to constitute fit and wholesome ordinances, provided they were consonant to reason and the laws of England, and did not extend to the life, freehold, or estate of any emigrant. For the benefit of the colony, the English

statutes restraining emigration were dispensed with; and all present and future liege people of the English king, except such as should be expressly forbidden, might transport themselves and their families to Maryland. Christianity, as professed by the church of England, was established; but the patronage and advowsons of churches were vested in the proprietary; and, as there was not an English statute on religion in which America was specially named, silence left room for the settlement of religious affairs by the colony. Nor was Baltimore obliged to obtain the royal assent to his appointments of officers, nor to the legislation of his province, nor even to make a communication of the one or the other. Moreover, the English monarch, by an express stipulation, covenanted that neither he, nor his heirs, nor his successors, should ever, at any time thereafter, set any imposition, custom, or tax whatsoever, upon the inhabitants of the province. To the proprietary was given the power of creating manors and courts baron, and of establishing a colonial aristocracy on the system of sub-infeudation. But feudal institutions could not be perpetuated in the lands of their origin, far less renew their youth in America. Sooner might the oldest oaks in Windsor forest be transplanted across the Atlantic than antiquated social forms. The seeds of popular liberty, contained in the charter, would find in the New World the soil best suited to quicken them.

Sir George Calvert deserves to be ranked among the wisest and most benevolent law-givers, for he connected his hopes of the aggrandizement of his family with the establishment of popular institutions; and, being a "papist, wanted not charity toward Protestants."

On the fifteenth of April, 1632, before the patent could pass the great seal, he died, leaving a name in private life free from reproach. As a statesman, he was taunted with being "an Hispaniolized papist;" and the justice of history must avow that he misconceived the interests of his country and of his king, and took part in exposing to danger civil liberty and the rights of the parliament of England. For his son, Cecil Calvert, the heir of his father's intentions not less than of his father's fortunes, the charter of Maryland was, on the twentieth

of the following June, published and confirmed; and he obtained the high distinction of successfully performing what colonial companies resident in England had hardly been able to achieve. He planted a colony, which for several generations descended as a lucrative patrimony to his heirs.

Virginia regarded the severing of her territory with apprehension; and, in 1633, before any colonists had embarked under the charter for Maryland, her commissioners in England remonstrated against the grant, as an invasion of her commercial rights, an infringement on her domains, and a discouragement to her planters. In all the business, Strafford, the friend of the father, "took upon himself a noble patronage of" Lord Baltimore; and the remonstrance was in vain. The privy council sustained the proprietary charter; they left the claimants of the isle of Kent to the course of law; at the same time they advised the parties to an amicable adjustment of all disputes, and commanded a free commerce and a good correspondence between the respective colonies.

Lord Baltimore was unwilling to take upon himself the sole risk of colonizing his province; others joined with him in the adventure; and, all difficulties being overcome, his two brothers, of whom Leonard Calvert was appointed his lieutenant, "with very near twenty other gentlemen of very good fashion, two or three hundred laboring men well provided in all things," and Father White with one or two more Jesuit missionaries, embarked themselves for the voyage in the good ship Ark, of three hundred tons and upward, and a pinnace called the Dove, of about fifty tons. On the twenty-second of November, 1633, the ships, having been placed by the priests under the protection of God, the Virgin Mary, St. Ignatius, and all the other guardian angels of Maryland, weighed anchor from the isle of Wight. As they sailed by way of the Fortunate islands, Barbadoes, and St. Christopher's, it was not until the last week in February of the following year that they arrived at Point Comfort, in Virginia, where, in obedience to the express letters of King Charles, they were wel comed with courtesy and humanity by Harvey. The governor offered them what Virginia had obtained so slowly, and at so much cost, from England: cattle and hogs and poultry; two

or three hundred stocks already grafted with apples and pears, peaches and cherries; and promised that the new plantations should not want the open way to furnish themselves from the old. Clayborne, who had explored the Chesapeake bay, and had established a lucrative trade in furs from Kent and Palmer's isles, predicted the hostility of the natives; and was told that he was now a member of Maryland, and must relinquish all other dependence.

After a week's kind entertainment, the adventurers bent their course to the north and entered the Potomac. "A larger or more beautiful river," writes Father White, "I have never seen; the Thames, compared with it, can scarce be considered a rivulet; no undergrowth chokes the beautiful groves on each of its solid banks, so that you might drive a four-horse chariot among the trees." Sheltered by a small island, which can now hardly be identified, the Ark cast anchor, while Calvert, with the Dove and another pinnace, ascended the stream. At about forty-seven leagues above the mouth of the river, he came upon the village of Piscataqua, an Indian settlement nearly opposite Mount Vernon, where he found an Englishman who had lived many years among the Indians as a trader, and spoke their language well. With him for an interpreter, a parley was held. To the request for leave for the newcomers to sit down in his country, the chieftain of the tribe answered: "they might use their own discretion." It did not seem safe to plant so far in the interior. Taking with him the trader, Calvert went down the river, examining the creeks and estuaries nearer the Chesapeake; he entered the branch which is now called St. Mary's; and, about four leagues from its junction with the Potomac, he anchored at the Indian town of Yoacomoco. The native inhabitants, having suffered from the superior power of the Susquehannahs, who occupied the district between that river and the Delaware bay, had already resolved to remove into places of more security; and many of them had begun to migrate. It was easy, by presents of cloth and axes, of hoes and knives, to gain their good-will, and to purchase their rights to the soil which they were preparing to abandon. With mutual promises of friendship and peace, they readily gave consent that