Province of Maryland

Henrietta Maria, the English queen after whom the colony was named

The Catholic George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, (1579–1632), former Secretary of State to King Charles I of England, wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the New World. After having visited the Americas and founded a colony in the future Canadian province of Newfoundland called "Avalon", he convinced the King to grant him a second territory in more southern, temperate climes. Upon Baltimore's death in 1632 the grant was transferred to his eldest son Cecil, the 2nd Baron Baltimore.

On 20 June 1632, Charles granted the original charter for Maryland, a proprietary colony of about twelve million acres (49,000 km²), to the 2nd Baron Baltimore. Some historians view this grant as a form of compensation for the 2nd Lord Baltimore's father's having been stripped of his title of Secretary of State upon announcing his Roman Catholicism in 1625. The charter offered no guidelines on religion, although it was assumed that Catholics would not be molested in the new colony.[4]

Whatever the reason for granting the colony specifically to Lord Baltimore, however, the King had practical reasons to create a colony north of the Potomac in 1632. The colony of New Netherland begun by England's great imperial rival in this era, the United Provinces, specifically claimed the Delaware River valley and was vague about its border with Virginia. Charles rejected all the Dutch claims on the Atlantic seaboard, but was anxious to bolster English claims by formally occupying the territory. The new colony was named after the devoutly Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria,[5] by an agreement between the 1st Lord Baltimore and King Charles I.[6]

Colonial Maryland was considerably larger than the present-day State of Maryland. The original charter granted the Calverts a province with a boundary line that started "from the promontory or headland, called Watkin's Point, situate upon the bay aforesaid near the river Wighco on the West, unto the main ocean on the east; and between that boundary on the south, unto that part of the bay of Delaware on the north, which lyeth under the 40th degree of north latitude from the aequinoctial, where New England is terminated."[7]^p. 116 The boundary line would then continue westward along the fortieth parallel "unto the true meridian of the first fountain of the river Pattowmack". From there, the boundary continued south to the southern bank of the Potomac River, continue along the southern river bank to the Chesapeake Bay, and "thence by the shortest line unto the aforesaid promontory, or place, called Watkin's Point."[7]^p. 38. Based on this deceptively imprecise description of the boundary, the land may have comprised up to 18,750 square miles (48,600 km²), 50% larger than today’s State.[8]

1975 reconstruction of Maryland Dove at St. Mary's City

In Maryland, Baltimore sought to create a haven for English Catholics and to demonstrate that Catholics and Protestants could live together peacefully, even issuing the Act Concerning Religion in matters of religion. The 1st Lord Baltimore was himself a convert to Catholicism, a considerable political setback for a nobleman in 17th century England, where Roman Catholics could easily be considered enemies of the crown and potential traitors to their country. Like other aristocratic proprietors, he also hoped to turn a profit on the new colony.

Catholic church at St Mary's City

The Calvert family recruited Catholic aristocrats and Protestant settlers for Maryland, luring them with generous land grants and a policy of religious toleration. To try to gain settlers, Maryland used what is known as the headright system, which originated in Jamestown. Settlers were given 50 acres (20 ha) of land for each person they brought into the colony, whether as settler, indentured servant, or slave.

Of the 200 or so initial settlers who traveled to Maryland on the ships Ark and Dove, the majority were Protestant.[9] On November 22, 1633, Lord Baltimore sent the first settlers to the new colony, and after a long voyage with a stopover to resupply in Barbados, the Ark and the Dove landed on 25 March 1634 (thereafter celebrated as "Maryland Day"), at Blackistone Island, thereafter known as St. Clement's Island, off the northern shore of the Potomac River, upstream from its confluence with the Chesapeake Bay and Point Lookout. The new settlers were led by Lord Baltimore's younger brother the Honorable Leonard Calvert, whom Baltimore had delegated to serve as governor of the new colony.[9]

The Native Americans in Maryland were a peaceful people who welcomed the English. At the time of the founding of the Maryland colony, approximately forty tribes consisting of 8,000 – 10,000 people lived in the area. They were fearful of the colonists’ guns, but welcomed trade for metal tools. The Native Americans who were living in the location where the colonists first settled were called the Yaocomico Indians. The colonists gave the Yaocomico Indians cloth, hatchets, and hoes in exchange for the right to settle on the land. The Yaocomico Indians allowed the English settlers to live in their houses, a type of longhouse called a witchott. The Indians also taught the colonists how to plant corn, beans, and squash, as well as where to find food such as clams and oysters.[10][11]

Here at St. Clement's Island they raised a large cross, and led by Jesuit Father Andrew White celebrated Mass. The new settlement was called "St. Mary's City" and it became the first capitol of Maryland. It remained so for sixty years until 1695 when the colony's capital was moved north to the more central, newly established "Anne Arundel's Town (also briefly known as "Providence") and later renamed as "Annapolis".

More settlers soon followed. The tobacco crops that they had planted from the outset were very successful and quickly made the new colony profitable. However, given the incidence of malaria and typhoid, life expectancy in Maryland was about 10 years less than in New England.[12]

"Historic St. Mary's City" (a historic preservationist/tourism agency) has been established to protect what is left of the ruins of the original 17th century village, and several reconstructed, government buildings, little of which remained intact. With the exception of several periods of rebellion by early Protestants and later colonists, the colony/province remained under the control of the several Lords Baltimore until 1775–1776, when it joined with other colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and eventually became the independent and sovereign U.S. State of Maryland.

In 1642, the Province of Maryland declared war on the indigenous Susquehannock nation (Conestoga peoples).[13] The Susquehannock (with the help of the colony of New Sweden) defeated Maryland in 1644. As a result, the Conestoga traded almost exclusively with New Sweden to the north while the colony was young.[13] The Susquehannocks remained in an intermittent state of war with Maryland until a peace treaty was concluded in 1652,[13][14] but would become allies in the following decades.[13] Records from this era are poor and accounts of these early conflicts are incomplete.[14]

In the peace treaty of 1652 the Susquehannock ceded to Maryland large territories on both shores of the Chesapeake Bay in return for arms and for safety on their southern flank. This decision was also related to the unrest among Native Americans caused by the Beaver Wars of the late 1650s, in which the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) swept south and west against other tribes and territories to expand their hunting grounds for the fur trade.[13] With the help of Maryland's arms, the Susquehannock fought off the Iroquois Confederacy effectively, and a brief peace followed. In 1666 the Susquehannock decisively defeated two tribes of the Five Nations of the Iroquois, recasting the power relationships in the upper Susquehanna Valley and those into the lower parts of New York.[13] This kept the colony free of incursions by the warlike Iroquois.[13] However, the buffer of the Susquehannock nation soon failed to protect the colony from the threat of the powerful Iroquois: the Susquehannock tribe became decimated by an epidemic. They went from being a regional power to nearly extinct in the first years of the 1870s.[13] In a later peace with the colonial governments of Virginia and Maryland, the Iroquois agreed in a treaty to absorb their remaining distant cousins, and the remaining Susquehannock people became a mere shadow of their former power.[13] By 1878 only 300 or so remained in the Wyoming Valley.[15]

In 1629, George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore "driven by 'the sacred duty of finding a refuge for his Roman Catholic brethren,"[16] applied to Charles I for a royal charter to establish a colony south of Virginia. He also wanted a share of the fortunes being made in tobacco in Virginia, and hoped to recoup some of the financial losses he had sustained in his earlier colonial venture in Newfoundland.[17]

In 1631, William Claiborne a Puritan from Virginia received a royal trading commission granting him the right to trade with the natives on all lands in the mid-Atlantic where there was not already a patent in effect.[18] Claiborne established a trading post on Kent Island on 28 May 1631.

Meanwhile, back in London, the Privy Council persuaded the 1st Lord Baltimore that he be granted a charter for lands north of the Virginia colony, in order to put pressure on the Dutch settlements further north along the Delaware and Hudson Rivers. Calvert agreed, but died in 1632 before the charter was formally signed by King Charles I. The Royal Grant and Charter for the new colony of Maryland was then granted to his son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, on 20 June 1632.[18] This placed Claiborne on Calvert land. Claiborne refused to recognize Lord Baltimore's charter and rights.

Following the arrest of one of his agents for trading in Maryland waters without a license in 1635, Claiborne fitted out an armed ship, and there ensued a naval battle on April 23, 1635 by the mouth of the Pocomoke River during which 3 Virginians were killed. Following this battle, Leonard Calvert captured Kent Island by force in February 1638.[19]

In 1644, during the English Civil War Claiborne led an uprising of Protestants in what came to be called the Plundering Time, also known as "Claiborne and Ingle's Rebellion" and retook Kent Island. Meanwhile, privateer Captain Richard Ingle (Claiborne's co-commander) seized control of St. Mary's City, the capital of the Maryland colony. Catholic Governor Calvert escaped to the Virginia Colony which remained nominally loyal to the crown until 1652.[20] The Protestant pirates began plundering the property of anyone who did not swear allegiance to the English Parliament, mainly Catholics. The rebellion was put down in 1647 by Governor Calvert.

A Parliamentary victory in England renewed old tensions leading to the Battle of the Severn, now present-day Annapolis, in 1655 between moderate Protestants and Catholics loyal to Lord Baltimore under the command of William Stone and Puritans loyal to the Commonwealth of England from the settlement of "Providence" under the command of Captain William Fuller. 17 of Stones men and two Puritans were killed, resulting in victory for the Puritans.

The issue of the ongoing Claiborne grievance was finally settled by an agreement reached in 1657. Lord Baltimore provided Claiborne amnesty for all of his offenses, Virginia laid aside any claim it had to Maryland territory, and Claiborne was indemnified with extensive land grants in Virginia for his loss of Kent Island.[21]

"Multiple colonial charters, two negotiated settlements by the states in 1785 and 1958, an arbitrated agreement in 1877, and several Supreme Court decisions have defined how Maryland and Virginia would deal with the Potomac River as a boundary line, and shaped the boundary on the Eastern Shore (separating Accomack County in Virginia from Worcester/Somerset counties in Maryland)."[22]

The border dispute with Pennsylvania continued and led to Cresap's War, a conflict between settlers from Pennsylvania and Maryland fought in the 1730s. Hostilities erupted in 1730 with a series of violent incidents prompted by disputes over property rights and law enforcement, and escalated through the first half of the decade, culminating in the deployment of military forces by Maryland in 1736 and by Pennsylvania in 1737. The armed phase of the conflict ended in May 1738 with the intervention of King George II, who compelled the negotiation of a cease-fire. A provisional agreement had been established in 1732.[23]

Maryland lost some of its original territory to Pennsylvania in the 1660s when King Charles II granted the Penn family, owners of Pennsylvania, a tract that overlapped the Calvert family's Maryland grant. For 80 years the powerful Penn and Calvert families had feuded over overlapping Royal grants. Surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon mapped the Maryland-Pennsylvania border in 1767, setting out the Mason–Dixon line.[24]

In 1672, Lord Baltimore declared that Maryland included the settlement of Whorekills on the west shore of the Delaware Bay, an area under the jurisdiction of the Province of New York (as the British had renamed New Netherland after taking possession in 1664). A force was dispatched which attacked and captured this settlement. New York could not immediately respond because New York was soon recaptured by the Dutch. This settlement was restored to the Province of New York when New York was recaptured from the Dutch in November, 1674.

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore

• George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1579–1631), Secretary of State under King James I, applied in 1629 for charter to establish a colony in the Mid-Atlantic area of North America, but died five weeks before it was issued.[25]
• Caecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605–1675), inherited both his father's title and his charter, which was granted in 1632. He was named for Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury,[26] principal Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth, whom Calvert had met during an extended trip to Europe between 1601 and 1603.[25] Rather than go to the colony himself, Baltimore stayed behind in England to deal with the political opposition raised by supporters of the Virginia Colony and sent his next younger brother Leonard in his stead. Caecilius never travelled to Maryland.[27]
• Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore (1637–1715), sailed to Maryland in 1661 as a young man of 24, becoming the first member of the Calvert family to take personal charge of the colony. He was appointed deputy governor by his father and, when the 2nd Lord Baltimore died in 1675, Charles inherited Maryland, becoming governor in his own right. During his tenure the price of tobacco began to decline, causing economic hardship especially among the poor. A hurricane in 1667 devastated the tobacco crop.[28] In 1684, the 3rd Lord Baltimore travelled to England[29] in regard to a border dispute with William Penn. He never returned to Maryland. In his absence the Protestant Revolution of 1689 took control of the colony. That year the family's royal charter was also withdrawn, and Maryland became a Royal Colony.

Benedict Calvert

• Benedict Calvert, 4th Baron Baltimore (1679–1715) understood that the chief impediment to the restoration of his family's title to Maryland was the question of religion.[30] In 1713 he converted to Anglicanism, despite his father cutting off his support. He also withdrew his son Charles from a Jesuit school, largely for political reasons. Henceforth father and son would worship within the Church of England, much to the disgust of his father Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, who maintained his Catholic faith despite the political drawbacks, until his death in February 1715.[30] Benedict became the Fourth Lord Baltimore upon his father's death in February 1715 and immediately petitioned King George I to reinstate the family's charter. However, the 4th Lord Baltimore survived his father by only two months, dying himself in April 1715.
• Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore (1699–1751) was the great-grandson of Charles II of England through his maternal grandmother, Charlotte Lee, Countess of Lichfield, the illegitimate daughter of the king's mistress, Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland. The Province of Maryland was restored to the control of the Calvert family by King George I when around 1715 Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, swore publicly that he was a Protestant and had embraced the Anglican faith.

Frederick Calvert, 6th and last Baron Baltimore, "conceited, frivolous, and dissipated"[31]

• Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore (1731–1771) inherited from his father the title Baron Baltimore and the Proprietary Governorship of the Province of Maryland in 1751. The 6th Lord Baltimore wielded immense power in Maryland, which was then a colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain, administered directly by the Calverts.[32] Frederick's inheritance coincided with a period of rising discontent in Maryland, amid growing demands by the legislative assembly for an end to his family's authoritarian rule. Frederick, however, remained aloof from the colony and never set foot in it in his lifetime. He lived a life of leisure, writing verse and regarding the Province of Maryland as little more than a source of revenue. The colony was ruled through governors appointed by the 6th Lord Baltimore. His frequent travels made him difficult to contact and meant that Maryland was largely ruled without him. His personal life was extremely scandalous by the standards of the time, and this contributed to growing unrest in his colony. In 1758, his wife "died from a hurt she received by a fall out of a Phaeton carriage" while accompanied by her husband. Although Frederick was suspected of foul play, no charges were ever brought.[31]

Frederick died in 1771, by which time relations between Britain and her American colonies were fast deteriorating. In his will, Frederick left his proprietary Palatinate of Maryland to his eldest illegitimate son, Henry Harford, then aged just 13. The colony, perhaps grateful to be rid of Frederick at last, recognized Harford as Calvert's heir. However, the will was challenged by the family of Frederick's sister, Louisa Calvert Browning, who did not recognize Harford's inheritance. Before the case could grind its way through the Court of Chancery, Maryland had become engulfed by the American Revolution and by 1776 was at war with Britain. Henry Harford would ultimately lose almost all his colonial possessions.

Lord Baltimore held all the land directly from the King for the payment of "two Indian arrowheads annually and one fifth of all gold and silver found in the colony."[1] Maryland's foundation charter was drafted in feudal terms and based on the practices of the ancient County Palatine of Durham, which existed until 1646. He was given the rights and privileges of a Palatine lord, and the extensive authority that went with it. The Proprietor had the right and power to establish courts and appoint judges and magistrates, to enforce all laws, to grant titles, to erect towns, to pardon all offenses, to found churches, to call out the fighting population and wage war, to impose martial law, to convey or lease the land, and to levy duties and tolls.[1]

However, as elsewhere in English North America, English political institutions were re-created in the colonies, and the Maryland General Assembly fulfilled much the same function as the House of Commons of England.[33] An act was passed providing that:

"from henceforth and for ever everyone being of the council of the Province and any other gentleman of able judgement summoned by writ (and the Lord of every Manor within this Province after Manors be erected) shall and may have his voice, seat, and place in every General Assembly. together with two or more able and sufficient men for the hundred as the said freedmen or the major part of them ... shall think good".

In addition, the Lord Proprietor could summon any delegates whom he was pleased to select.[34]

In some ways the General Assembly was an improvement upon the institutions of the mother country. In 1639, noting that Parliament had not been summoned in England for a decade, the free men of Maryland passed an act to the effect that "assemblies were to be called once in every three years at the least," ensuring that their voices would be regularly heard.[33]

Due to immigration, by 1660 the population of the Province had gradually become predominantly Protestant. Political power remained concentrated in the hands of the largely Catholic elite. Most councilors were Catholics and many were related by blood or marriage to the Calverts, enjoying political patronage and often lucrative offices such as commands in the militia or sinecures in the Land Office.[35]

Up to the time of the American Revolution, the Province of Maryland was one of two colonies that remained an English proprietary colony, Pennsylvania being the other.[51] Maryland declared independence from Britain in 1776, with Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton signing the Declaration of Independence for the colony. In the 1776–77 debates over the Articles of Confederation, Maryland delegates led the party that insisted that states with western land claims cede them to the Confederation government, and in 1781 Maryland became the last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. It accepted the United States Constitution more readily, ratifying it on 28 April 1788.

Maryland also gave up some territory to create the new District of Columbia after the American Revolution.