Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore
Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore was an English politician and lawyer who was the first proprietor of Maryland. Born in Kent, England in 1605, he inherited the proprietorship of overseas colonies in Avalon along with Maryland after the 1632 death of his father, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, for whom it had been originally intended in a vast land grant from King Charles I. Young Calvert proceeded to establish and manage the Province of Maryland as a proprietary colony for English Catholics from his English country house of Kiplin Hall in North Yorkshire.
As a Catholic, he continued his father's legacy by promoting religious tolerance in the colony. He also was involved in the establishment of the Newfoundland Colony and the Province of Avalon. Maryland quickly became a haven for English Catholics in the Americas, particularly due to rising religious persecution in England. Governing Maryland's affairs since its founding for 44 years, Calvert died in England in 1675. After his death, the Protestant Revolution along the Chesapeake Bay of 1689, matched events occurring overseas across the Atlantic Ocean in Europe, overturning King James II and the Stuart royal dynasty of England and Scotland, and ended Roman Catholic control of the Province of Maryland colony, and established Protestant supremacy.
Early life and education
Calvert was born on 8 August 1605 in Kent, England, to George Calvert, a young English lawyer and assistant to Lord Cecil, Secretary of State to King James I, and was christened "Cecilius" in honour of his father's employer. His mother, his father's wife, was Anne Mynne, and he was the first of several sons. At the time, his father was under pressure to conform, and all ten children were baptised into the Church of England.Calvert entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1621. His mother died the following year. In 1625, his father, George Calvert, was created the first Baron Baltimore, of Baltimore, County Longford, in the peerage of Ireland, which did not give him a seat in the English House of Lords. He formally converted to Roman Catholicism the same year, and it is likely that his children followed him; at least his sons did.
In 1628, Cecil Calvert accompanied his father, along with most of his siblings and his stepmother, to the newly settled Colony of Newfoundland. The colony failed due to disease, extreme cold and attacks by the French, and the family returned to England.
Cecil Calvert succeeded as the second Baron Baltimore upon his father's death in April 1632. On 8 August 1633, the new Lord Baltimore was called to the bar as a barrister from Gray's Inn.
Settlement of the Maryland colony
Maryland Charter
Lord Baltimore, as Cecil now was, received a Charter from King Charles I for the new colony of Maryland, to be named for the Queen Consort, Henrietta Maria. This was shortly after the death, in April 1632, of his father, George who had long sought the charter to found a colony in the mid-Atlantic area to serve as a refuge for English Roman Catholics. The original grant would have included the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay as far south as the Potomac River and the entirety of the eastern shore.When the Crown realised that settlers from Virginia had already crossed the bay to begin settling the southern tip of their eastern shore, the grant was revised to include the eastern shore only as far south as a line drawn east from the mouth of the Potomac River. Once that alteration was made, the final charter was confirmed on 20 June 1632. This charter would be heavily contested by the 2nd Lord Baltimore's heirs and the Penn family in the Penn–Calvert Boundary Dispute.
Baltimore's fee for the Charter, which was legally a rental of the land from the King, was one-fifth of all gold and silver found and the delivery of two Native American arrows to the royal castle at Windsor every Easter. The Charter established Maryland as a palatinate, giving Baltimore and his descendants rights nearly equal to those of an independent state, including the rights to wage war, collect taxes and establish a colonial nobility. In questions of interpretation of rights, the Charter would be interpreted in favour of the proprietor.
Supporters in England of the Virginia colony opposed the Charter, as they had little interest in having a competing colony to the north. Rather than going to the colony himself, Baltimore stayed behind in England to deal with the political threat and sent his next younger brother Leonard in his stead. He never travelled to Maryland.
While the expedition was being prepared, Baltimore was busy in England defending the 1632 Charter from former members of the Virginia Company. They were trying to regain their original Charter, including the entirety of the new Maryland colony, which had previously been included within the domains described as a part of Virginia. They had informally tried to thwart the founding of another colony for years, but their first formal complaint was lodged with the "Lords of Foreign Plantations" in July 1633. The complaint claimed that Maryland had not truly been unsettled, as stated in its charter, because William Claiborne had previously run a trading station on Kent Island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay off the eastern shore. It also claimed that the Charter was so broad as to constitute a violation of the liberties of the colony's subjects. At this point, there were few Marylanders yet in residence.
''Ark'' and ''Dove''
The first expedition consisted of two ships that had formerly belonged to Baltimore's father George, Ark and Dove. Both ships departed from Gravesend, Kent with 128 settlers on board, but were intercepted and forced to return to port by the Royal Navy so that the settlers would take an oath of allegiance to the King as required by law. They then sailed to the Isle of Wight in October 1632 to pick up more settlers. There, two Jesuit priests and nearly 200 more settlers boarded before the ships set out across the Atlantic Ocean.Baltimore sent detailed instructions for the governance of the colony. He directed his brother to seek information about those who had tried to thwart the colony and to contact William Claiborne to determine his intentions for the trading station on Kent Island. He also emphasised the importance of religious toleration among the colonists, who numbered nearly equally Catholic and Protestant.
File:Leonard Calvert, by Jacob Van Oost I or II.jpg|thumb|Leonard Calvert, Lord Baltimore's younger brother and the first governor of the Maryland colony.
With these last instructions, the expedition crossed the Atlantic and sailed through Cape Charles and Cape Henry into the large harbour and lower bay called Hampton Roads at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay and the mouth of the James River. After meeting with the Virginians at their colony and capital of Jamestown, they continued up the Bay to the Potomac River, then further upstream and landed on 25 March 1634 at Blakistone Island. There they erected a cross and celebrated their first Mass with Father White. Several days later, they returned downstream and founded the first settlement at St. Mary's City, on 27 March 1634, on land purchased from the native Yaocomico tribe, a branch of the Piscataway Indians.
From England, Baltimore tried to manage the political relations with the Crown and other parts of government. Claiborne, the trader on Kent Island, resisted the new settlement and conducted some naval skirmishes against it.
Calvert attempted to stay closely involved in the governance of the colony, though he never visited it. During his long tenure, he governed through deputies: the first was his younger brother Leonard Calvert, and the last was his only son Charles.
Crisis before and during the English Civil War
The enterprise took place in the context of serious unrest in England. In 1629, King Charles I had dissolved Parliament and governed for the next eleven years without consultation from any representative body. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his Star Chamber campaigned against both Puritans and Catholics. As a result, the Puritans and Separatists began to emigrate to New England in Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony. Catholics began to see Maryland as a possible English-speaking place of refuge.Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, struggled to maintain possession of Maryland during the English Civil War by trying to convince Parliament of his loyalty; he appointed a Protestant, William Stone, as his governor. It is accepted he did this exclusively to maintain possession of the colony during the civil war, as his loyalties were with King Charles.