The Beginners of a Nation Part 26

[Sidenote: The second Lord Baltimore and Virginia.]

[Sidenote: Note 20.]

On his enemies in Virginia the younger Baltimore took ample vengeance.

He got one of the queen's household appointed treasurer of the colony, and the Virginians found themselves obliged to pay the quitrents, which had been neglected and apparently forgotten. Other officers of the colony were nominated by Baltimore. Harvey, the governor, hoping to collect money due him from the royal treasury by Baltimore's a.s.sistance, was his obsequious tool, to the bitter indignation of the Virginians, who hated Baltimore not only because he was a Romanist, but also because he had divided the first colony and cut off the northern Indian trade from Virginia. In consequence of the quarrel between Harvey and the Virginians over Maryland there ensued a revolution in Virginia; Harvey was s.h.i.+pped to England by the same bold men who had sent the first Lord Baltimore packing. But Harvey was sent back again by the king, and by this counter revolution the colonial const.i.tution of Virginia was modified for the worse. It was altogether an exquisite revenge.

[Sidenote: Baltimore seeks to control Virginia.]

[Sidenote: Note 21.]

Cecilius meditated even a bolder stroke. He schemed through Windebank to have himself made governor of Virginia, promising to wring out of it eight thousand pounds more of revenue for the king from some neglected sources. To achieve this, he proposed a scheme by which Windebank was to impose on the king's credulity. Secretary Windebank may have recoiled from the part he was to play; it is certain that Charles was not persuaded to hand over Virginia bound hand and foot into the power of the proprietary of the rival colony.

XVIII.

[Sidenote: Cautious policy of Baltimore.]

[Sidenote: Baltimore's instructions, 15 Nov., 1633, Calvert Papers.]

Intolerance on the part of the authorities of Maryland directed toward Protestants might have brought a swift overthrow of the whole project.

The instructions given for the first voyage already cited show throughout the need for extreme caution in the face of extreme peril.

It is required of the governor and commissioners that "they be very careful to preserve the peace amongst all the pa.s.sengers on s.h.i.+pboard, and that they suffer no scandal nor offense to be given to any of the Protestants." The rulers are to instruct the Catholics to be silent "upon all occasions of discourse concerning matter of religion," and those in authority are to "treat the Protestants with as much mildness and favor as justice will permit." These instructions were to hold good after landing, and in one notable case of religious dissension after the arrival in Maryland, justice was meted out against the Catholic offender in a way that showed a disposition to observe this policy of conciliation toward Protestants at the expense of some unfairness toward Catholics. Very early a proclamation was issued for the suppression of all religious disputes, and Copley, the business administrator of the Jesuits, thought they ought to be put down for fear the writings should be sent to the governor of Virginia.

[Sidenote: Necessary ambiguity.]

[Sidenote: Note 22.]

The ambiguous charter of Maryland was a necessary hypocrisy. The plan of toleration was also inevitable, and it was carried no further than necessity required, for in that age, when toleration was odious, a liberal policy had also its perils. The Act for Church Liberties of 1639 was a fine example of the studied ambidexterity of the Maryland government. It was enacted "that Holy Church within this province shall have all her rights, liberties, and immunities, safe, whole, and inviolate in all things." Holy Church here is a deliberate subst.i.tution for "the Church of England" in a similar phrase of Magna Charta. Such an act was worthy of Bunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways.

Interpreted by judges holding office at the will of a Catholic proprietary, it could have but one meaning. For the outside world it might bear another sense. It did all that could be done in the circ.u.mstances for the Roman Catholic religion and for Catholic ecclesiastics.

XIX.

[Sidenote: Puritan settlers invited.]

[Sidenote: Note 23.]

[Sidenote: Winthrop's Journal, ii, 148, 149.]

In 1643, Parliament, dominated by Puritans, could not let the distant Maryland province rest in peace. It pa.s.sed an ordinance making the Earl of Warwick Governor in Chief and Lord High Admiral of all the plantations in America. This act contained covert allusions to papists, Spaniards, and governors recently appointed by the king.

Baltimore met the rising tempest in a way characteristic of him. If he could settle a portion of his province with Puritans they might serve to s.h.i.+eld him from the storm. Besides, the Catholic emigration had not proved large, and his province needed inhabitants. He wrote to a Captain Gibbons, of Boston, sending him a commission under the Maryland government, and offering "free liberty of religion and all other privileges" to such of the New England people as were willing to remove to Maryland. There were those in New England in that day who longed for a more genial climate, but to settle under the authority of a papist was to them much like pitching a tent on the confines of perdition.

[Sidenote: Puritans from Virginia.]

[Sidenote: 1643.]

Though Puritans could not be induced to move from New England, it happened that the Puritans living in Virginia were persecuted in this same year by that stanch cavalier and retrograde churchman, Sir William Berkeley, who wanted his parsons to read prayers, but did not like preaching ministers of any sort. He was new to his government, and had brought over with him plenty of hostility to the party that had affronted his royal master in England. Virginia Puritans had no choice but to suffer or depart, and Maryland was convenient. They began soon after this to seek a refuge under the protection of a proprietary who was a papist and who practiced toleration--two things almost equally hateful to the Puritans. Mr. James, a Puritan minister, tarried in Maryland a short time, as early as 1643; he was probably the only Protestant minister that set foot on Maryland soil before 1650. But the Puritan was never easy unless he was uneasy, and he was sure to be uneasy within when there was none to molest from without.

To take an oath of fidelity to a papist was to him swearing fealty to antichrist; but so desirous was Baltimore of Puritan settlers that even the Maryland oath of fidelity was modified, and a saving clause was inserted for the ease of the Puritan conscience. The coming of Puritans who were in sympathy with the Parliament in England and who abhorred a tolerant papist, contributed something to the multifarious turmoils of the following years.

XX.

[Sidenote: Maryland turmoils.]

[Sidenote: Note 24.]

What we know of the petty civil wars of Maryland is tedious and perplexing. The broils before 1649 sprang from diverse sources, some of which we know, others we may easily conjecture. There was the old claim of Claiborne to jurisdiction over Kent Island; there was a disposition on the part of some of the Marylanders to relieve the tedium of existence by taking a hand in the great struggle against royal authority which was rending England; there was the tendency common in frontier communities to carry debates to a violent issue; there was perhaps a natural p.r.o.neness to insurrection on the part of bond servants and men lately out of service; and there was an innate hunger for spoil of any sort in the seamen of that age and in the rougher cla.s.s on sh.o.r.e. But by 1648 the tempest had pa.s.sed for the time; order had been reestablished; the Catholic and the Puritan were living in peace like the lion and the lamb of Hebrew prophecy; and the Catholic proprietary, always promptly bending before the storm, had delegated his authority to a Protestant governor who took the Parliament side.

XXI.

[Sidenote: The Act of 1649.]

[Sidenote: Note 25.]

Before this epoch Maryland toleration had been merely a practical fact. It had not been theoretically stated; it had not been a matter of legislation at all; its extent and limitations were unknown. But now that this colonial home of Catholics was to be a land of Protestants, and particularly of Puritans, it was necessary to formulate the principle of toleration, the more, that Baltimore's own co-religionists were to be put under a Protestant governor. Governor and high officers of state were required to swear that they would molest on account of religion no person professing to believe in Jesus Christ, "and in particular no Roman Catholic." By the mere march of events it had come to pa.s.s that in the state founded by Catholics as a cradle for the Roman Catholic religion, the Catholic was now compelled to secure as best he could the toleration of his religion at the hands of the heretic. Part of Baltimore's plan for this new settlement of affairs involved the sending over of a code of perpetual laws to be adopted by the a.s.sembly. The proprietary gave orders that the governor should not a.s.sent to any of these laws if all were not pa.s.sed; but the a.s.sembly of Maryland farmers was too cunning to be entrapped into pa.s.sing laws which it thought inconvenient and unjust.

A humble letter was sent from the members to the lord proprietary complaining that they were "illeterate" and "void of that Understanding and Comprehension" necessary to the discussion of such a code, and that in April they were too busy with their "necessary employment in a Crop" to give attention to it. They selected certain acts out of the code which they pa.s.sed, among which was the famous Act of Toleration of 1649. That this was part of the code sent from England there can be no doubt; the "illeterate" colonists were not capable of framing it, and it bears the character-mark of the Baltimore policy throughout. Here is no philosophic theory of toleration, no far-reaching conclusion like that of Roger Williams, that the magistrate may not take cognizance of merely religious offences. Williams was a thinker, a doctrinary, too far in advance of his age to be the successful organizer of a new state. Baltimore, on the other hand, accepted a practical toleration as an expedient--he may even have come to believe in it as a theory by force of his own situation. But he was not primarily a thinker at all. Even here, where Baltimorean toleration reaches high tide, no philosophic congruity is sought. The Jew and the Unitarian who deny the divinity of Christ are to be put to death. Only so much toleration is granted as is needful to the occasion. And even this toleration is not put upon any other ground than public policy; the forcing of conscience in religion "hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence"; therefore this law is made "to preserve mutual love and amity amongst the inhabitants." The provisions against such offences as blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking and religious disputes precede those for toleration.

Very politic is the arrangement by which reviling of G.o.d is made a capital offence, while reviling the Virgin Mary is adroitly a.s.sociated with speeches against the "holy apostles or evangelists" as a sort of second-cla.s.s blasphemy, a finable offence.

[Sidenote: Vicissitudes of toleration.]

And yet it was toleration, and the law was all the more influential as an example, perhaps, because it was only practical and quite incongruous. It was eminently prudent and statesmanlike. That it was not perpetually effective was the fault not of Baltimore but of the times. Puritan ideas were rampant. The government of the proprietary was overthrown; the Jesuits fled to the inhospitable Virginia, where they lived concealed in a low hut like a cistern or a tomb, not lamenting their physical privations so much as the lack of wine which deprived them of the consolation of the sacrament. The new government of Maryland, five years after Baltimore's famous "act concerning Religion," pa.s.sed a new act with the same t.i.tle--an act brusque and curt, a law with its boots and spurs on. "That none profess and exercise the papist religion" is its rude forbidding. The tables are turned; it is no longer the nonresident Jew and the hypothetical Unitarian who are excepted. But the wheels rolled swiftly once more, and in three years Cecilius, absolute lord and proprietary, was again master of Maryland, and the beneficent act of 1649 resumed its sway.

It protected the Catholic element, which, though always rich and influential, came to be in latter colonial times but about a twelfth of the population. Toleration also served to make Maryland an early dwelling place for abounding Quakers and others holding religious views not relished in colonies less liberal.

ELUCIDATIONS.

[Sidenote: Note 1, page 223.]

"Voto a Dios que la Corte d'Inglatierra es como un libro de cavalleros andantes." Quoted by Chamberlain in Birch, i, 413. In view of the swift mutations of fortune among courtiers, Dudley Carleton the younger wrote on December 18, 1624, "He is happiest who has least to do at court"--a truth which Calvert probably had come to appreciate by that time.

[Sidenote: Note 2, page 224.]

"The third man who was thought to gain by the Spaniard was Secretary Calvert; and as he was the only secretary employed in the Spanish match, so undoubtedly he did what good offices he could therein for religion's sake, being infinitely addicted to the Roman Catholic faith, having been converted thereunto by Count Gondomar and Count Arundel.... Now this man did protest to a friend of his own that he never got by the Spaniards so much as a pair of pockets; which it should seem is a usual gift among them, being excellently perfumed, and may be valued at twenty n.o.bles or ten pounds price." Goodman's Court of King James, i, 376, 377.

[Sidenote: Note 3, page 225.]

Whitbourne gives these names. Those who believe that Calvert was already actuated by religious zeal, remind us that Glas...o...b..ry (by a curious legendary confusion of names) was also called Avalon, and that in the Christian legend Joseph of Arimathea began at Glas...o...b..ry the planting of the Christian religion in Britain. See Anderson's Church of England in the Colonies, second edition, i, 325, 326. This interpretation of Calvert's intention in naming his colony was early given. British Museum, Sloane MSS. XXG. 3662, folio 24, date 1670.

When Calvert's first colony was sent out the Scotch settlement in Newfoundland was of twelve years' standing, while the Bristol colony had been seated there five years. Calvert's enterprise seems to have been pushed with more energy and with a more liberal expenditure than its predecessors. Compare Whitbourne _pa.s.sim_ with the statement of Sir William Alexander in his Encouragement to Colonies, 1624, p. 25.

[Sidenote: Note 4, page 225.]

Among the papers at Landsdowne House which I was permitted to examine by the kindness of Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, there is an unpublished work by James Abercromby, written in 1752. It discusses with acuteness the nature of the several colonial governments. I shall refer to it hereafter under the t.i.tle of Abercromby's Examination, Landsdowne House, 47. Abercromby was, so far as I know, the first to point out the apparently intentional ambiguity of the pa.s.sages in the Maryland charter that have to do with religion.