assembly in America was convened at Jamestown. It consisted of the governor, council, and two burgesses from each of the ten plantations or settlements.

The London Company was fast passing out of the hands of merchants like Sir Thomas Smith and coming under the control of liberal statesmen like Sir Edwin Sandys, who more than any one else is entitled to the honor of being the father of representative government in America. In 1619 Sandys was elected to succeed Sir Thomas Smith as treasurer or president of the Company and would have continued in that position had it not been for the hostility of the king, who regarded him as the head of the opposition in Parliament. When the next annual election came around the king sent word to the Company to "choose the devil if you will, but not Sir Edwin Sandys," and the Earl of Southampton, of like liberal views, was chosen in his stead.

The London Company deprived of

its charter, 1624

Since 1616 the tobacco culture had made rapid strides in Virginia and the economic future of the colony was assured. Between 1619 and 1622 over 3500 new settlers arrived. The Indian massacre of 1622, which cost the lives of 347 men, women, and children, was a severe blow, and gave the king an excuse for charging the Company with mismanagement. James's foreign policy was entirely dominated by his desire to bring about a marriage between his son Charles and the Spanish Infanta and he fell completely under the sway of Count Gondomar, the Spanish minister at London, who was continually intriguing with the enemies of the Company, and who told the king that the meetings of the Company were but a "seminary for a seditious parliament."

Finally a writ of quo warranto was issued against the Company and its charter formally annulled June 16, 1624. Virginia thus became a royal province under the direct control of the crown, and while the change proved in the

long run beneficial, Americans should ever hold in grateful remembrance the great association which founded the first English colony and planted in it the germs of civil liberty. The next few years of Virginia history passed without striking incident save the "thrusting out" of Sir John Harvey, an arbitrary governor of no great ability, who was arrested by members of the Assembly and sent back to England. In January, 1642, the most famous of the early governors, Sir William Berkeley, arrived in the colony. He was a

typical cavalier,

Sir William

1642

staunch upholder of Berkeley king and church, who appointed thanked God that governor, there were no free schools or printing presses in Virginia and hoped there would not be for a hundred years. The Virginians of those days were opposed to the high church views of Laud and many moderate Puritans came to the colony. The Puritan settlement in Nansemund county made an appeal to New England for ministers and in 1642 three arrived in Virginia. The following year Berkeley got the Assembly to pass a severe act against nonconformists and the New England ministers had to leave. The second Indian massacre which followed shortly afterwards in 1644, in which over three hundred whites perished, was referred to by John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, as a special act of Providence.

As the fortunes of the Puritan party rose in England Governor Berkeley became more intolerant of Puritanism in Virginia, and in 1649, shortly after Charles I was beheaded, more than a thousand Puritans left the colony for Maryland.

At the invitation of Governor Stone they settled on the Severn at a place called by them Providence, but known to later generations as Annapolis.

The founder of Maryland, George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, seems to have been actuated by two motives; first, the creation of a

The found

ing of

Maryland, 1632-1634

great family domain,

and second, the es-
tablishment of a place

of refuge for Catholics. In 1627 he took his family and a group of settlers to Newfoundland, but two years later he went south in search of a warmer climate, and arrived at Jamestown in October, 1629. He was not a welcome guest, though the council appears to have treated him with respect, if we may judge by the following entry on the record: "Thomas Tindall to be pilloried two hours for giving my Lord Baltimore the lie and threatening to knock him down."

The Mary

land grant,

1632

Lord Baltimore, who was a favorite of James I, had been a member of the Virginia Company, but of the faction which opposed Sir Edwin Sandys and the Earl of Southampton. In addition to this he was a Catholic and when it became known that he contemplated a grant for himself south of the James River, Secretary Claiborne was sent to England to oppose his application. Claiborne was only partially successful, for in 1632 Lord Baltimore received a grant on the north side of the Potomac, extending as far as the fortieth parallel, and stretching from the meridian of the source of the Potomac on the west to the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The new colony was named Terra Maria, or Maryland, in honor of

Queen Henrietta Maria, though Terra Maria had, no doubt, a special significance to Catholics.

ment

George Calvert died before the charter passed the seal, but it was confirmed to his son Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore. By the terms of the charter The palatithe government of Maryland was modeled after nate form that of the bishopric of Durham, a county palat- of governinate on the Scottish border, whose bishop as ruler of the county had been vested in early times with almost absolute powers for the protection of the border against the forays of the Scotch. The position of Lord Baltimore as proprietor of Maryland was that of a great feudal landholder of the Middle Ages. To the king as overlord he had to deliver two Indian arrows at Windsor Castle each year in Easter week, and a fifth part of all the gold and silver mined in the colony. The principal limitation upon his power was that he could not make laws without the advice and consent of the freemen. The first colonists were sent over in two ships, the Ark and the Dove, and began a settlement at St. Mary's in lower Maryland on a branch of the Potomac March 27, 1634. Among them were both Protestants and Catholics, including two

The settle

ment at St.

Mary's, 1634, and the dispute

with Clai

borne over

Kent Island

Jesuit priests, and they were under the command of Leonard Calvert, brother of the proprietor, as governor.

St. Mary's was not the first settlement in Maryland. William Claiborne had settled a hundred men in 1631 on Kent Island, and this settlement was represented by a delegate in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Maryland had been carved out of the Virginia grant of 1609, and the Virginians resented Lord Baltimore's intrusion, so that when Leonard Calvert called upon Claiborne to recognize Lord Baltimore's authority over Kent Island, the council of Virginia advised him to disregard the demand. After several armed conflicts between the Kent Islanders and the settlers of St. Mary's, in which blood was shed on both sides, the Commissioners of Plantations finally decided the dispute in favor of Lord Baltimore.

It is only in a restricted sense that Maryland can be spoken of as a Catholic colony. The proprietor was of that Religious faith and most of the prominent and influential toleration families continued to be Catholic, but they were always in the minority. As early as 1641 three fourths of the settlers were Protestant. From the outset Lord Baltimore pursued a broad policy of religious toleration, and herein rests his chief claim to distinction. The provisions of the charter throw little light on the religious question. Its references to the religious status of the colony were indefinite and ambiguous, probably intentionally so, but the king undoubtedly understood that the laws against Catholics in England were not to be enforced in Maryland. The exclusion of Protestants on the other hand would certainly have involved the proprietor in serious difficulty, but it is certain that he never contemplated such a course.

The policy pursued in Maryland under Lord Baltimore's government was far in advance of the practices in England and in the other colonies, and to him full credit is due. In 1649, when he felt the control of the province slipping from