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and executed. Cromwell paid but little attention to these atrocities, and made no effort to sustain the government of Lord Baltimore. a

In 1656 Josias Fendall, a weak and impetuous man, was sent out by the proprietor as governor of the province. There was now a Catholic insurrection with Fendall at the head. For two years the government was divided, the Catholics exercising authority at St. Mary's, and the Protestants at Leonardstown. At length, in March of 1658, a compromise was effected; Fendall was acknowledged as governor, and the acts of the recent Protestant assemblies were recognized as valid. A general amnesty was published, and the colony was again at peace.

When the death of Cromwell was announced in Maryland, the provincial authorities were much perplexed. One of four courses might be pursued: Richard Cromwell might be recognized as protector; Charles II. might be proclaimed as king; Lord Baltimore might be acknowledged as hereditary proprietor; colonial independence might be declared. The latter policy was adopted by the assembly. On the 12th of March, 1660, the rights of Lord Baltimore were formally set aside; the provincial council was dissolved, and the whole power of government was assumed by the House of Burgesses. The act of independence was adopted just one day before a similar resolution was passed by the general assembly of Virginia. The population of Maryland had now reached ten thousand.

On the restoration of monarchy the rights of the Baltimores were again recognized, and Philip Calvert was sent out as deputy-governor. In the mean time, Fendall had resigned his trust as agent of the proprietor, and had accepted an election by the people. He was now repaid for his double-dealing with an arrest, a trial and a condemnation on a charge of treason. Nothing saved his life but the clemency of Lord Baltimore, who, with his customary magnanimity, proclaimed a general pardon.

Sir Cecil Calvert died in 1675, and his son Charles, a young man who had inherited the virtues of the illustrious family, succeeded to the estates and title of Baltimore. For sixteen years he exercised the rights of proprietary governor of Maryland. The laws of the province were carefully revised, and the liberal principles of the original charter reaffirmed as the basis of the State. Only once during this period was the happiness of the colony disturbed. When the news arrived of the abdication of King James II., the deputy of Lord Baltimore hesitated to acknowledge the new sovereigns, William and Mary. An absurd rumor was spread abroad that the Catholics had leagued with the Indians for the purpose of destroying the Protestants of Maryland in a general massacre. An opposing force was organized; and in 1689 the Catholic party was compelled to surrender the government. For two years the Protest--

ants held the province, and civil authority was exercised by a body called the Convention of Associates.

On the 1st day of June, 1691, the government of Maryland was revolutionized by the act of King William. The charter of Lord Baltimore was arbitrarily taken away, and a royal governor appointed over the province. Sir Lionel Copley received a commission, and assumed the government in 1692. Every vestige of the old patent was swept away. The Episcopal Church was established by law and supported by taxation. Religious toleration was abolished and the government administered on despotic principles. This condition of affairs continued until 1715, when Queen Anne was induced to restore the heir of Lord Baltimore to the rights of his ancestor. Maryland again became a proprietary government under the authority of the Calverts, and so remained until the Revolutionary war.

The early history of the colony planted by the first Lord Baltimore on the shores of the Chesapeake is full of profitable instruction. In no other American province were the essential vices of intolerance more clearly manifested; in no other did the principle of religious freedom shine with a brighter lustre. Nor will the thoughtful student fail to observe how the severe dogmas of Catholicism were softened down when brought into contact with the ennobling virtues of the Calverts, until over river and bay and shore a mellow light was diffused like a halo shining from the altars of the ancient Church.

THE

CHAPTER XXVII.

NORTH CAROLINA.

HE first effort to colonize North Carolina was made by Sir Walter Raleigh. In 1630 an immense tract lying between the thirtieth and the thirty-sixth parallels of latitude was granted by King Charles to Sir Robert Heath. But neither the proprietor nor his successor, Lord Maltravers, succeeded in planting a colony. After a useless existence of thirty-three years, the patent was revoked by the English sovereign. The only effect of Sir Robert's charter was to perpetuate the name of CAROLINA, which had been given to the country by John Ribault in 1562.

In the year 1622 the country as far south as the river Chowan was

explored by Pory, the secretary of Virginia. Twenty years later a company of Virginians obtained leave of the assembly to prosecute discovery on the lower Roanoke and establish a trade with the natives. The first actual settlement was made near the mouth of the Chowan about the year 1651. The country was visited just afterward by Clayborne of Maryland, and in 1661 a company of Puritans from New England passed down the coast, entered the mouth of Cape Fear River, purchased lands of the Indians and established a colony on Oldtown Creek, nearly two hundred miles farther south than any other English settlement. In 1663 Lord Clarendon, General Monk, who was now honored with the title of duke of Albemarle, and six other noblemen, received at the hands of Charles II. a patent for all the country between the thirty-sixth parallel and the river St. John's, in Florida. With this grant the colonial history of North Carolina properly begins.

In the same year a civil government was organized by the settlers on the Chowan. William Drummond was chosen governor, and the name of ALBEMARLE COUNTY COLONY was given to the district bordering on the sound. In 1665 it was found that the settlement was north of the thirty-sixth parallel, and consequently beyond the limits of the province. To remedy this defect the grant was extended on the north to thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, the present boundary of Virginia, and westward to the Pacific. During the same year the little Puritan colony on Cape Fear River was broken up by the Indians; but scarcely had this been done when the site of the settlement, with thirty-two miles square of the surrounding territory, was purchased by a company of planters from Barbadoes. A new county named CLARENDON was laid out, and Sir John Yeamans elected governor of the colony. The proprietors favored the settlement; immigration was rapid; and within a yeareight hundred people had settled along the river.

The work of preparing a frame of government for the new province was assigned to Sir Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury. The proprietors, not without reason, looked forward to the time when a powerful nation should arise within the borders of their vast domain. To draft a suitable constitution was deemed a work of the greatest importance. Shaftesbury was a brilliant and versatile statesman who had entire confidence in his abilities; but in order to give complete assurance of perfection in the proposed statutes, the philosopher John Locke was employed by Sir Ashley and his associates to prepare the constitution. The legislation of the world furnishes no parallel for the pompous absurdity of Locke's performance.

From March until July of 1669 the philosopher worked away in

the preparation of his GRAND MODEL; then the mighty instrument was done, and signed. It contained a hundred and twenty articles, called the "Fundamental Constitutions ;" and this was but the beginning of the imperial scheme which was to stand like a colossus over the huts and pastures along the Cape Fear and Chowan Rivers. The empire of Carolina was divided into vast districts of four hundred and eighty thousand acres each. Political rights were made dependent upon hereditary wealth. The offices were put beyond the reach of the people. There were two grand orders of nobility. There were dukes, earls and marquises; knights, lords and esquires; baronial courts, heraldic ceremony, and every sort of feudal nonsense that the human imagination could conceive of. And this was the magnificent constitution which a great statesman and a wise philosopher had planned for the government of a few colonists who lived on venison and potatoes and paid their debts with tobacco!

It was one thing to make the grand model, and another thing to get it across the Atlantic. In this the proprietors never succeeded. All attempts to establish the pompous scheme of government ended in necessary failure. The settlers of Albemarle and Clarendon had meanwhile learned to govern themselves after the simple manner of pioneers, and they could but regard the model and its authors with disdainful contempt. After twenty years of fruitless effort, Shaftesbury and his associates folded up their grand constitution and concluded that an empire in the pine forests of North Carolina was impossible.

The soil of Clarendon county was little better than a desert. For a while a trade in staves and furs supplied a profitable industry; but when this traffic was exhausted, the colonists began to remove to other settlements. In 1671, Governor Yeamans was transferred to the colony which had been founded in the previous year at the mouth of Ashley River, and before the year 1690 the whole county of Clarendon was a second time surrendered to the native tribes. The settlement north of Albemarle Sound was more prosperous, but civil dissension greatly retarded the development of the country.

For the proprietors were already busy trying to establish their big institutions in the feeble province. The humble commerce of the colony was burdened with an odious duty. Every pound of the eight hundred hogsheads of tobacco annually produced was taxed a penny for the benefit of the government. There were at this time less than four thousand people in North Carolina, and yet the traffic of these poor settlers with New England alone was so weighed down with duties as to yield an annual revenue of twelve thousand dollars. Miller, the governor, was a harsh and violent man. A gloomy opposition to the proprietary government

pervaded the colony; and when, in 1676, large numbers of refugees from Virginia-patriots who had fought in Bacon's rebellion-arrived in the Chowan, the spirit of discontent was kindled into open resistance.

The arrival of a merchant-ship from Boston and an attempt to enforce the revenue laws furnished the occasion and pretext of an insurrection. The vessel evaded the payment of duty, and was declared a smuggler. But the people flew to arms, seized the governor and six members of his council, overturned the existing order of things and established a new government of their own. John Culpepper, the leader of the insurgents, was chosen governor; other officers were elected by the people; and in a few weeks the colony was as tranquil as if Locke's grand model had never been heard of. But in the next year, 1679, the imprisoned Miller and his associates escaped from confinement, and going to London told a dolorous story about their wrongs and sufferings. The English lords of trade took the matter in hand, and it seemed that North Carolina was doomed to punishment.

But the colonists were awake to their interests.

Governor Cul

pepper went boldly to England to defend himself and to justify the rebellion. He was seized, indicted for high treason, tried and acquitted by a jury of Englishmen. It marks a peculiar feature of this cause that the sagacious earl of Shaftesbury came forward at the trial and spoke in defence of the prisoner. But Lord Clarendon was so much vexed at the acquittal of the rebellious governor that he sold his rights as proprietor to the infamous Seth Sothel. This man in 1680 was sent out by his associates as governor of the province. In crossing the ocean he was captured by a band of pirates, and for three years the colony was saved from his evil presence. At last, in 1683, he arrived in Carolina and began his work, which consisted in oppressing the people and defrauding the proprietors. Cranfield of New Hampshire, Cornbury of New York and Wingfield of Virginia were all respectable men in comparison with Sothel, whose sordid passions have made him notorious as the worst colonial governor that ever plundered an American province. After five years of avaricious tyranny, the base, gold-gathering, justice-despising despot was overthrown in an insurrection. Finding himself a prisoner, and fearing the wrath of the defrauded proprietors more than he feared the indignation of the outraged colonists, he begged to be tried by the assembly of the province. The request was granted, and the culprit escaped with a sentence of disfranchisement and a twelve months' exile from North Carolina.

Sothel was succeeded in the governorship by Ludwell, who arrived in 1689. His administration of six years' duration was a period of peace

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