Democratic Stirrings in Maryland
Virginia, all this time, with Maryland a thorn in her side, was
wrestling with an autocratic governor, John Harvey. This avaricious
tyrant sowed the wind until in 1635 he was like to reap the
whirlwind. Though he was the King's Governor and in good odor in
England, where rested the overpower to which Virginia must bow, yet
in this year Virginia blew upon her courage until it was glowing and
laid rude hands upon him. We read: "An Assembly to be called to
receive complaints against Sr. John Harvey, on the petition of many
inhabitants, to meet 7th of May." But, before that month was come,
the Council, seizing opportunity, acted for the whole. Immediately
below the entry above quoted appears: "On the 28th of April, 1635,
Sr. John Harvey thrust out of his government, and Capt. John West
acts as Governor till the King's pleasure known." (Hening's
Statutes vol. I p. 223.)
So Virginia began her course as rebel against political evils! It is
of interest to note that Nicholas Martian, one of the men found
active against the Governor, was an ancestor of George Washington.
Harvey, thrust out, took first ship for England, and there also
sailed commissioners from the Virginia Assembly with a declaration
of wrongs for the King's ear. But when they came to England, they
found that the King's ear was for the Governor whom he had given to
the Virginians and whom they, with audacious disobedience, had
deposed. Back should go Sir John Harvey, still governing Virginia;
back without audience the so-called commissioners, happy to escape a
merited hanging! Again to Jamestown sailed Harvey. In silence
Virginia received him, and while he remained Governor no Assembly
sat.
But having asserted his authority, the King in a few years' time was
willing to recall his unwelcome representative. So in 1639 Governor
Harvey vanishes from the scene, and in comes the well-liked Sir
Francis Wyatt as Governor for the second time. For two years he
remains, and is then superseded by Sir William Berkeley, a notable
figure in Virginia for many years to come. The population was now
perhaps ten thousand, both English born and Virginians born of
English parents. A few hundred negroes moved in the tobacco fields.
More would be brought in and yet more. And now above a million
pounds of tobacco were going annually to England.
The century was predominantly one of inner and outer religious
conflict. What went on at home in England reechoed in Virginia. The
new Governor was a dyed-in-the-wool Cavalier, utterly stubborn for
King and Church. The Assemblies likewise leaned that way, as
presumably did the mass of the people. It was ordered in 1631: "That
there bee a uniformitie throughout this colony both in substance and
circumstance to the cannons and constitutions of the church of
England as neere as may bee, and that every person yeald readie
obedience unto them uppon penaltie of the paynes and forfeitures in
that case appoynted." And, indeed, the pains and forfeitures
threatened were savage enough.
Official Virginia, loyal to the Established Church, was jealous and
fearful of Papistry and looked askance at Puritanism. It frowned
upon these and upon agnosticisms, atheisms, pantheisms, religious
doubts, and alterations in judgment -- upon anything, in short, that
seemed to push a finger against Church and Kingdom. Yet in this
Virginia, governed by Sir William Berkeley, a gentleman more
cavalier than the Cavaliers, more royalist than the King, more
churchly than the Church, there lived not a few Puritans and
Dissidents, going on as best they might with Established Church and
fiery King's men. Certain parishes were predominantly Puritan;
certain ministers were known to have leanings away from surplices
and genuflections and to hold that Archbishop Laud was some kin to
the Pope. In 1642, to reenforce these ministers, came three more
from New England, actively averse to conformity. But Governor and
Council and the majority of the Burgesses will have none of that.
The Assembly of 1643 takes sharp action.
For the preservation of the puritie of doctrine and unitie of the
church, IT IS ENACTED that all ministers whatsoever which shall
reside in the collony are to be conformable to the orders and
constitutions of the church of England, and the laws therein
established, and not otherwise to be admitted to teach or preach
publickly or privately. And that the Gov. and Counsel do take care
that all nonconformists upon notice of them shall be compelled to
depart the collony with all conveniencie. And so in consequence out
of Virginia, to New England where Independents were welcome, or to
Maryland where any Christian might dwell, went these tainted
ministers. But there stayed behind Puritan and nonconforming minds
in the bodies of many parishioners. They must hold their tongues,
indeed, and outwardly conform -- but they watched lynx-eyed for
their opportunity and a more favorable fortune.
Having launched thunderbolts against schismatics of this sort,
Berkeley, himself active and powerful, with the Council almost
wholly of his party and the House of Burgesses dominantly so, turned
his attention to "popish recusants." Of these there were few or none
dwelling in Virginia. Let them then not attempt to come from
Maryland! The rulers of the colony legislated with vigor: papists
may not hold any public place; all statutes against them shall be
duly executed; popish priests by chance or intent arriving within
the bounds of Virginia shall be given five days' warning, and, if at
the end of this time they are yet upon Virginian soil, action shall
be brought against them. Berkeley sweeps with an impatient broom.
The Kingdom is cared for not less than the Church in Virginia. Any
and all persons coming into the colony by land and by sea shall have
administered to them the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance. "Which if
any shall refuse to take," the commander of the fort at Point
Comfort shall "committ him or them to prison." Foreigners in birth
and tongue, foreigners in thought, must have found the place and
time narrow indeed.
On the eve of civil war there arose on the part of some in England a
project to revive and restore the old Virginia Company by procuring
from Charles, now deep in troubles of his own, a renewal of the old
letters patent and the transference of the direct government of the
colony into the hands of a reorganized and vast corporation.
Virginia, which a score of years before had defended the Company,
now protested vigorously, and, with regard to the long view of
things, it may be thought wisely. The project died a natural death.
The petition sent from Virginia shows plainly enough the pen of
Berkeley. There are a multitude of reasons why Virginia should not
pass from King to Company, among which these are worthy of note: "We
may not admit of so unnatural a distance as a Company will interpose
between his sacred majesty and us his subjects from whose immediate
protection we have received so many royal favours and gracious
blessings. For, by such admissions, we shall degenerate from the
condition of our birth, being naturalized under a monarchical
government and not a popular and tumultuary government depending
upon the greatest number of votes of persons of several humours and
dispositions."
When this paper reached England, it came to a country at civil war.
The Long Parliament was in session. Stafford had been beheaded, the
Star Chamber swept away, the Grand Remonstrance presented. On
Edgehill bloomed flowers that would soon be trampled by Rupert's
cavalry. In Virginia the Assembly took notice of these "unkind
differences now in England," and provided by tithing for the
Governor's pension and allowance, which were for the present
suspended and endangered by the troubles at home. That the forces
banded against the Lord's anointed would prove victorious must at
this time have appeared preposterously unlikely to the fiery
Governor and the ultra-loyal Virginia whom he led. The Puritans and
Independents in Virginia -- estimated a little earlier at "a
thousand strong" and now, for all the acts against them, probably
stronger yet -- were to be found chiefly in the parishes of Isle of
Wight and Nansemond, but had representatives from the Falls to the
Eastern Shore. What these Virginians thought of the "unkind
differences" does not appear in the record, but probably there was
thought enough and secret hopes.
In 1644, the year of Marston Moor, Virginia, too, saw battle and
sudden and bloody death. That Opechancanough who had succeeded
Powhatan was now one hundred years old, hardly able to walk or to
see, dwelling harmlessly in a village upon the upper Pamunkey. All
the Indians were broken and dispersed; serious danger was not to be
thought of. Then, of a sudden, the flame leaped again. There fell
from the blue sky a massacre directed against the outlying
plantations. Three hundred men, women, and children were killed by
the Indians. With fury the white men attacked in return. They sent
bodies of horse into the untouched western forests. They chased and
slew without mercy. In 1646 Opechancanough, brought a prisoner to
Jamestown, ended his long tale of years by a shot from one of his
keepers. The Indians were beaten, and, lacking such another leader,
made no more organized and general attacks. But for long years a
kind of border warfare still went on.
Even Maryland, tolerant and just as was the Calvert policy, did not
altogether escape Indian troubles. She had to contend with no such
able chief as Opechancanough, and she suffered no sweeping
massacres. But after the first idyllic year or so there set in a
small, constant friction. So fast did the Maryland colonists arrive
that soon there was pressure of population beyond those first
purchased bounds. The more thoughtful among the Indians may well
have taken alarm lest their villages and hunting-grounds might not
endure these inroads. Ere long the English in Maryland were placing
"centinells" over fields where men worked, and providing penalties
for those who sold the savages firearms. But at no time did young
Maryland suffer the Indian woes that had vexed young Virginia.
Nor did Maryland escape the clash of interests which beset the
beginnings of representative assemblies in all proprietary
provinces. The second, like the first, Lord Baltimore, was a
believer in kings and aristocracies, in a natural division of human
society into masters and men. His effort was to plant intact in
Maryland a feudal order. He would be Palatine, the King his
suzerain. In Maryland the great planters, in effect his barons,
should live upon estates, manorial in size and with manorial rights.
The laboring men --the impecunious adventurers whom these greater
adventurers brought out --would form a tenantry, the Lord
Proprietary's men's men. It is true that, according to charter,
provision was made for an Assembly. Here were to sit "freemen of the
province," that is to say, all white males who were not in the
position of indentured servants. But with the Proprietary, and not
with the Assembly, would rest primarily the lawmaking power. The
Lord Proprietary would propose legislation, and the freemen of the
country would debate, in a measure advise, represent, act as
consultants, and finally confirm. Baltimore was prepared to be a
benevolent lord, wise, fatherly.
In 1635 met the first Assembly, Leonard Calvert and his Council
sitting with the burgesses, and this gathering of freemen proceeded
to inaugurate legislation. There was passed a string of enactments
which presumably dealt with immediate wants at St. Mary's, and
which, the Assembly recognized, must have the Lord Proprietary's
assent. A copy was therefore sent by the first ship to leave. So
long were the voyages and so slow the procedure in England that it
was 1637 before Baltimore's veto upon the Assembly's laws reached
Maryland. It would seem that he did not disapprove so much of the
laws themselves as of the bold initiative of the Assembly, for he at
once sent over twelve bills of his own drafting. Leonard Calvert was
instructed to bring all freemen together in Assembly and present for
their acceptance the substituted legislation.
Early in 1638 this Maryland Assembly met. The Governor put before it
for adoption the Proprietary's laws. The vote was taken. Governor
and some others were for, the remainder of the Assembly unanimously
against, the proposed legislation. There followed a year or two of
struggle over this question, but in the end the Proprietary in
effect acknowledged defeat. The colonists, through their Assembly,
might thereafter propose laws to meet their exigencies, and Governor
Calvert, acting for his brother, should approve or veto according to
need.
When civil war between King and Parliament broke out in England,
sentiment in Maryland as in Virginia inclined toward the King. But
that Puritan, Non-conformist, and republican element that was in
both colonies might be expected to gain if, at home in England, the
Parliamentary party gained. A Royal Governor or a Lord Proprietary's
Governor might alike be perplexed by the political turmoil in the
mother country. Leonard Calvert felt the need of first-hand
consultation with his brother. Leaving Giles Brent in his place, he
sailed for England, talked there with Baltimore himself, perplexed
and filled with foreboding, and returned to Maryland not greatly
wiser than when he went.
Maryland was soon convulsed by disorders which in many ways
reflected the unsettled conditions in England. A London ship,
commanded by Richard Ingle, a Puritan and a staunch upholder of the
cause of Parliament, arrived before St. Mary's, where he gave great
offense by his blatant remarks about the King and Rupert, "that
Prince Rogue." Though he was promptly arrested on the charge of
treason, he managed to escape and soon left the loyal colony far
astern.
In the meantime Leonard Calvert had come back to Maryland, where he
found confusion and a growing heat and faction and side-taking of a
bitter sort. To add to the turmoil, William Claiborne, among whose
dominant traits was an inability to recognize defeat, was making
attempts upon Kent Island. Calvert was not long at St. Mary's ere
Ingle sailed in again with letters-of-marque from the Long
Parliament. Ingle and his men landed and quickly found out the
Protestant moiety of the colonists. There followed an actual
insurrection, the Marylanders joining with Ingle and much aided by
Claiborne, who now retook Kent Island. The insurgents then captured
St. Mary's and forced the Governor to flee to Virginia. For two
years Ingle ruled and plundered, sequestrating goods of the
Proprietary's adherents, and deporting in irons Jesuit priests. At
the end of this time Calvert reappeared, and behind him a troop
gathered in Virginia. Now it was Ingle's turn to flee. Regaining his
ship, he made sail for England, and Maryland settled down again to
the ancient order. The Governor then reduced Kent Island. Claiborne,
again defeated, retired to Virginia, whence he sailed for England.
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