For some time harmony, peace, and prosperity prevailed. The mild and wise institutions of the proprietary were conducive to the interests of the colonists, and won in return their attachment and gratitude. Every heart, excepting Clayborne’s, was satisfied, and desired that things should remain as they were. Clayborne from the first had rejected the claim of Lord Baltimore, and refused to submit to it. Accordingly, in the sitting of the first Legislative Assembly of Maryland, in February, 1635, at St. Mary’s, the jurisdiction of the state was vindicated, in opposition to the claims of Clayborne. Nothing, however, daunted by this measure, he determined to make good his claims by force of arms. A bloody skirmish took place on one of the rivers of Maryland; several lives were lost; Clayborne’s men were defeated and taken prisoners, and he himself fled to Virginia, whence, to escape being given up to the governor of Maryland, he was sent by Harvey, the governor of Virginia, to England for trial. The colony was well rid of this troublesome member, at least for a while; he was declared by the Assembly guilty of treason, not only by endeavouring to overthrow the government of the proprietary, but by exciting the jealousies of the Indians against the settlers; and his property on Kent Island was confiscated. In England he won at first a favourable hearing from the king, Charles I.; but on the merits of the case being more thoroughly investigated, it was decided that the charter of Lord Baltimore superseded all earlier licences of traffic. Clayborne was again defeated, and the claims of Lord Baltimore fully confirmed. Men of strong intellect, ardent champions of popular liberty, were, as we have seen, the founders of the early American states, hence we universally find them not more jealous for the possession and maintenance of territory, than for the establishment of principles of democratic liberty. In 1639, therefore, the third annual General Assembly was convened for the purpose of establishing “a more convenient form of representative government,” and the people were allowed to send as many delegates to the General Assembly as they should deem proper. A declaration of rights was also drawn up; allegiance was declared to the English sovereign, Lord Baltimore’s prerogatives as proprietary were defined, and the liberties of Englishmen confirmed to the inhabitants of Maryland. “There was as yet,” says our historian, “no jealousy of power, no strife for place. Yet,” adds he, “while these laws prepared a frame of government for future generations, we are reminded of the feebleness and poverty of the state, when the whole people were at that very period obliged to contribute to the setting up of a water-mill.”