For fourteen months the province was without a settled government. In March, 1645/6, the Virginian Assembly in view of the secret flight into Maryland of Lieutenant Stillwell, and others, enacted that "Capt. Tho. Willoughby, Esq., and Capt. Edward Hill be hereby authorized to go to Maryland or Kent to demand the return of such persons who are alreadie departed from the colony. And to follow such further instructions as shall be given them by the Governor and Council."[55] After Hill had arrived in Maryland he was elected governor by the members of the council, who, notwithstanding Ingle's rebellion, were in the province. The right of the council to elect Hill was afterwards disputed, but one word must be said in regard to this. The reason for disputing the right was that the councilors could elect only a member of the council to be governor. In the commission to Leonard Calvert in 1637, no such restriction was made,[56] in the commission of 1642 the restriction occurs, and in the commission of 1644, which has been preserved in two copies, the same provision was made.[57] As Lord Baltimore himself had confused ideas about this commission, it is not surprising that the council thought they were doing right in electing Hill. Even if the council had no right to act thus, Hill had stronger claims to the governorship. In Lord Baltimore's commission to Leonard Calvert, of September 18th, 1644, is the provision:[58] "and lastly whereas our said Lieutenant may happen to dye or be absent from time to time out of the said province of Maryland, before we can have notice to depute another in his place we do therefore hereby grant unto him full power and Authority from time to time in such Cases to Nominate elect and appoint such an able person inhabiting and residing within our said province of Maryl^d, as he in his discretion shall make choice of & think fit to be our Lieutenant Governor, &c." Such is the command as recorded in the Council Proceedings of Maryland. But Baltimore, in 1648, in a commission to the Governor and council in Maryland, wrote that Leonard Calvert had no right to appoint any person in his stead "unless such persons were of our privy council there,"[59] although he recognized the validity of Leonard's death-bed appointment by witnesses of Governor Greene. He, to be sure, was a member of the council, but this fact was not mentioned in the preamble of the commission, in which the words, with some slight changes in tense and mood, are almost identical with those in the preamble of the commission of July 30th, 1646, from Calvert to Hill, which, notwithstanding doubts to the contrary, must have been genuine. For Lord Baltimore, in the commission of 1648 seems to have acknowledged that his brother had granted the commission to Hill,[60] who, in a letter to Calvert, said that he had promised him one-half the customs and rents, the remuneration stipulated in his commission. Hill, not