On November 30, 1633, two little ships, the _Ark_ and the _Dove_, set sail from Cowes, under command of Leonard Calvert, brother of the Lord Proprietary, and having on board a goodly company of gentlemen--adventurers. It was but the common sight of the putting out to sea of two insignificant boats to those who watched them from the shore that autumn day; but it stands out as marking a great era in the history of human progress. The pious and catholic Cecilius Calvert, carrying out the designs of his great father, had decreed that all men living under his protection should be free to serve God according to the dictates of their own consciences,--a decree so far in advance of their times as to place the names of the Calverts forever in the foremost rank of the world’s greatest and wisest men. After many adventures, on the 25th of March, the Feast of the Annunciation, the colonists landed. A precious early chronicle tells us that “Heere we went to a place where a large tree was made into a Crosse, and taking it upon our shoulders, wee carried it to the place appointed for it. The gouvernour and Commissioners putting their hands first vpon it, and then the rest of the chiefest aduenturers. At the place prepared wee all kneeled downe and said certain Prayers, taking possession of the Countrey for our Savior, and for our Soueraigne Lord the King of England.” The early relations between the new comers and the aborigines seem to have been of the most friendly character, and the _Relation of the Successful Beginning of the Lord Baltimore’s Plantation in Maryland_, from which we have just quoted, is full of the praises of the climate, the soil, the flora and fauna, and the general goodliness of the land. An Eden it must have been in its primeval loveliness! As ever in Eden, there were serpents. The world was not yet worthy of the lofty ideas of the founder of the _Terra Mariæ_. The first Provincial Assembly, which met in 1637-38, had many grave questions to discuss, and these grew only graver as the political situation in England became more complicated--the power of the King waning while that of the Puritans waxed. In 1642, the Churchmen in Virginia passed a Conventicle Act, which bore so heavily upon the non-conforming Puritans that, in 1648, Governor Stone sent an invitation to the persecuted men to come and enjoy the liberties which, in the next year, were to go upon our Statute Books, and to be their glory forever, as the Toleration Act. In 1649, therefore, ten families crossed the Potomac, and on Severn-side built a few huts, to which they gave the name of Providence.