History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of VirginiaCampbell, Charles
History
History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia
Campbell, Charles
Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Virginia -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783
In the mean time, George, the elder Lord Baltimore, dying on the
fifteenth of April, 1632, aged fifty, at London, before his patent was
issued, it was confirmed June twentieth of this year, to his son
Cecilius, Baron of Baltimore. The new province was named Maryland in
honor of Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort of Charles the First of England,
and daughter of Henry the Fourth of France. For eighteen months from the
signing of the Maryland charter, the expedition to the new colony was
delayed by the strenuous opposition made to the proceeding. The
Virginians felt no little aggrieved at this infraction of their
chartered territory; and they remonstrated to the king in council in
1633, against the grant to Lord Baltimore, alleging that "it will be a
general disheartening to them, if they shall be divided into several
governments." Future events were about to strengthen their sense of the
justice of their cause. In July of this year the case was decided in the
Star Chamber, the privy council, influenced by Laud, Archbishop of
Canterbury, and the Earl of Strafford, deeming it fit to leave Lord
Baltimore to his patent and the complainants to the course of law
"according to their desire," recommending, at the same time, a spirit of
amity and good correspondence between the planters of the two colonies.
So futile a decision could not terminate the contest, and Clayborne
continued to claim Kent Island, and to abnegate the authority of the
proprietary of Maryland.
At length, Lord Baltimore having engaged the services of his brother,
Leonard Calvert, for founding the colony, he with two others, one of
them probably being another brother, were appointed commissioners. The
expedition consisted of some twenty gentlemen of fortune, and two or
three hundred of the laboring class, nearly all of them Roman
Catholics. Imploring the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, St.
Ignatius, and all the guardian angels of Maryland, they set sail from
Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, in November, 1633, St. Cecilia's day. The
canonized founder of the order of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, was the
patron saint of the infant Maryland. February twenty-seventh, 1634, they
reached Point Comfort, filled with apprehensions of the hostility of the
Virginians to their colonial enterprise. Letters from King Charles and
the chancellor of the exchequer conciliated Governor Harvey, who hoped,
by his kindness to the Maryland colonists, to insure the recovery of a
large sum of money due him from the royal treasury. The Virginians were
at this time all under arms expecting the approach of a hostile Spanish
fleet. Calvert, after a hospitable entertainment, embarked on the third
of March for Maryland. Clayborne, who had accompanied Harvey to Point
Comfort to see the strangers, did not fail to intimidate them by
accounts of the hostile spirit which they would have to encounter in the
Indians of that part of the country to which they were destined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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