Governor Calvert, the chief of the Maryland Pilgrims, after a trying but heroic and honorable administration, had died, amid the prayers and blessings of his friends, without a stain upon his memory. Thomas Green had also for a short period been the governor; and the principal key of authority was then held by Captain William Stone. The assembly was composed of the Governor, the privy counsellors and the burgesses. In many particulars its model was not unlike that of the primitive parliaments of England. The governor and the privy counsellors were appointed by Cecilius, the feudal prince or proprietary of the province; the burgesses, who were chosen by the freemen, represented the democratic element in the original constitution of Maryland. The delegates were sent by Kent and by St. Mary's, the only two counties at that time within the limits of the principality; the former upon the east, the latter upon the west, side of "the Great Bay." And while there is no reason for asserting the want of harmony upon the business of this assembly, it is a remarkable fact that for more than two centuries the most strongly marked differences have existed between the shores of the Chesapeake, not only of a geographical, but also of a political, character. Kent, in the midst of many sad reverses, had grown out of a settlement founded as early as 1630, by Colonel Clayborne, in the spirit of a truly heroic adventure, under the jurisdiction established at Jamestown, and during the administration--it is supposed--of Governor Harvey, upon an island of the Chesapeake called Kent, but then the "Isle of Kent"; a purchase--to quote the Colonel's own words--from "the kings of that country"; and the original centre of the country represented at St. Mary's, though now included within the limits of Queen Anne's--an island still noted for the beauty of its scenery and the wealth of its waters in fish and fowl; and the only dwelling-place of the colonists upon the eastern shore at the time of this assembly; the seat, also, of opulence and elegance at a period anterior to the American Revolution, and presented in the Virginia House of Burgesses before the settlement of St. Mary's;[37] but above all, distinguished as the first focal point of Anglo-American civilization within the present boundaries of the State[38] of Maryland.