Maryland was settled at a little later period than New England. The London Company, of which Sir George Calvert (Lord Baltimore), the first proprietor of Maryland, was a member, claimed, under its charter, the whole of the vast region from the head of the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays--the boundary line of the Dutch settlements in [[1609]] New Netherlands--to an undefined boundary south and west. Calvert was a young man of good birth and fine talents. He attracted the attention and won the friendship of Sir Robert Cecil (afterward Earl of Salisbury), first lord of the Treasury under James the First. Calvert was appointed by Cecil his private secretary,a which office he held for several years. Cecil died in 1612. Calvert appears to have won the esteem of his king, for, in 1617, James conferred the honor of knighthood upon him, appointed him clerk of the Privy Council, and, two years later, made him principal secretary of state, as successor to Sir Thomas Lake. In 1624, Calvert resigned his office, not, as Fuller says, because "he freely confessed himself to the king that he was become a Roman Catholic, so that he must be wanting to his trust, or violate his conscience in discharging his office," * for he was doubtless a Roman Catholic from his earliest youth, if not born in the bosom of that Church, but probably for the purpose of giving his personal attention to schemes of foreign colonization, in which he was interested. On retiring from the secretary's office, the king continued him a privy counselor, granted him a tract of land in Longford, Ireland, (b) with a pension of one thousand pounds, and created him "Lord Baltimore, of Baltimore, Ireland." [[ b 1621]] He already had a patent as absolute lord and proprietor of the province of Avalon, in Newfoundland. After the death of James, in 1625, Lord Baltimore went to Avalon, where, with his family, he resided for some time, and then returned to England. He visited Virginia in 1628; and, although a member of the London Company, and high in the confidence of Charles, the successor of James, he was required by the local authorities of that colony to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. ** Baltimore was offended, for he considered the requisition as an intended insult, he being a Roman Catholic. He refused to take the oaths himself, or allow his attendants to do so; and soon afterward departed from the James River, and made a voyage up the Chesapeake. He entered the Potomac, was pleased with the appearance of the country, projected a settlement upon the upper portions of the Chesapeake Bay, and then returned to England.