The Calverts, who were responsible for this interesting experiment, were of Flemish origin, but the father had moved to England and had rendered very distinguished services to the house of Stuart. Originally they had been Protestants, but George Calvert, private secretary and general utility man to King James I, had become so utterly disgusted with the futile theological haggling of his contemporaries that he returned to the old faith. Good, bad or indifferent, it called black, black and white, white and did not leave the final settlement of every point of doctrine to the discretion of a board of semi-literate deacons. This George Calvert, so it seems, was a man of parts. His back-sliding (a very serious offense in those days!) did not lose him the favor of his royal master. On the contrary, he was made Baron Baltimore of Baltimore and was promised every sort of assistance when he planned to establish a little colony of his own for the benefit of persecuted Catholics. First, he tried his luck in Newfoundland. But his settlers were frozen out of house and home and his Lordship then asked for a few thousand square miles in Virginia. The Virginians, however, staunchly Episcopalian, would have naught of such dangerous neighbors and Baltimore then asked for a slice of that wilderness which lay between Virginia and the Dutch and Swedish possessions of the north. Ere he received his charter he died. His son Cecil, however, continued the good work, and in the winter of 1633-1634 two little ships, the _Ark_ and the _Dove_, under command of Leonard Calvert, brother to George, crossed the ocean, and in March of 1634 they safely landed their passengers on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. The new country was called Maryland. This was done in honor of Mary, daughter of that French king, Henri IV, whose plans for a European League of Nations had been cut short by the dagger of a crazy monk, and wife to that English monarch who soon afterwards was to lose his head at the hands of his Puritan subjects.