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Struggle for the Chesapeake

After a series of violent confrontations between Claiborne’s Kent Islanders and Calvert’s Marylanders, the courts of England take up the case of Baltimore’s patent vs. Claiborne’s trading rights.  Virginia governor Harvey is also deposed and sent to England.  Ultimately, Clobbery and Company sends George Evelin to take Claiborne’s place as head of Kent Island, and Evelin helps Calvert bring the island under Maryland control.  Claiborne turns his sights elsewhere for the time being.  Maryland also clashes with Baltimore on the subject of drafting laws.

 

Transcript

Spring of 1635 was a tumultuous time in English America.  At the same time as Massachusetts settlers were preparing to stand off with the King on the subject of a royally appointed governor, Puritans in Virginia deposed their own governor and fomented violent confrontation with neighboring Marylanders.

Introduction

Two weeks after the seizure of the Longtail, William Claiborne sent an armed pinnace called the Cockatrice, with a crew of 14 people led by Lieutenant Warren, to go to St. Mary’s and demand the return of his pinnace.  He also instructed them to seize whatever vessels they could which belonged to the Maryland government in retaliation.

Calvert, however, was prepared for a clash, and sent Captain Cornwallis with two armed pinnaces, the St. Margaret and the St. Helen, and sent them up the Pocomoke River to force the Cockatrice to stand down.  The ships saw each other, and slowly sailed towards each other, each side waiting for the other to fire the first shot.  When they were within firing range, Warren’s soldiers opened fire, instantly killing one Marylander named William Ashmore, and injuring several others.  Cornwallis’s men returned the fire, killing three of Claiborne’s crew, including Warren, after which the rest of the men surrendered, and Cornwallis took his prisoners and their ship back to St. Mary’s.

Four days later, in Virginia, members of Matthews’s faction presented Governor Harvey with a list of grievances, and his support of Maryland was at the top of the list.  They said he “had reduced the colony to a great strait by complying with the Marylanders so far that between them and himself all places of trade for corn were shut up from them and no means left to relieve their wants without transgressing his commands, which was very dangerous for any to attempt.”  Harvey was furious.  He tried to have three of the rebels arrested, and demanded martial law, but the Council backed the rebels.  Harvey shoved one of the council members and said he’d arrest him on suspicion of treason to the King, but John Utie responded “and the like to you, sir!”  They forced Harvey into his seat, surrounded him with 50 musketeers, and told him they planned to send him back to England to answer complaints against him.  At first he refused, but with no real hope of keeping his position, he agreed to go back to England two days later.  In his place, the council elected John West governor.  John West was, of course, the brother of Lord Delaware, and of Francis West, the former Jamestown governor and one of Claiborne’s strongest supporters.  The only person from Harvey’s faction who remained in a position of any prominence was Richard Kemp, who remained the colony’s secretary.

Claiborne kept sending traders up the Potomac, and the Marylanders kept driving them away, and a couple weeks after the first shootout, the Marylanders nearly captured another pinnace.  Shots were fired, and a couple people injured, but no one was killed, and the ship’s captain, Philip Taylor, escaped at the last minute and returned to Virginia.  Given allusions to Kent Island behavior after the incident, it seems likely that Taylor’s vessel was joined at the last minute by another armed pinnace which helped it escape.

Now, whether or not Claiborne had a legitimate claim to Kent Island, he had at this point attacked colonists with a patent from the King.  And, he hadn’t been successful in forcing Calvert to back down.  The attack was a gamble, and it was an unsuccessful one.  He fled to Virginia’s sympathetic government for protection, but Calvert knew that he was dealing with an existential struggle for his colony.  He sent commissioners to Jamestown to demand Claiborne be turned over for punishment as a rebel and traitor.  Instead, the new government sent Claiborne to England, where they said he could have a fairer trial.

They did, however, send commissioners to Maryland to establish peace.  Failing to establish peace at this point would have been a lose-lose proposition for the two colonies.  Maryland was still too weak to effectively defend itself from Virginia, and neither colony could deal with the PR fallout of more conflict.  For the next year and a half, the battle would be fought in the courts of England, so both colonies wanted to show themselves to be the wronged party, and the reasonable party, not the aggressor.  So, West agreed not to challenge Maryland’s patent, and Calvert agreed to leave the Kent Islanders alone until the issue was settled.

And fought in the courts of England, it was.  The Privy Council ordered both parties to be examined before the Attorney General, and as Harvey pled his case, Maryland was part of his argument.  “It is to be feared that they intend no less than the subjection of Maryland, for whilst I was aboard the ship and ready to depart the colony, there arrived William Claiborne from the Isle of Kent with news of a hostile encounter ‘twixt some of his people and those of Maryland.”  Meanwhle, West assured them that Virginia had only done what it needed to to protect itself, and never intended to infringe on Baltimore’s grant.  And, Jerome Hawley returned to England to justify Conrwallis’s conduct in the skirmish, as well as rumors which were starting to circulate about Maryland.  Some said Maryland had only been planted with the purpose of planting the Romish religion.  Another rumor was that one of Wintours’s servants had declared it lawful and ineritorious to kill a heretic King.  The tendency to plots and regicide was certainly a stereotype people held of Catholics at the time, but it also needs to be noted that this was an accusation about Wintours’s servant, with two Wintours being involved in the Gunpowder Plot.  So you can see the kind of intensity the debate was provoking, both between future Royalists and future Parliamentarians, as well as against Catholics in a colony which had tried its best to allow a refuge for Catholicism while avoiding presenting the image of being an overtly Catholic Colony.  And, as part of this first round of arguments in England, under interrogation Hawley was forced to admit that Mass was celebrated publicly in Maryland.

King Charles, however, confirmed his support of Baltimore’s patent, and said he would never issue a quo warranto against it, nor let any grant or commission pass which might encroach on his rights.  He also ordered that Harvey be sent back to Virginia, though this didn’t actually happen for a year or two.  In the meantime, West continued as acting governor.

Life back in Maryland was relatively calm, though.  They traded, planted, built and grew.  Baltimore was continuously working to attract settlers and clergy for the colony, publishing pamphlets advertising the attractions of the area, and giving advice to people considering moving there.  New families arrived, and others sent for more servants.  And, as they bought indentured servants, they worked hard to ensure that Catholic indentured servants ended up in Maryland instead of elsewhere in English America.  White and Altham continued to preach, to care for the sick and dying, and to convert the local tribes, as well as the Protestant servants in the colony.  Quite a few members of both groups did convert, including all of the servants working for the Jesuits.  Attendance at the sacraments was large, and though the priests were not permitted to put themselves at risk by going to visit the tribes of the interior, Maryland was increasingly surrounded by Christian Indians.

One of the new arrivals was a man named John Lewger, who was a college friend of Baltimore’s from Oxford, and was a former Anglican minister who had turned Catholic.  He did, however, keep a lot of his Protestant ideals, such as the importance of reading the Bible, and minimizing the emphasis of the Pope.  He may have even gone back to Protestantism later, but at the very least, he was the most protestant a Catholic could be.  He became one of the leading officials of the colony.

And, in 1636, the local Yoamacoes left, and the settlers were given sole possession of St. Mary’s and the surrounding land.  They finally divided the land and town into lots according to Baltimore’s instructions, so the settlement took its final form.  The people on Kent Island continued to do their own thing, and John Cotton and a man named Hampton visited from New England for about six months each.  Claiborne continued to collect rent from the Kent Islanders, and Clobbery and Company continued to send them provisions and men.

But, at the end of the year, they sent a man to replace Claiborne.  In December, George Evelin arrived at Kent Island with a power of attorney, and orders to sent Claiborne back to England to explain his behavior and adjust his accounts.  His management hadn’t been profitable, and they suspected that he’d been dealing with them dishonestly.  They also sent a new accountant named John Herriott, but he died almost immediately after arriving.  Evelin was actually Maryland settler Thomas Young’s nephew, his father had been a member of the Virginia Company, and his brother had settled in Virginia a few years before.  He also knew the Calverts well, though he didn’t have a particularly high regard for them, considering them unintelligent, unsophisticated and provincial.

When Evelin arrived, he only knew Clobbery and Company’s side of the story, and that relied almost exclusively on Claiborne’s description of events.  Evelin was also well aware of his own inexperience, so for the first few weeks, he simply yielded to Claiborne as his superior.  He didn’t bring up the power of attorney, and instead acted as Claiborne’s subordinate as he learned about the area.

He did, however, go to St. Mary’s to announce his arrival to Calvert, and there he found the governor pleasant, but firm regarding Maryland’s territorial rights, showing him all relevant paperwork to substantiate his claims.  This was the first time Evelin had actually heard Baltimore’s side of the story, and he was pretty convinced by it.  He acknowledged Baltimore’s rights to the area, and then he returned to Kent Island and announced that he was now in charge and would be taking over.  Claiborne asked that Evelin agree not to give any part of Kent Island to the Marylanders, and not to remove any servants from Kent Island, but Evelin responded that he was in charge, and that that wasn’t open to negotiation.  Then, he showed Claiborne his power of attorney for the first time.  Claiborne knew he could do nothing but leave Kent Island unconditionally in Evelin’s hands, and that’s exactly what he did less than a week later.  Eveilin then traveled to Jamestown and showed his power of attorney to West and the Virginia Council, and after a few weeks there he returned to Kent Island and started governing the Island, allying strongly with Calvert.  He even sold cloth to Calvert, which Calvert used to buy corn from the Susquehannocs, something which Claiborne’s faction complained made it more difficult for the Kent Islanders to get food.  Then, he began to dismantle the settlement, preparing to move it to a better location within Maryland, and sending some of its trading goods to Virginia.  Claiborne’s supporters complained Evelin had turned the island into a wasteland.

Ousted from Kent Island, Claiborne bought land from the Indians at a place called Palmer’s Island.  Palmer’s Island, though, was again within the Maryland patent area.  And, this is the thing about Claiborne.  At some points in this story, you can see where his position is somewhat reasonable, but then he does something like this.  And to make matters worse, he then returned to England, and wrote a petition to the King.  In his petition, he listed his own grievances, including accusing Baltimore’s officers of having violently assaulted his pinnaces and killed his men.  Then, he asked for Baltimore to be restrained from interfering with his trade, and asked for his own patent, a patent which would have given him the entire Chesapeake Bay, and the entire length of the Susquehannah River, in essentially an 800 mile long stretch of the best land in North America, and which would have divided the Crown’s American possessions in half, while giving Claiborne ¾ of Baltimore’s territory.  It was written in a confusing way, because the only way Claiborne would get the patent would have been if the people issuing it misunderstood it thanks to their meager geographic knowledge.  The King referred the petition to the Lords Commissioners for Plantations.  The Lords Commissioners investigated Claiborne’s claims, and ruled that the land in question belonged to Baltimore, and that no trade could be carried on there without his consent, and that there was no cause for relief with regard to the violence Claiborne complained of.  They didn’t even bother addressing the land request, so it was a thorough defeat for Claiborne.

There was some talk that Virginia was preparing to get a new trading company which it would use to oppose Maryland, though, so back in the Chesapeake, Calvert went to Virginia to discuss the situation with Kemp.  Kemp told Calvert that he’d do what he could to oppose the company and support Maryland, but their meeting was interrupted by news that Maryland settlers had been attacked by Nanticokes, and Calvert needed to go home to address the situation.

Calvert, Hawley and Lewger also signed a proclamation declaring that Kent Island must be brought into line.  They had committed piracy, mutiny and contempt, disobeyed arrest warrants and used armed force to rescue prisoners.  Worst of all, they suspected the Kent Islanders were conspiring with the Susquehannocs and other local Indians to help drive the Marylanders out, a worry substantiated by the attack which occurred in Calvert’s absence.  To protect Maryland, if Kent Island wouldn’t submit, Maryland would impose martial law, and execute people who refused to submit to its government.  They also attained Claiborne and prepared to confiscate his property.

Calvert wrote to the Kent Islanders, promising to give them amnesty for past offences if they agreed to submit to Baltimore, and saying that if they submitted, he’d even allow them to elect their own commander.  They still refused, so Calvert appointed Evelin as commander, and Evelin returned to Kent Island to take over.  It wasn’t long before resistance turned violent, and Evelin told Calvert he’d need military support to restore order.  Calvert sent Cornwallis to lead a 20 man armed force to push the island into submission and arrest the three leading troublemakers, Thomas Smith, Edward Beckler and John Butler.  That expedition was stopped by bad weather, but when the weather abated Calvert, himself, led the next force.  With Calvert’s armed backup, Evelin assembled the Kent Islanders and read his commission to them, as well as the Maryland Charter.  As he stood before them, Butler demanded to know whether Evelin was an agent for Clobbery and Company or the Marylanders, and Evelin replied, “for both,” going on to explain that he’d seen the patent, and that they’d be better off living under Maryland’s government than Virginia’s anyway.  They would actually have more trading rights if they submitted to Maryland.  The island still in chaos, Calvert then arrested Smith and Butler, and took them to St. Mary’s for trial.  He then told the remaining residents to choose their burgesses for the upcoming General Assembly, and told them that he would come to survey the land with Lewger the next summer, and to give them valid patents.  He then dismantled Clobbery and Company’s post, sending the equipment and servants either back to England or to Virginia, and to help with this he contracted a man named Richard Ingle.  You may want to remember that name.  When he returned to St. Mary’s, he left three people to act as conservators of peace on the island, authorizing them to hold courts leet for minor cases, and to issue warrants for major ones.

Then, they dismantled Claiborne’s settlement on Palmer’s Island, and replaced it with a Fort, which they called Fort Conquest.  After this, Claiborne got a grant in the Bahamas within the Providence Island Company’s patent, for Rich Island, named for the family of the Earl of Warwick.

And finally, it was time for the meeting of the second General Assembly, with fewer than 20 people present – two representatives for each of the 4 hundreds, two for Kent Island, plus the three councilors, and the governor.  At this point, some of the shorter indentured servant terms had started to expire, so the colony’s voting population was beginning to increase.  The servants which were now getting their freedom were largely younger sons of good families.  There were also craftsmen, whose presence in the colony was strongly valued, and who ended up with more favorable conditions, including bigger land allotments, than simple workers.

None of this actually mattered at this assembly, though, because the first order of business at the Assembly was for Calvert to announce that Baltimore had rejected the laws passed by the colonists at the first Assembly.  By the terms of the charter, and this was 100% true, legislation was supposed to originate with him.  The charter said the Lord Proprietor was to pass laws with the assent of the colonists, not the other way round.  Instead, Baltimore had sent his own list of laws to be presented.

Now, this debate is actually extremely interesting, because it’s the first instance of a debate which is essentially unique to Maryland, but which will pop up occasionally throughout our discussion of Maryland’s early history.  The thing is, like New England, Maryland was created on an idealistic, or ideological, depending on how you look at it, framework.  And, New England had had conflicts about exactly how far it wanted to take its ideology.  But unlike New England, which wanted to sever itself from tradition, Maryland actually wanted to hearken back to old traditions, not just in terms of Catholicism, though that was an issue, but also in terms of the structure of society, itself.  What Baltimore had was a borderline feudal charter, and that did come with its benefits, benefits which had attracted quite a few people to Maryland in the first place.  Non-indentured servants could enjoy a higher degree of personal liberty and autonomy in Maryland than anywhere else in the English speaking world.  But, that came with institutions and practices which were pretty much anachronistic in the eyes of most Englishmen.  The idea of going back to a system in which Baltimore was above them in the same way that the King was above them, just to a lesser degree, was rather shocking in the eyes of even the most anti-Parliamentarian, pro-Royalist 17^th Century Englishmen.  It hadn’t even occurred to them that they might be in a system in which they didn’t have the power to draft laws.  I can’t stress enough that this was a two-sided coin.  In New England, there was an ever-increasing amount of popular representation, but that came with forced communal behavior and an ever-increasing government intrusion into day-to-day life.  In Maryland, it was the opposite.  A huge amount of personal liberty, but a government structure which inherently made people uneasy.

So for the next week or more, the Assembly debated.  Some members asked how the colony would be governed if both the Assembly and Baltimore kept rejecting each other’s laws, and others said they’d simply live under English Common Law until the issue was settled.  Calvert evidently took a neutral position, acknowledging that he felt laws should originate with the people, but emphasizing that the laws sent over were extremely reasonable.  But, Calvert’s commission as governor didn’t give him the authority to deal with offenses punishable by death or mutilation under English Common Law, though it did under Baltimore’s Law, and remember, they actually had two prisoners awaiting trial for piracy and murder.  How would they indict, try and sentence him without the law to do so?  Ultimately, they decided completely to reject Baltimore’s laws, and instead, to pass a new set of 41 laws for Baltimore to approve.

And, to get around the trial issue, the sheriff impaneled the Assembly into a grand inquest, meaning he turned it into a Common Law-style legislative jury which could investigate the crimes, hear both sides and act as a court, and then pass a sentence.

Against Smith, Calvert produced two dispositions, one for piracy and the other for the murder of William Ashmore, who had been killed in the skirmish, and Smith pled not guilty to both charges.  The court found him guilty by a vote of 18:1, and Calvert condemned him to death by hanging, and said his goods should be forfeited except his wife should have her dower.  Smith demanded the benefit of clergy, which would have protected him from the court’s condemnation, and Calvert said that there was no such privilege for a man accused of piracy, and that if he had wanted benefit of clergy he needed to demand it before judgment, not after.  Smith then petitioned Baltimore for a pardon, but Calvert let him go.  He wanted to stop Kent Island resistance and establish Baltimore’s authority, and he’d effectively done that.  He also didn’t need to be killing people when his court was only dubiously legal.  He also let Butler off with a warning, saying he’d be punished if he continued his opposition.