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A huge amount of the information in this episode comes from Timothy Riordan’s book, The Plundering Time. So little survives from the event that virtually nothing was known before Riordan made his extensive and detailed survey & analysis of existing data and testimony. In addition, it was well written, and well put into the context of the war.
Transcript
This week, we will talk about one of the most infamous, yet underdocumented, periods in Colonial American history, two years in Maryland known as the Plundering TIme.
Intro.
But, before we get started I have some things to rectify from last episode. I’ve reached a point in this podcast where the information is becoming exceedingly hard to find. And, long story short, as I was finalizing the research for this episode, I realized I made a few omissions, and a couple of actual mistakes last episode. Deeply upsetting … but what better way to start this episode than to correct those mistakes and oversights?
The first mistake is that Calvert and Copley’s letters had been written but not set when Ingle and Claiborne got together. The second, is that Claiborne wasn’t the person who offered him ⅙ of the loot in a Man o War mission – that was a letter of marque that Parliament had given Ingle to be a privateer against Royalist ships.
And third, the London ship I mentioned, wasn’t a London ship. It was a Bristol-based Royalist pinnace, which escaped Ingle’s capture by going too far up a creek for Ingle to follow in his larger vessel. Ingle had agreed to leave the ship alone if the captain promised to go fight for Parliament at London. The man agreed, because Ingle was in no position to make him keep that promise, then snuck past Ingle and sailed off in the middle of the night to go back to England, presumably to Bristol.
And the last two are just omissions of interesting and worthwhile details of Ingle’s plundering of the Dutch ship last episode. First, before Ingle approached the ship, which was named the Spiegle, by the way, Leonard Calvert was actually on board, asking it to help defend Maryland if Ingle approached, anticipating an attack, and the captain had refused, saying he was neutral and at peace with both King and Parliament. Calvert had thrown up his hands in the air and declared the man and his crew cowards, and left the ship in disgust.
And, second, when Ingle was on board the ship, because he only had a commission to plunder royalist vessels, the first thing he’d done was taken actions to legitimize his attack. First, he’d gone through the captain’s papers looking for evidence that the man had been trading with royalists at Bristol or Ireland. When he didn’t find that evidence, he had destroyed the ship’s official papers, which would severely weaken any future legal action by the captain.
Phew. And, I’m sorry. I try to be more careful than that, but boy.
But, to continue our story, and Ingle’s voyage to St. Mary’s, Ingle next stopped at St. Inigoe’s. There, he started recruiting the support of Maryland’s leading Protestants. He told them he had a Parliamentary commission to root out all papists like vermin. And, he told them that he planned to extend this policy to anyone who refused to actively fight alongside him, not just those who opposed him or known Catholics. And, he told them that two other ships were with him, both with similar commissions, and similarly acting against other parts of Maryland. One of these was Claiborne’s, and another belonged to a man named Richard Tompson.
So Ingle was gradually building up his force. He’d tried recruiting help in Virginia, but only ended up with about 15 people, almost all people with personal connections to either him or Claiborne. Most, in fact, had lived in Maryland previously, predominantly on Kent Island. And, only one was described as being there for the plunder. So he was drawing from a very specific and limited pool. And Maryland’s Puritans were really the key.
Maryland’s Puritans had always been at odds with the colony’s Catholics. They would jump at an opportunity to take over the colony, and they could fundamentally change the dynamic of Ingle and Claiborne’s Rebellion from an external invasion into an internal coup. They would also help legitimize Ingle’s actions, as he helped topple what he characterized as a Royalist, Catholic colony that oppressed Protestants, and put it in the hands of Protestants, in keeping with the Warwick declaration I mentioned last episode. And they were indeed eager to help. Significantly, they also told Ingle that Calvert was planning to disarm all the Protestants in Maryland, and had told them not to pay their debts to Ingle. This would come up in later court cases, and we don’t exactly know how true it was.
It’s perfectly possible that Calvert had at least considered it, hearing that Parliament was issuing letters of marque against Royalists and indirectly encouraging rebellion within Maryland. And he must have heard about the rumors in Virginia that Puritans had caused the Powhatan uprising there, and that Ingle himself had been part of a fleet sent to arm and supply Virginia Puritans.
So, he would have had ample reason to consider it, and ample reason to never, ever follow through.
After leaving St. Inigoe’s, though, Ingle soon arrived at St. Mary’s. And his first stop there was none other than the home of Captain Thomas Cornwallis, called Cross House, the nicest in the colony. It was also centrally located, and as a military man, Cornwallis also had his fair share of arms and ammunition.
Cornwallis wasn’t home when Ingle arrived. Instead, his employee, Cuthbert Fenwick, was looking after his property. When Fenwick saw the Reformation approaching, he rushed to send one group of servants to hide Cornwallis’s silver somewhere in the woods, and another to retrieve his new pinnace. As the second group sailed back, Ingle captured them, and offered them the choice of joining his rebels or being held captive. Only one, named Matthews, chose the option of being a prisoner.
Then Ingle contacted Fenwick, sending some of his crew to ask him to come aboard the Reformation. Fenwick agreed, bringing Calvert and Copley’s letters, which Ingle read, pocketed and dismissed, telling Fenwick they were too little too late. He said he would have revenge, and he didn’t want Cornwallis’s house to be used against him as he got it. For this reason, he said, even though he had no desire to plunder Cornwallis’s house, he couldn’t let it be used against him, so he wanted Fenwick to write a note authorizing the surrender of the house, cannons and other arms to him. If Fenwick did this, he promised everything would be returned untouched. Fenwick resisted, saying he was afraid Ingle wouldn’t let him return to shore if he signed. But Ingle insisted that if he signed, he’d be set free. “Nay, if I have promised, I will be good as my word.” Fenwick still wouldn’t agree, though, so Ingle kept him prisoner overnight, and the next morning Fenwick signed, and was allowed to go. But, as soon as he reached the shore, he was immediately re-arrested by Ingle’s Maryland allies.
The next morning, Ingle sent Fenwick’s note to his wife, along with 17 armed men to demand the surrender of Cornwallis’s Cross House. By this time, there were virtually no servants left. There were a couple Africans, a man named Richard Harvey, and the rest had either joined Ingle or gone to join the force Calvert was raising. Plus the one prisoner. So, it was Fenwick’s wife and children, and three servants against a force of 17 armed men with a note demanding their surrender, so on promise of quarter they agreed.
Ingle installed a garrison there, led by Kent Islander and Clobbery & Company employee Thomas Sturman, and went with the rest of his crew to look for Calvert.
But, for one reason or another, he couldn’t get Calvert. Calvert was either at a local fort, so he was protected, or Ingle simply couldn’t find him, but he returned to Cross House a few hours later and found that one of the servants had told the garrison where Cornwallis’s silver was, and the guards had divided it amongst themselves. At this point, Ingle ordered the further plunder of the house, and ordered that he be given a share of the silver. So, they took every single thing from the house, right down to the nails and hinges from the doors and windows. The total value of the goods amounted to 2,623 pounds. They killed or drove off all the livestock, and Ingle ordered the house burned to the ground. He did rescind this order, though. He had all fences and external structures burned, but left the house intact with a single bed for Fenwick’s wife and children to sleep in, and the rest to be used to store loot and prisoners.
Loot taken, Ingle again sent out armed parties to capture Lewger, Copley, Nicholas Causin, George Binks and others, including, most importantly, Governor Calvert. That really was the key to the whole operation. Calvert’s Catholicism and obvious Royalist sympathies would be key to proving the mission was within the bounds of his privateering commission. They caught Lewger while he was asleep, pulled him to Cross House with no shoes or stockings, and gave him a pair from the plundered goods accumulating there before jailing him on the Reformation with Fenwick and Brent. Then they went through the rest of the city, burning, looting, searching.
Apart from capturing Calvert, the highest priority was to get the Colony’s Catholic priests, especially Andrew White and Thomas Copley. Again, those two would help to prove that the colony wasn’t just a religious refuge, but a Catholic colony operating outside the bounds of English law. The rest just needed to be eliminated as part of destroying the colony’s link to Catholicism.
Copley and White were away when Ingle struck the first Jesuit property, but he took the people who were there prisoner and fortified the house as a garrison. They plundered the mission property, burned the house of a Nicholas Harvey to the ground, and turned the others into their own private residences. Ingle broke open various chests and trunks, and distributed the contents to whoever he felt like, and then they burned Copley’s personal library. They imprisoned Jesuit overseer Robert Percy at Pope’s Fort, and offered him the forgiveness of a debt of 500 pounds of tobacco if Percy would tell him the location of hidden valuables. Percy refused. They burned all the books, took the altar vessels, and all of the other things the Jesuits had either brought or been given over the course of the previous decade. It would be 20 years before the mission was back on a solid foundation.
Within a month, they’d captured the five Jesuit priests and brought them to St. Mary’s. They put Copley and White in prison, then dumped the others in Susquehannoc territory, where they met an unknown, but easy to imagine fate. They then released the non-Priests, who fled to Virginia.
But where was Calvert? Well, by this time he’d gathered a group of recruits to St. Thomas Fort, which isn’t a well documented one, but which was clearly the best stronghold the Catholics could use to defend themselves, probably near Margaret Brent’s house. He had tried to raise a militia to defend the province, but since most of Maryland’s Puritans, which comprised most of its Protestants, supported Parliament, he ended up with half what he might have recruited for a fight with an external enemy, like the Susquehannocs. In fact, several prominent militia leaders had become plundering leaders. And, since Virginia was in the middle of its own war, Maryland was alone.
After the initial flurry of activity, things seem to have settled in to a pattern – or, at least, Timothy Riordan makes a good case that they did. The Catholics stayed at St. Thomas Fort, while the Puritans gathered at their own fort, on land owned by colony inkeeper Nathaniel Pope, known as Pope’s Fort. So, ironically, in this battle, Pope’s Fort was the Protestant stronghold.
And for the next few months, they raided each others’ lands and properties, scavanged what food they could find and ate whatever cows passed near enough to their respective outposts. Catholic gentry were the particular targets of plunder, with their homes suffering the same fate as Cornwallis’s had, emptied of literally anything of even minor value. Ingle took the tobacco and major valuables, while Maryland rebels got all household goods, livestock and tools. Any planters who refused to give up their tobacco had their houses burned.
The Catholics seem to have held out through the end of November, but Ingle left in April. He simply hadn’t been able to get Calvert, which was a devastating blow. Also, in the months of fighting, a member of the Spiegle’s crew who was a supposed English Catholic, and who would also have strengthened his case in England, died. That was another devastating blow, and not too long after that, Ingle decided to leave for England.
He loaded his ships full of cargo, stopped by Kent Island to plunder Brent’s property, and again to burn all the books. Before leaving the colony, he released Fenwick, who simply wasn’t worth the space or supplies to transport to England. He appointed some of his crew members to command the Spiegle, and asked the Dutch crew if they would help sail the ship and fight for Parliament if necessary. They agreed to help sail the ship, but emphasized that they were neutral, and would not fight any Englishmen. So, Ingle said that if there was a fight, his crew should confine the Dutch in the hold, and he boosted his Parliamentary numbers by hiring Puritans in Maryland and Virginia. On his way to England, he stopped by Accomac in Virginia, where he traded tobacco with George Yeardley’s sons and a man named William Stone, and then he headed back across the Atlantic, perhaps for the last time ever.
After Ingle left, the standoff continued until the Puritans finally overwhelmed St. Thomas Fort and Catholic resistance collapsed. Prisoners were taken, but Calvert escaped to Virginia, and many of the colony’s other Catholics followed. They were all financially ruined, they’d totally lost control of the colony, and there’s virtually no record of what happened in Maryland for the next year. Of the old Catholic leadership, only Thomas Gerard remained.
Though, to call it a government might be an overstatement. No governmental functions were performed. No land was surveyed, granted or transferred, no governor or council was appointed, and no courts were held. The only person who was doing anything governance related was Nathaniel Pope, who Ingle had left as an agent to collect tobacco for his return trip. But, no tobacco was grown in this period, and Ingle never returned to America, so he wasn’t doing very much. They did force everyone to take an oath of loyalty to Parliament, and of the remaining Catholics, only one John Thompson actually agreed to do this.
There was actually a minor problem to their taking on the role of government, though, and that’s that they actually didn’t yet comprise the legal government of the colony. They were still, legally, rebels until their government was authorized. And to this end, they did send a petition asking Parliament for legal recognition, complaining about Baltimore’s tyrannical government.
And that really brings us to phase two of the whole thing – a morass of intertwined legal battles in England.
As Ingle sailed for England, he worried that Brent and Copley were trying to turn the crew against him, and possibly even to kill him. It would be shocking, I know. At one point, when they saw some ships near Plymouth which may have been Royalist-captained, Ingle brought some of his appointed crew from the Spiegle, to discuss a plan of defense, part of which included throwing Brent and Copley overboard. At this point, one of the Maryland Puritans, Ralph Bean, objected, and when the ships disappeared over the horizon, Brent and Copley were spared.
And when they reached England, the lawsuits began. Both Marylanders and Spiegle sailors would try to prove that Ingle’s actions had been wrong. Maryland Protestants would try to get Parliament to recognize them instead of the Proprietary Government. And, the Dutch merchants waiting for the Spiegle’s cargo would try to get it back. Individuals would try to use courts to get anything they could, either plunderers trying to get anything that was left, or Catholics trying to get compensation for things that had been stolen. So, Hilliard tried to sue Percy for the tobacco he said was owed him, but Percy said Hilliard had stolen items worth more than any debt. And Copley filed a claim against Ingle for the devastation of the mission’s properties, but neither Copley nor Hilliard were successful.
But first came the Admiralty Court case about whether Ingle’s actions had been, well, privateering or piracy. Had they been within the limits of his letter of marque? Ingle laid out his case, which was pretty much exactly like you’d expect. Catholic oppression, forced oaths of loyalty to the King, disarming Protestants, Catholic crew member on the Dutch ship …
Fundamentally, Ingle claimed that he had helped settle the government of the colony into Protestant hands. One interesting argument he made, though, was that Maryland was a part of Virginia, meaning that Calvert’s commission was just as applicable there as it was in Jamestown. And though the colony had rejected the commission, he said that no Catholic had actually opposed it. This hearkened back to the colony’s earliest controversies. And a second was that he accused Maryland’s Catholic leadership of trying to convince the local Indians to kill its Protestant colonists.
And, the Marylanders and Spiegle crew joined forces to oppose Ingle. Again, with pretty much the exact arguments you’d expect, neutral, not Catholic, only arrested Ingle according to laws Parliament itself recognizes, trade freely with London ships, etcetera, though there were some interesting points there. First, the Spiegle’s crew accused Ingle of embezzling plundered tobacco to deny Parliament its cut of the loot, and that was important, because it was an accusation that was taken very, very seriously by the Admiralty Court. The spat over throwing Brent and Copley overboard also seems to have caused Ralph Bean to have a change of heart, and he joined forces with the Spiegle’s crew to oppose Ingle. He said that he personally had tried to remain neutral, and that Ingle had attacked Maryland for no reason, and that he “did plunder divers houses and plantations and burnt some but this he did not see then although he was there in the country, because he resisted and would not be near when and where such things were committed, abhorring such strange acts and misdemeanors or outrages done to those whom this examinant conceiveth wished no hurt at all to them.”
Amidst all the “to be expected” and “same old same old,” a couple interesting points were raised, though. The first was that a searcher working for the Committee of Sequestrations, which we will discuss more next episode to avoid distraction, but basically someone working to seize the goods of Catholics and Royalists, said that on Cornwallis’s last visit, he’d had a warrant to seize his goods, but that Ingle, Ingle! Had testified that Cornwallis was a good, loyal Parliamentarian, and persuaded him to release the goods. Now, back in 1644, there was a very practical reason to give this testimony. Whatever was sequestered, Ingle couldn’t profit from. But now this seriously damaged Ingle’s defense. It came from a Parliamentary official and contradicted everything Ingle and his crew had tried to prove about Cornwallis’s part in the seizure of the Reformation. It also allowed Cornwallis to sue Ingle the courts of common law, and he tried, though again unsuccessfully.
And, the last relatively interesting event is that when the Court interrogated Cornwallis about Copley and his politics, Cornwallis refused to label him as a Jesuit, or even a Catholic, simply portraying him as a normal, affluent citizen.
The real problem for Ingle’s case, though, came when the leading merchant came from Rotterdam to fight for his group’s right to the plundered goods. Parliament may not have had sympathy for Baltimore’s government, but this certainly wasn’t worth turning into an international spat, especially with accusations that Ingle had embezzled his loot. Plus, the people who would have proven Ingle’s testimony correct had either died or escaped, and his only real evidence was Calvert’s commission, which the Colony had overwhelmingly rejected. It needed to give the Spiegle back to the Dutch, and the tobacco to the Rotterdam merchants. By extension, it had to rule that Maryland wasn’t a Royalist or Catholic colony. So they ruled against Ingle, and Ingle had to appeal to the Court of Delegates. He also sued Cornwallis, claiming a 5,000 pound loss and damages for his arrest in 1644, which was about a thousand times as much as he actually lost.
At the same time, Brent and Copley sued Ingle, and the Spiegle officers sued him for damages for their ship, so it all just got very … lawsuit-y. Ingle even persuaded William Clobbery to sue Cornwallis for 10,000 pounds for Kent Island, something which led to Cornwallis being imprisoned until some unnamed friends posted a very large bond, after which he went into hiding. After the Kent Island suit loss, Clobbery also tried to get him convicted of murder regarding the 1635 fight involving the Cockatrice. But, in hiding, Cornwallis couldn’t continue to legally fight Ingle.
But, Ingle was in an increasingly precarious situation. After losing the Admiralty case, he stood to lose everything, and he was suspected of embezzling goods, and he was being sued by multiple people. And, though we don’t know exactly what happened to him, it does seem that he was financially destroyed by the consequences of the Rebellion, and the last time he appears in the historical record is 1653, in a letter discussing his debts.
And speaking of losing everything, I haven’t mentioned what happened to Copley and White. Both were immediately imprisoned and put on trial for having returned to England, a capital crime. At their trial, they plead not guilty, noting that they hadn’t actually voluntarily returned to England. They didn’t want to be there. They had been captured elsewhere and forced to return at gunpoint. They would rather be in Maryland at that very moment. And, in addition, Copley argued that he wasn’t an English Catholic at all. He had been born in Madrid, so he couldn’t be prosecuted as an English Catholic. The judges freed them, with a warning, and ordered them to leave the Kingdom, but being impoverished Jesuit priests in the Parliamentary port of London, where people literally thought they were servants of the anti-Christ, or the Whore of Babylon … they had no real way to do that. So they didn’t.
Copley’s argument about being a foreigner must have held some sway, because he wasn’t bothered when he remained in England. In fact, he actually managed to return to Maryland, as we’ll see. White, though, was arrested again, and sent to prison for the next three years. He was 66 years old, and in poor health, and now awaited a trial whose sentence would likely be execution. He continued his religious activities, though, including twice weekly fasts, something which prompted a rather snarky remark from his jailer, who told him that if he didn’t eat, he wouldn’t have the strength to “hold yourself upright and hang from the gibbet at Tyburn.” And to this, White replied “it is this very fasting which gives me strength to bear all for the sake of Christ.” He continued to ask for permission to return to Maryland, but the request was denied. He was, however, found not guilty at his trial and freed to live a quiet life in England, cared for by friends, until he died in December 1656.
And, that’s where we’ll have to leave it for today. Next episode, we’ll see how everything ended, what’s going on in Virginia, and pretty much finish up the story of America in the first English Civil War. Don’t worry, there are still two more to go! But, I am sorry to say that I won’t be releasing an episode next week. I just don’t have time.