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Transcript
Welcome back, everyone, and thank you, yet again, for your patience!
Introduction
First, let me apologize for yet another massive delay between episodes. I’ve been working to transition into being a teacher, and then, I actually took a long term substitute teaching job, to get some experience. I naively thought that getting off work at 3pm, I’d have ample time to work on the podcast. Time, perhaps, but energy, not so much. I can’t say enough good about it, but wow. But, it ended, and then I finished a qualification test, and here I am, back to ye olde podcast.
And, as thanks for your patience, I actually have a surprise bonus episode coming up for you all sometime in the next few weeks. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but that I was going to do when it fit into the main narrative of the show, but I’ve decided to push it forward and just do it now. It’ll be a complete change from everything I’ve done previously, but it’s going to be amazing.
And, now back to the story of America in the English Civil War.
Just as a refresher, we left of in 1645. The King was really starting to lose the war, and Parliament was clearly starting to think about exerting its authority in the colonies, especially those where Royalist sympathies dominated. It was putting the legal framework in place to do that, and to encourage Parliamentarians within those colonies to get the ball rolling. And, the three colonies which had experienced the most turmoil as a result of this and the war in general were Maryland, Virginia and Bermuda. But, we’ll get to Bermuda next week. This episode is by and large about the other two.
After a second massacre orchestrated by the now century old Opechancanough, Virginia had yet again become embroiled in a vicious war with the Powhatan. And, the war had yet again taken the generation old form of raids and corn burning. And after the colonists’ offensive had gotten solidly underway, Berkeley had gone to England. Hopefully, he could get some supplies and money to help Virginia fight and rebuild. Maybe he could help the King fight Parliament. At the very least, he could get a better understanding of what was going on in the mother country, and bring back more reliable, and hopefully more hopeful, information for Royalist Virginians.
Maryland was faring even worse than Virginia, as Puritans led by Richard Ingle had risen up and taken control of the colony, pushing most Catholics, including Governor Calvert, to take refuge in Virginia, thoroughly impoverishing everyone, and then resulting in lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit in England. The main result of the lawsuits, thanks in large part to Ingle’s plundering of a neutral Dutch ship, was that Parliament ruled Ingle’s actions unlawful and prevented him from profiting from the voyage. And this opened things up for countersuits that ensured that Ingle, too, lost everything in the fiasco. The acting government had also seized and destroyed almost all of the colony’s records, which is one reason we know so very little about what happened in Maryland’s early years.
Meanwhile, group of Maryland Puritans had sent a petition to the House of Lords, calling Baltimore’s government tyrannical, Catholic and Royalist, citing a privateering commission given to Governor Calvert, and Giles Brent’s seizure of the Reformation. In the petition, the Puritans asked for legal recognition of their new government, and immunity for Ingle and all rebels from any sort of legal prosecution.
So we have a Virginia at war, and Maryland a shambles. And both colonies without their governors, though in Virginia, the stalwart Richard Kemp was acting in Berkeley’s place, while William Claiborne led the colony’s militia against the Powhatan.
And to resume our story, in June of 1645, a visibly heartbroken Governor Berkeley returned to Jamestown. Things in England were worse than he’d even imagined. Some of his closest friends and mentors, like Viscount Falkland, were dead. The Queen was on the continent trying to get money to support the Royalist cause. And beyond that, just seeing the unimaginable devastation in his country after three years of civil war, battle scarred countryside, devastated towns, sieged fortresses and ransacked Churches. Sadness, pain and loss everywhere. And even worse, he had arrived to news that just a couple weeks before his arrival, while he was crossing the Atlantic, the devastating defeat at Marston Moor, a major turning point of the war, had taken place.
It went without saying that there would be no help for Virginia, no money, no supplies or arms. Berkeley had joined in some of the fighting in the West Country, his ancestral home and one of the last remaining Royalist holdouts, but there was no coming back. Parliament continued to advance, and the Royalists retreated. And in May 1645, after nearly a year in England, Berkeley decided to return to Virginia.
He arrived just in time for a Council of War session, and there, he learned that Claiborne, the man he’d left in charge of the militia to fight the Powhatan, had done very little during his absence. Claiborne had been focused on Kent Island, and allowed the Powhatan War to continue. The English hadn’t lost the war, that would have been virtually impossible, but they also hadn’t won, or ended it. It had just been a series of continued raids, no purpose, no focus, no end to the violence in sight. But now, Berkeley was back, and he took command of the militia, and personally led multiple expeditions. Much like had happened in the Second Anglo Powhatan War, Berkeley recruited native allies from among Powhatan – now in reality Pamunkey – tributaries. The real prize would be to capture Opechancanough, but Berkeley was using both battle and diplomacy to chip away at his base of power, until there were only two tribes left fighting the English. The leaders of the Powhatan side had been the Pamunkey, Chicahominie and Weyanoke tribes, and the Weyanokes had by this point incorporated the Nansemonds, but now, after suffering devastating raids, and with their tributaries shifting loyalty to the English, the Weyanokes threw in the towel, and moved south to modern day North Carolina. And that was a devastating blow for Opechancanough.
And speaking of devastating blows, just a few weeks after Berkeley’s arrival, while all this was going on, news had come to Virginia that, again while he was crossing the Atlantic, the Royalist Army had been all but destroyed at the Battle of Naseby, a truly irrecoverable defeat. And, not long after that, news arrived that Bristol, the last remaining Royalist port, had fallen after a two week siege.
The fall of Bristol was an event with special significance to the colonies, because it severed the last remaining reliable link between England’s Royalists and the outside world. It opened the way for the Earl of Warwick to declare all Royalist ships to be fair game for Parliamentary privateers, which meant there was no real safety, anywhere in the world, for surviving Royalist captains. It meant that all American products traded to England would profit Parliament, and it increased that monopoly dynamic among English merchants.
In fact, after the fall of Bristol, English traders started to propose to Parliament that they be given beneficial trade policies to push English colonists to trade with them instead of the Dutch. As we’ve discussed before, Dutch merchants had always been willing to pay higher prices for goods produced in the colonies than English merchants had. Trade with the Dutch is what had elevated the tobacco producing colonies from inescapable poverty, and trade with the Dutch is what had facilitated the emerging sugar production that would soon make the Caribbean rich beyond its wildest dreams. The Netherlands had a revolutionary economy for the 17th Century, and that not only benefited them but also the English colonists who traded with them.
English merchants, on the other hand, found themselves increasingly cut off from the lucrative American trade. With Bristol gone, and with Parliament now starting to think about how it would run the colonies, Parliamentarian merchants started to argue that English colonies should only be able to trade with English ships. This had been debated on a colony by colony basis in the past, but in most colonies trade with the Dutch was accepted, and followed by economic growth. Now the English merchants hoped to reverse that trend, and use a sympathetic government to bolster their interests. In 1645, a preoccupied Parliament shelved the issue. But I don’t have to tell you that it didn’t end there.
There were more immediate results of the defeat, though. All colonies, even those in New England, had been careful to maintain shipping neutrality during the war, out of sheer necessity, but now the dynamic was different, and there was very little that colonists could do about that. Thomas Warner of St. Kitts made a uniquely bold move in response to this news, when he declared that no ships captained by Londoners, in other words no Parliamentary ships, would be allowed to anchor in the colony’s harbors, and that no Londoners would be allowed to come ashore there. This created at least a small haven for some Royalist vessels, and was beyond that a decisive statement of loyalty to a defeated cause. As far as we can tell, it was a move no one else dared to emulate.
On the other side of the divide, the fall of Bristol and Warwick’s privateering commissions also caused a bit of a stir in New England, and this brings me back to some events that I referenced in an earlier episode, but said I’d get to later. They don’t really fit smoothly in the rest of the New England narrative, but they do fit in the context of this topic.
New England, like the rest of the colonies, had by and large tried to maintain a position of shipping neutrality in the early years of the war. Virginia had failed when it had tried to only trade with Royalists, because the costs of taking sides in that way were just too high for any colony to bear. Especially early in the war, when it could have gone either way, it was just a bad idea. For colonies that produced goods to sell, it reduced their ability to actually sell their goods, and for New England colonies which were starting to really develop trade as an economic foundation, neutrality meant security for their ships. New England merchants could sail and trade with a security that no other English ships could, and even if it wasn’t completely safe, it was the safest any merchant could realistically expect in the middle of a civil war with a significant naval component.
But now? Royalist ships were officially fair game, the King would lose the war, and New England had a bit more freedom to adhere to its own sympathies – at least some people felt that way. So not too long after the fall of Bristol, a Parliamentary captain named Thomas Stagg seized a Royalist ship, and what made the event noteworthy is that he seized that ship in Massachusetts waters, which were technically neutral, which should have meant that all ships were safe there. Stagg asked to be able to keep his prize, citing his privateering commission from the Earl of Warwick, while the Royalist captain and others like him in Boston at the time, argued that since Massachusetts waters were neutral, the seizure was illegal and the ship should be returned. Massachusetts merchants also asked the Court to return the Royalist’s ship, saying that there would be retaliation for this, and that they would be the victims of that retaliation. But, both the Standing Council and General Court ruled that Stagg could keep his prize. Warwick had declared Royalist ships fair game, and they would be fair game in Massachusetts.
And then, a couple months later, they doubled down on their decision by themselves seizing a Royalist ship, and distributing its cargo to whatever merchants in Boston had lost cargoes during the war.
Merchant fears were confirmed, as this end of neutrality did in fact provoke severe retaliation against New England merchants. Royalist captains already had nowhere to go, so a number of them decided to just hang out in the area and attack New England ships. I mean, it was actually a great option for them. New England ships were weaker, but still solidly Parliamentarian in sympathy, and trading with American colonies and Dutch merchants meant they had actually had a great assortment of valuable goods, and New England was far enough away from England to be a safer place than most. They had nowhere else to go, and the time before they, themselves were inevitably captured was limited, so what else were they going to do? And they weren’t just retaliating for the two plundered ships – they were taking out their frustrations about the whole nasty war, and having some fun before they, themselves, lost everything.
Massachusetts Merchants used the next sparsely attended General Court session to push for legislation guaranteeing protection of all ships entering the colony’s ports, a return to neutrality which would end their shipping woes, but while the bill passed, the magistrates essentially refused to enforce it. It wasn’t long, though, before there were so few Royalist ships left that the issue was pretty much moot.
So, that’s a little detour from our main narrative, but while the Fall of Bristol was a catastrophic enough loss for King Charles that it caused him to dismiss Prince Rupert from his service, it was probably even more significant in the colonies.
And soon after the King’s surrender in May 1646, Virginia’s war was over, too. At a Council of War session early in 1646, the Virginians laid out another plan to try to capture Opechancanough. They gathered the best soldiers in Virginia, along with a number of Rappahannock and Accomac allies, and surrounded the place he was staying over winter, gradually pushing in, forcing him to less protected ground, and finally cornering and capturing him. They moved all the males accompanying him to Tangier Island, and took the aged leader to the Jamestown jail, where he would stay while they decided what to do with him. But after just a couple days in captivity, one of his guards shot him in the back.
And that, of all ways, is how Opechancanough died. 100 years old, on the floor of a jail cell after being shot in the back. I mean, I am quite sure the murder was at least partly symbolic. His surprise massacres had killed well over a thousand people. And, while they were colonists, and some of the first settlers of what would within a century become one of the world’s biggest empires – they were mostly just people. And mostly just the vulnerable people of English society, who had, either by being tricked or out of sheer hopelessness turned to Virginia as the place where their chances of a decent future were highest. They weren’t, for the most part, thinking about some grander vision. They were just trying to make their own lives as decent as possible.
But, Opechancanough didn’t have all that many options to protect his own tribe, interest, land, way of life. Even if he wanted to attack the movers and shakers, and the empire builders, directly, well, they were in London. And I think it’s worth noting that he never tried to play the games that people like Wahunseneca or Massasoit did. He was one of few who just wanted the English gone, sooner rather than later. If he’d had his way, he would have wiped out that first group of settlers, and that would have been the end of that. So it’s one of the stories of which I can most understand both sides. And I understand the murder. But I also can’t help but feel a little sad, even 400 years later, like it was a bit unceremonious for someone who was truly larger than life.
But back to the main story, Opechancanough’s successor sued for peace, and Berkeley drew up a treaty, and submitted it to the General Assembly, where it was ratified. And the fact that Berkeley involved the Assembly in the peacemaking process meant that this was a more robust peace than the colony had ever had before. Now, the Assembly would have to approve any attempts to go to war, or to change the terms of the peace, and not just the Governor’s Council. Berkeley had more influence over the Assembly, which loved him, than he did the Governor’s Council, which still included multiple members of the old Mathews-Claiborne faction. So by adopting a more directly democratic approach to governance, something which Berkeley’s would-be rivals ideologically wanted, Berkeley could circumvent their power and maintain a steadier policy, more control over the colony, and most of all, a peace which he had always wanted more than they did. It’s the same tactic he’d used when he’d first arrived from England, and it’s yet another example of Berkeley’s leadership skills.
As part of the peace treaty, the Powhatan agreed to become tributaries of the English. And, as part of this, they would give 20 beaver skins per year as tribute to the governor. This was more than anything a statement. Powhatan tributaries had given a specified quantity of products to whichever leader was in charge at the time, and now the Powhatan gave tribute to the English. It was an unambiguous statement that the Powhatan were now subservient to the English. And, as such, they would live under English law, and outside of English borders, and the English were the ones in charge. Tsenocomoco was now, unambiguously, Virginia.
And Berkeley got back to the work of building, strengthening and renewing Virginia and its capital. He’d been popular before. Now he was even more popular. He worked to strengthen ties to Dutch merchants, which was now both an economic and a political decision. He worked to attract artisans, and followed up on the 1642 requirement to build brick houses by encouraging, though not mandating, them to install ice pits, leading by example. And there, we’ll leave it for now.
At the same time as that was going on, Baltimore was yet again preparing to abandon Maryland. On Christmas of 1645, the House of Lords had asked a committee to draw up an ordinance accepting the Maryland Puritans’ petition asking for legal recognition of their new government, and legal absolution for all rebels. Nothing had been finalized by the next fall, but Ingle had taken the opportunity to ask that all legal proceedings against him be stopped until the Lords decided one way or another on the petition. And, the Lords agreed to this.
Baltimore couldn’t afford to fight this, so he prepared to formally withdraw his government from the colony. He asked Lewger and his brother to try to collect whatever they could to help salvage his financial situation, and then ordered them to prepare to abandon the colony permanently.
Calvert still wasn’t ready to give up on Maryland, though. Instead of preparing for the final and formal surrender, he began recruiting Virginians and Marylanders to help overthrow the Puritan government. The Marylanders were those loyal to Baltimore, and the Virginians were, well, a variety of people, some Catholics, some Protestants, but mostly Royalists who were now freed up from fighting the Powhatan War.
Two Virginia burgesses, named Captain Edward Hill and Captain Thomas Willoughby, went ahead of Calvert to demand the return of several Virginia Puritans who had unlawfully left Virginia and settled in Maryland. Willoughby had lived in Virginia since he was a kid, and Hill was one of Virginia’s leading Puritans. Yes, Puritans.
And we don’t know exactly how Hill’s expedition and Calvert’s planned invasion fit together. Hill and Willoughby were officially acting on behalf of the Virginia general assembly. But, the timing would certainly fit with Calvert’s plans, and certainly the Assembly would tend to support Calvert over the Puritan, Parliamentarian usurpers.
And when Hill arrived in Maryland, he got himself elected governor, officially acting on behalf of Lord Baltimore. It seems as if Calvert had unofficially given Hill a commission to act as governor while he was out of the province, the kind of commission that he’d given Lewger, Brent and Cornwallis previous times that he’d left the colony. So, it seems like they’d sent him with official, run of the mill business, but with hopes that he could, possibly, restore Baltimore’s government. And, being a Puritan, he was a unique, clever and strategic choice to do that.
The thing is, life in Maryland had been pretty terrible since the rebellion, even if you were on the winning side. Growing of corn and tobacco had all but stopped, and people were living on what they’d managed to plunder. And the government didn’t even have legal recognition, and in fact it wasn’t any sort of a functioning government at all. So, for all but the most ideologically motivated of people, the return of the Proprietary Government didn’t sound that bad. And if Hill came and said “I’m a Puritan representing Lord Baltimore. Why don’t you vote on whether to accept me as your governor?” If you were one of the few Catholics who was still hanging on, then yay, Baltimore’s government had returned! Religious toleration, stability and order! And even if you were a Puritan who had opposed Baltimore’s government on sectarian grounds, well, Hill was a Puritan. Everyone got what they wanted, and this helped diffuse the tricky legal situation in England. It was actually quite brilliant.
So, on August 5, the residents of St. Mary’s accepted Hill as their governor, though Kent Island still refused. And the Plundering Time was officially over. Ingle’s Rebellion was officially over. Baltimore’s Proprietary Government was officially restored. And Hill ran the colony through the end of 1646. He began rebuilding the government, and toward the end of the year, he even held an Assembly. Calvert granted him a salary of a whopping half of all quit rents and customs dues that Baltimore was owed that year.
And this renewed Baltimore’s legal fight in England. He petitioned the Lords for a delay in the ordinance and all legal proceedings, so he could prepare a defense against all the accusations against him, and he asked them to wait for nearly a year, so that people from Maryland who could support his claims could come, which wouldn’t happen before the next shipment of tobacco. And the Lords agreed to this, and shortly afterward, the ordinance was dropped entirely.
This doesn’t mean that the Maryland issue was over. It means that the Ingle issue was over. And that was a smart move on Parliament’s part. Parliament didn’t want to build its New World policy using a messy set of court cases and petitions. And Ingle’s particular rebellion had involved neutral Dutch merchants, so it even brought in some potential foreign policy trouble. Parliament was best off stepping back and addressing Maryland directly, legislatively, in a focused and proactive way, rather than simply in reaction to other events.
This did, of course, mean that Ingle was sunk. He had officially lost everything, and at this point he drew up a list of debts owed to him by Chesapeake planters, amounting to about 40,000 pounds of tobacco or 300 pounds sterling, and gave it to Cornwallis, along with whatever plundered goods could be recovered and returned to him.
But by November, Calvert was still quietly recruiting soldiers and supplies to invade Maryland. And we don’t know exactly how all of that played out. Calvert had, most likely, commissioned Hill as acting governor. Baltimore had definitely recognized Hill’s government as representing his authority. Hill, as we’ll see, was reluctant to actually yield his authority to Calvert on Calvert’s return, so maybe that had something to do with it. I would venture a guess that he had tried to use his election as a basis for him being the true, permanent governor, and shifting the position of governor to being an elected position rather than one representing the Lord Proprietary’s interests alongside an elected assembly. This would have legitimized Hill’s government under Baltimore’s name, but eliminated all influence Baltimore had in the colony. And, when he learned of Hill’s plans, Calvert may have decided to go to Maryland as its true governor, which he still legally was, and resumed his recruitment of soldiers, to take control by force if necessary. That would be very in keeping with the themes and conflicts of the era.
But, whatever happened, in November, Calvert sent a message offering pardon to all residents of St. Mary’s who submitted to Baltimore’s authority. And by December, he’d finalized his force, comprising half Marylanders and half Virginians.
They gathered at York, the northernmost substantial Virginia settlement, and from there they sailed. As they approached St. Mary’s, Calvert gave a speech, ordering his men to respect the pardon of any rebel who submitted, and to refrain from pillage.
When they arrived, they took over the colony with virtually no effort or bloodshed. We don’t know exactly what happened, but taking Timothy Riordan’s collection and analysis of available data, and applying just a little bit of narrative license, the story probably went something like this. The Assembly had adjourned shortly before Calvert’s surprise arrival. No one actually expected Calvert to return, so when he arrived with a pardon in one hand, and a sword in the other, and with that sword backed up with a moderate military force – pretty much everyone surrendered on the spot. A few resisted, including a handful of people at Pope’s Fort, and a few members of Hill’s government, but they were in no position to resist, even if they wanted to. Those who resisted were jailed, but even leaders like Nathaniel Pope and Capt. Hill begrudgingly submitted. And, when Hill submitted, Calvert guaranteed him the salary that he’d been promised, as soon as it was available. Hill returned to Virginia, though Willoughby remained in Maryland, and Calvert once again resumed control of the colony, with virtually no bloodshed.
Ingle’s Rebellion, and the Plundering Time, were officially over on both sides of the Atlantic. Puritans may not have been happy about it, but Baltimore’s authority had, if anything, ultimately been strengthened. A few people continued to grumble that Hill was the rightful governor, but that was about the extent of opposition in St. Mary’s. The plunderers had lost pretty much everything. And pretty much the only remaining conflicts were over payment to people like Hill and Bennet, a Virginia Puritan who had invested in Calvert’s mission.
And for the next few months, Maryland worked to rebuild everything that had been destroyed. Inventories, doubling the depleted population, including bringing people back from Virginia, and attracting new settlers, like those who had helped retake Maryland. Calvert recruited Nathaniel Pope as an ally in restoring unity and order. People accused Pope of trying to re-start the rebellion using a recruited force from Virginia, but Calvert and his allies investigated and found them to be false, or at least, inconsequential. And, Pope continued to work for Calvert, even if he didn’t fully support him.
Kent Islanders still resisted, though, and when this resistance led them to attack the home of Baltimore supporter Robert Vaughan, and imprison him for three weeks, Calvert prepared to invade and permanently subdue the place. The rebels fled, but only after slaughtering as many cattle as possible to prevent Calvert from benefiting from them. When Calvert recaptured Kent Island, he placed it under martial law, but again he pardoned any rebels willing to submit. By this point, there were only 20 people left at the Kent Island settlement. He put Vaughan in charge, with a commission including one other Baltimore supporter, and two rebel leaders. And, he seized the estates of rebels who had fled the Island, but said everything would be returned as soon as the rebels submitted to Baltimore’s authority.
The level of manganimity shown by Calvert and his allies is actually quite extraordinary given everything that had happened, and it did help to stabilize the colony. And in four months, Calvert had Maryland back on solid footing. Reasonably unified, Baltimore’s authority stronger than ever, growing corn and tobacco, with twice the population of the previous year, and with a functioning government. The only thing that really wasn’t recoverable was the Jesuit mission.
On June 9th, though, just 8 days after holding a session of the provincial court, Calvert died.
We don’t know what happened. He started to feel sick. They brought the best medical minds in the Chesapeake, for what that’s worth, to do what they could to heal him, but he just didn’t recover. On June 9, he called his friends and servants to his bedside, appointed Thomas Greene as his gubernatorial successor, and Margaret Brent as the executrix of his will, and after speaking with her privately for a while, he called everyone back to his bedside and personally gave stuff to his servants, and his godson. Six hours later, he was dead. I reiterated, we just don’t know what happened. All we can do is look at the sparse evidence and speculate, but it doesn’t really make a difference anyway. The Chesapeake was brutal, and Calvert wouldn’t be the first, nor the last, to die suddenly of something or other. It’s just the way life was in that place, at that time. But boy, what timing.
And that’s where we’ll leave it for today. Maryland’s greatest victory thus far, followed by its greatest loss.
Next week, we’ll check in on Bermuda and Barbados, and in fact the rest of the Caribbean.