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Catholicism and conflict in the Chesapeake
In many ways, the establishment of Maryland was remarkably smooth. The settlers had been sent with enough supplies to get through the first growing season, and they established great relations with the local tribes. They prioritized growing corn, then building the town, then working for profit, and by fall they had enough corn to trade some to New England in exchange for salt and other provisions. There was seasoning sickness, but overall, it was a great start.
Puritans in Virginia, however, were dedicated to making trouble and pushing the Marylanders out. Their efforts centered around Captain William Claiborne, who had a small settlement on Kent Island. First, he seems to have tried to convince the local Indians that they were secret, dangerous enemies. Then, he began trading nearer and nearer to St. Mary’s instead of staying around his own settlement. Meanwhile, Calvert got orders from Baltimore to stop Claiborne.
Transcript
As always, before we get started with the story of this episode, it’s worth taking a minute to introduce the native inhabitants of the region that’s now Maryland. They were tribes who had been at the edge of the Powhatan empire, and the 1630s found them in a rather unique situation.
Introduction
A lot of what we know about these tribes actually comes from early Virginia exploration. John Smith had first explored the future Maryland way back in 1608, on that trip with Mosco. Then, John Pory, who worked for Argall and Warwick, and with Yeardley, had explored the area about a decade later, and Thomas Savage lived there for a while.
And, there had also been some others who had ventured into the area over the years. Perhaps most interestingly, one of the people who taught some of the Marylanders about the region was one of the Africans who had come to Virginia as an indentured servant. Afterward, he’d gone to the northern tribes to learn their language and culture and do some trading, and by the time the Ark and Dove arrived he was able to give the new settlers some pretty decent information. And of course there were Fleet and Claiborne.
The peoples of Maryland were a group of smaller tribes caught between two massive powers, right at the edge of both spheres of influence. Coming from the South, the Powhatan had conquered them. And coming from the north, there was a tribe called the Susquehannocs. Everyone pretty much gave the same description of the Susquehannocs, from Wahunseneca to John Smith to the African. They were physically huge, they spoke a completely different language, wore completely different clothes, had tools unlike anyone around them, and they were fierce and terrifying. They, it turns out, were the southernmost tribe of the Iroquois, or Five Tribes, Confederation.
As the Powhatan power collapsed, the Susquehannocs started to expand. They ended up conquering the Massawomecks, and when the Marylanders arrived, the little tribes of the Northern Chesapeake were really feeling the pressure. Most importantly to our story, a tribe called the Yoamacoes were trying to fight the Susquehannocs, and they were losing badly enough that they were preparing to leave the area. Others weren’t necessarily in as severe a situation, but for them, the English could only help matters. There were Patawomecks, and Patuxents, and the strongest tribe in the region was the Piscataway tribe.
So, picking up about where we left off last week, after their initial encounter, Leonard Calvert, the governor, left Father White and a group of settlers in St. Clements with the Ark, and sailed the Dove up the St. Mary’s River with a group of people including Captain Fleet and Father Altham, to talk to the local tribes and explore the area. Calvert offered Fleet a portion of Maryland’s beaver trade if he would serve the Lord Proprietor, Lord Baltimore, and help establish the colony. Fleet accepted the offer, and began to show them around, and lead them to a perfect place for the Marylanders to establish their capital.
First, they sailed to the heart of the Potomac tribe, which was ruled by a child whose uncle, Archibu, was acting as regent. They spoke to the uncle for a while, as Fleet translated, and Altham started to preach to them. He said they’d come neither to make war on them, nor do them any wrong, but to instruct them in Christianity and make them acquainted with the arts of civilized life, and to live with them like brothers. Archibu told them they were welcome, but using the Protestant Fleet as a translator as the Jesuit Altham tried to convert the Indians wasn’t going to work, so Altham told Archibu that he didn’t have time to enter on further discourse, but he’d return to visit him again. And, Archibu responded enthusiastically. “It is good. We will use one table – my people shall hunt for my brother, and all things shall be common between us.”
They left, and their next stop was Pascataway. This time, though, they were confronted by a massive group of warriors, 500 by their estimation. Calvert signaled that his intentions were peaceful, and Fleet went ashore to invite the werowance to come aboard the Dove. He accepted the invitation, and Calvert told him they were there to teach him a divine doctrine to lead him to Heaven, and this time the reception was skeptical and reserved. The werowance replied that he wouldn’t bid them go, nor would he bid them stay, but that he would use his own discretion. He did, however, entertain the settlers overnight in his own wigwam, gave Calvert his own bed for the night, and spent the next day guiding Calvert around the area. At the end of the visit, the werowance was ready to ally with the English, and Calvert was completely smitten with his new home.
Then, Fleet guided them to a place that would be suitable for a new town, and Calvert agreed. This would be the location of St. Mary’s, capital of Maryland.
Back at St. Clements, things were also going pretty well. Unfortunately, their shallop had overturned and they’d lost most of the linen they’d brought from England, but White and the other settlers had been busy felling trees, building a palisade, and assembling the barge they’d brought from England. And, they had also been talking to the Indians in that area. They’d invited them aboard the ship, and showed them around, firing the cannon, and answering questions, like, “where in the world did so large a tree grow, from which so huge a ship could be hewn?” And, like Altham, White’s openness and manner helped convince the tribes that the Marylanders had good intentions.
When the Dove returned, the other two ships joined it, and the group of colonists sailed up to the location of the new city. They met with the local Yoacomicos, and bought 30 miles of territory in exchange for hatchets, axes, hoes and cloth. According to the terms of the agreement, they’d live in the huts with the Indians while they built their own town. The Yoacomicos had already been planning to leave, so the arrangement worked for both groups. As they finalized the purchase, the settlers fired salutes in honor of the occasion.
And, soon after they planted their settlement, Governor Harvey sailed up from Jamestown. Calvert threw a banquet on board the Ark in honor of the occasion, and he invited the werowances of all the neighboring tribes. The Patuxent werowance was particularly friendly, so Calvert gave him the place of honor at the table, seated between himself and Harvey. One of the king’s subjects was certain that this was a trap, but the werowance convinced the man he was in no danger and prevented him from sounding the alarm on shore. As the feast drew to a close, he addressed the surrounding Indians, saying “I love the English so well that if they should go about to kill me, and I had so much breath as to speak, I would command the people not to avenge my death, for I know that they would do no such thing, except it were through my own fault.”
With such a smooth beginning, you can imagine how weird it was when suddenly the Indians became reserved and distant. Fleet confirmed that something was wrong when he told Calvert that Claiborne had told the local tribes that the Marylanders were Spaniards, and their secret enemies.
Calvert ordered the settlers to suspend all other works and focus on building a blockhouse for protection. He also ordered the colonists to keep acting normal until the suspicion passed. They were to remain ceaselessly friendly, convincing them of the sincerity of their conduct. Six weeks later, the blockhouse was completed, and suspicions among the local tribes were starting to dissipate. Calvert then sent a message to Baltimore telling him what Fleet had said, and a complaint to Harvey, who ordered Claiborne not to leave Jamestown until the charges were investigated.
So, the initial problem was smoothed over relatively easily, but the fundamental issue still remained. William Claiborne was dedicated to pushing the Marylanders out of the Chesapeake region.
And, though this first attempt was pretty trivial, Claiborne’s efforts would be so long-lasting and impactful that he really needs a proper introduction. Claiborne was a Puritan, and the son of the mayor of King’s Lynn, in Norfolk. His family had always been involved in trade, though not particularly successfully, so in 1621, he sailed to Virginia, where he worked as a surveyor. By 1625, he had 1,100 acres of land, a hefty salary of 60 pounds a year, and the political connections to become Secretary of State of the colony. And, in 1627, he’d gotten the authority from governor Yeardley to sail and trade north and south of the Chesapeake. By 1634, he was easily one of the most successful people in Virginia.
And, he still had his Kent Island settlement, which he was operating for Clobbery and Company. That particular partnership wasn’t doing particularly well. Clobbery and Company were complaining that they hadn’t gotten enough, or high enough quality pelts from Claiborne, and they even stopped sending Kent Island supplies for over a year. With nothing to trade for food, the Kent Islanders were hungry and too weak to defend their post if Indians chose to attack.
And by 1634, Kent Island was in a very, very murky legal area.
On the one hand, the words hactenus inculta were in the Maryland grant, which meant there had been no intention to grant any land already occupied by English colonists, so, even if Maryland became its own colony, Claiborne claimed he still had propriety rights to Kent Island.
On the other hand, Claiborne had only inhabited the land 10 months before the patent’s date, knowing there was likely to be a patent in that area.
On the one hand, he’d been trading in the area for several years, and the people living on Kent Island had political representation in the Virginia government, actually by a guy named Nicholas Martian, an ancestor of George Washington.
On the other hand, he had gotten no official ownership to the land he was living on. He’d been given a trading permit. There was nothing legally official about his settlement of Kent Island.
On the one hand, he had a special license from the King for his trading activities, granting him the right to trade anywhere in America which hadn’t been granted exclusive trading privileges, which Maryland hadn’t.
On the other hand, that license was under the privy seal of Scotland, not England, and as England and Scotland were still separate countries, though with the same King, it was essentially impossible to take the matter to court.
And, these legal issues hadn’t been settled by the confirmation of Baltimore’s patent over Virginia opposition. In fact, Claiborne hadn’t even brought up the issue until the original case was decided. He only began his petition after the decision against Virginia, a few days before the Ark and Dove left England. He sent a petition with John Wolstenholme and other colonists, saying they’d settled the land at great expense, and asking that Baltimore settle in some other place. Baltimore hadn’t halted the very-expensive mission to deal with a second, strategically-timed lawsuit, though. He’d just stayed in England, sent his brother as governor, and ordered his brother not to get in a fight with Claiborne. They’d allow him to trade as freely as any Marylander until the English courts dealt with the issue.
But, Claiborne wasn’t just fighting for his rights to trade. He was fighting a deeply political battle which fell along the same lines the English Civil War would just a few years later. He was a Puritan, and a member of a Puritan party in Virginia. He was fighting against Catholics, and demeaning royal supremacy. He would soon be a roundhead, fighting people who would soon be cavaliers. Kent Island was only a part of a wider fight going on within Virginia, and that same fight would soon drag England into one of the bloodiest wars in its history. The Kent Island trading post wasn’t even doing well. Clobbery and Company had even stopped sending the post supplies and trading goods because they didn’t feel Claiborne had been sending them enough pelts, or high enough quality pelts. There would have been no reason to fight if the issue wasn’t political.
So, at the end of June, both Maryland and Virginia sent commissioners to investigate claims that Claiborne had lied about the Marylanders to turn the Indians against them. They met at Patuxent, which was one of the tribes whose werowance had exhibited the most dramatic change. Maryland sent George Calvert, the 21 year old brother of the governor and Lord Proprietor, and Frederick Wintour. Virginia sent the leaders of Claiborne’s faction – Matthews, John Utie, William Peirce and Thomas Hinton. They’d been rising through the ranks in Virginia since George Calvert and Frederick Wintour were children. Older, more experienced and more political, the Virginians dominated the proceedings, and by the end of the investigation, there was no evidence that Claiborne had done anything wrong. Then, they pushed Wintour and George Calvert to sign a document which stated the results of the investigation. The Marylanders still weren’t convinced. There hadn’t been a fair investigation, and there had been a clear change in the Indians which wasn’t otherwise explained. But the Virginians were able to use the results to claim that Claiborne had been the wronged party. Claiborne hadn’t done anything wrong. Fleet, his trading rival, had cast his lot with the Marylanders to boost his own trading business. Claiborne had been falsely accused for personal profit.
For the rest of the summer, the Indians taught the settlers how to hunt the types of game which were native to Maryland, and the colonists discovered that the rivers and bays were full of fish and oysters. The Indians also taught the colonists how to work the land, and they planted lots of corn before moving on to building their city. They lived in their huts, and the priests lost no time turning one hut into a chapel. They also continued discussing religion with them, and White in particular learned about their own beliefs with a detail not before understood. They had a somewhat similar tradition to the Powhatan. They did believe in one supreme God, but many minor deities, and they spent most of their time trying to appease the evil spirit, Okee, using sacrifices. But, as they discussed religion with the locals, and as they explained Christianity, they converted more and more of them. The priests were forbidden from visiting the tribes of the interior, though, because the colony couldn’t afford to lose them until they had reinforcements. In addition to conversions, White kept meticulous journals which he used to send detailed reports back to England and Rome. Baltimore kept White’s identity a secret, but used the information in his reports to recruit more settlers for the colony.
They’d brought enough supplies from England and Barbados to get them through the growing season, and by fall, they had enough corn not only to feed the settlement through the next year, but to trade 10,000 bushels to New England in exchange for salt and other provisions. The transaction didn’t go smoothly, though. The New Englanders were offended at being called “holy bretherin,” and the Dove’s crewmembers used profanity. The merchant ended up being arrested for a week in Massachusetts, and asked to punish the offenders. He died a week after being released, before the pinnace had even left Plymouth. This wasn’t the result of mistreatment. Marylanders, like Virginians, had suffered a huge rate of illness since arriving at their colony, the same seasoning sickness which left people permanently week and prone to residual bouts of illness, and they were already weak when they arrived.
But, all in all, things were going really well. Governor Calvert was under orders to ask for a meeting with Claiborne, though.
Baltimore had ordered his brother to send a Protestant gentleman to invite Claiborne to a cordial meeting, where he’d assure Claiborne of Maryland’s good intentions toward him. So, Calvert sent Thomas Young. When Young returned from delivering the message, he expressed deep reservations about the possibility of peace with Claiborne. He said Claiborne spoke subtly, but was deeply, bitterly opposed to Baltimore, and he also explained that Claiborne was part of a bigger faction within Virginia politics. Claiborne had evidently said that, until he’d been falsely accused of trying to turn the Indians against the Marylanders, he’d hoped for peaceful coexistence, but Maryland’s accusations had changed his mind. The leader of the anti-Harvey, anti-Maryland party was the puritan Captain Matthews, and Matthews was strongly enough opposed to Maryland that he had refused to obey the King and leave Maryland alone. Young told Calvert and Baltimore that unless they suppressed Matthews quickly, they would end up with a long political battle with daily plots and subterfuge. Without Matthews’s political agitation, the entire faction would quickly dissipate.
Claiborne had agreed to the meeting, though, and a few days later he met with Calvert. Baltimore had strictly ordered his brother to keep the meeting cordial, and not to confront Claiborne on the legal issues. Somehow, this order got disobeyed, and Calvert ended up telling Claiborne that if he remained in Maryland, he’d be deemed a subject of the colony.
Now, we don’t know exactly how that ended up happening. It’s pretty clear in later interactions that Leonard Calvert wasn’t quite as mild mannered as his brother, Lord Baltimore. And, it’s pretty clear from the whole situation that Claiborne was actively hoping to cause problems for Maryland.
But, regardless of exactly how Calvert ended up making that blunder, he made Maryland the topic of discussion at the next Virginia Council meeting, just a few days later. Claiborne asked the rest of the councilors if he should demean himself in respect of Baltimore’s patent, and the overwhelming majority of the councilors answered that Virginia was bound in duty and oaths to maintain the rights and privileges of its colonists, and they saw no reason to give up Kent Island to Maryland. They supported Claiborne’s refusal to consider himself a part of Maryland or halt his right to trade in Maryland’s waters without license from Baltimore. They did say that Virginia would maintain peace with Maryland, but they gave their official and unequivocal support to Claiborne’s actions.
And that brought the colony through the end of 1634. They began the next year with the first meeting of the General Assembly, where they passed a few laws which they sent to Baltimore for his approval, and elected Hawley and Cornwallis as the first two commissioners.
In March, though, both Claiborne and Calvert got orders from England regarding Kent Island. In response to Fleet’s accusations, Baltimore ordered his brother to take possession of Kent Island if possible, and to take Claiborne and his settlers prisoner until further orders. At the same time, Clobbery and Company had sent orders to Claiborne to continue his trading, saying that the King had assured them of their continued rights to the island. A third letter to Harvey from the Privy Council thanked him for his service to Maryland.
So, everyone had gotten different messages. In fact, everyone had gotten messages telling them exactly what they wanted to hear. After a year of hostility, Calvert was ready to push Claiborne out. And Claiborne was happy to continue his activities in a more and more aggressive way.
So just a couple weeks later, Claiborne sent a pinnace called the Longtail to trade for corn and furs in Maryland waters. Under the command of Thomas Smith, the Longtail sailed well past Kent Island, up the Patuxent River, and very close to St. Mary’s. Calvert sent Fleet and Captain Humber to seize the pinnace for trading in Maryland waters without a license from the Proprietary. Smith showed the Marylanders copies of his commission, as well as the letter from Clobbery and Company, but Fleet noted that the commission didn’t allow them to trade further than the Isle of Kent, and said that the papers had been grounded on false information Claiborne had sent to England. He seized the vessel and confiscated the goods. He put the crew on shore, unarmed, and that night they slept in the woods, walking to St. Mary’s the next day. They complained to Cornwallis – who was in charge of the colony while Calvert was visiting Virginia – that Fleet’s actions had been illegal, but Cornwallis said Fleet hadn’t done anything he hadn’t been ordered to do. Two days later, Calvert returned and met with Smith. He, too, refused to return the vessel, and he refused to return them to Kent Island, offering to send them to Virginia or England instead. Smith refused, and asked for a boat with which to return home. Calvert refused, but allowed Smith to make arrangements with local Indians for transportation. He also allowed them one gun.
In response to this incident, Claiborne sent an armed vessel called the Cockatrice to demand the return of the Longtail, and to seize and capture any pinnaces it found belonging to the Marylanders. Calvert also outfitted a couple pinnaces in anticipation.