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The historical record is sparse in the years leading up to the English Civil War in Maryland. But, there are a few themes which emerge in what we do know:
Catholics vs. Puritans
A Catholic named William Lewis found two Puritans (one an indentured servant he managed) in his house, loudly reading sermons by Henry “Silver tongued” Smith, calling the Pope an anti-Christ, and Jesuits anti-Christian ministers. He lost his temper, told them the book was full of “lies of the devil,” and that they shouldn’t keep such books. Then, the Puritans wrote a petition to the Virginia government telling them about mistreatment of Protestants.
Lewis warned Cornwallis about the actions, and the Maryland government averted disaster by trying the case, themselves, and fining Lewis 500 pounds of tobacco.
Indian conversions
Father White led the most famous Indian conversion yet, when he converted Tayac, werowance of the Piscataway/Pascataway Indians. After the conversion, Indians from around the area started to be educated by the English, and White himself went to live with Tayac (who took the Christian name Charles, while his wife chose Mary, in honor of the English sovereigns).
Baltimore vs. the Jesuits
Baltimore entered a feud with the Jesuits which prompted Cornwallis to threaten to leave the colony. Ultimately, he put the Church under the state by applying all normal laws to the priests and forbidding them from living with the Indians or accepting gifts of land from them. He also asked Rome to recall the Jesuits and replace them with secular clergy.
Descent into chaos
As England approached war, threats piled up against Maryland. Susquehannocs and Nanticokes started to attack, Dutch and Swedish colonists settled within Baltimore’s patent, and a group from New Haven even set up an illegal trading post there (but were driven out by the Dutch). Protestants started to push for the same kinds of political changes which were happening in Maryland, and Assemblies grew so heated that the Council passed a law to try to restore order – or at least civility.
Transcript
The historical record between 1639 and 1642 in Maryland is pretty sparse, and the practical upshot of that for us is that this will be the last episode of the Maryland foundation series, as we survey what we do know about the time period. It kind of works, though, because you can see the problems pile up in a pretty dramatic way as Maryland starts to get sucked into the English Civil War era.
Introduction
But, let’s start with a quick overview of 1638, and the events which were occurring in the background of the last episode. Though 1638 was a politically important year for the colony, politics were far from the only important thing going on at the time.
First, seeing the continual struggle to keep non-Puritans in control of Virginia, Baltimore had actually written privately to the King’s secretary of state, Francis Windebank, raising the idea that he, himself, be appointed governor. This would help with the Maryland issue, and Baltimore said he thought he could increase the King’s revenue from Virginia by 8,000 pounds a year, purely through economic growth without imposing additional taxes or duties. But, the idea went no further than that, for obvious reasons. Baltimore was, however, able to keep Kemp in office as Secretary of Virginia, and soon the King sent Harvey back as governor of Virginia, but Harvey was almost immediately pushed to the side again, and soon replaced by Francis Wyatt.
And, in England, Clobbery and Company made one last attempt to confirm its rights to Kent Island, by filing a lawsuit. They complained to Secretary John Coke about the removal of servants and equipment that they’d paid for, and King Charles wrote to Baltimore and asked him not to press the Kent Island issue until further decision.
Of course, Evelin and the Marylanders had already taken control of Kent and Palmer’s Islands months before. Calvert had claimed the land, issued surveys, appointed officials or allowed their election, dismantled everything owned by Clobbery and Company and erected his own fort on Palmer’s Island. The issue had already been pressed, and Calvert wasn’t going to introduce a whole bunch of new problems by conceding the advances he’d made, especially when the case was likely to be decided in Baltimore’s favor, anyway. After the King told Baltimore not to press the issue, Claiborne approached Baltimore with a group of supporters and demanded that Baltimore send a set of instructions to Claiborne’s deputies on Kent Island, and Baltimore refused, saying he’d just wait for the case to be decided.
And, finally it was decided, again, unsurprisingly, fully in Baltimore’s favor. Claiborne returned to the Chesapeake to try to demand that the Maryland government return his property, but the attainder they’d passed meant he’d be arrested if he set foot in the colony. Claiborne and Matthews then formed a plan to recruit 1,500 settlers from Virginia and Bermuda to establish a plantation in Patawomeck, hoping to use sheer force of numbers and public sentiment to make up for the illegality of their grant, but that plan fell apart so quickly it’s almost unmentioned in historical transcripts.
In summer, a bunch of the colonists died, including council-member Jerome Hawley, Robert Wintour, and two of the priests. As we know from last episode, White also nearly died, but felt the priests had come up with an effective way to treat the disease. And, back in England, Evelin’s father died, so he went home to take care of his estate.
Late summer, though, brought the colony’s biggest legal and religious battle to date, one which could have created serious problems for Maryland’s Catholic leadership in Virginia and England.
It seems like the event in question happened at Cornwallis’s property, and that William Lewis was someone who helped Cornwallis manage his property. Some sources differ from that account, saying Lewis was a landowner in St. Mary’s, and yet-others say that Lewis was an overseer for the priests’ land and servants, but regardless, Lewis was a devoted Catholic, while Robert Sedgrave and Francis Grey were Puritans, one an indentured servant, and the other a carpenter.
One day, Lewis walked into a room of his house, where Sedgrave and Grey were loudly reading sermons by the most popular Elizabethan Puritan preacher, Henry Smith, also known as “Silver-tongued Smith.” After illness stopped him from preaching, Smith had published a book of sermons entitled God’s Arrows against Atheists, which argued in part against atheism, but also drove home the point that Catholicism was a lie of the devil, no better than atheism. The specific passage they were reading said the Pope was an anti-Christ, and the Jesuits were anti-Christian ministers. Lewis felt that they were intentionally reading the passages loudly to provoke him, and angrily told them that what they were reading “It was a falsehood and came from the devil as all lies did, and that he that writ it was an instrument of the devil, and that they should not keep nor read such books.”
The servants then drew up a petition to Harvey, who was at least nominally governor of Virginia at that point, and were getting as many Protestants as they could to sign it. The petition was for a redress of grievances, with the grievances being that Lewis had said scandalous and abusive things about their ministers. He had said that Protestant clergy were ministers of the devil, that their books were made by the instruments of the devil, and that he was forbidding his servants to keep or read any protestant books.
This was Maryland’s worst nightmare. Maryland could not afford to be painted as a Catholic colony oppressing Protestants. Maryland had never even overtly admitted it was a Catholic colony, and Hawley had only admitted that Mass was publicly celebrated under official interrogation. They were merely a colony in which Catholics were allowed to live, thanks to a high degree of separation of Church and state.
Before the petition could be delivered, though, Lewis, himself told Cornwallis what was going on, and Cornwallis pushed the council to try the case. They would examine the petition, and they would question the witnesses. The rest of the council agreed. Sedgrave and Grey reiterated their version of events to the Council, and said that they’d only written the petition after complaining to Copley, who they said had agreed with them that Lewis had a tendency toward an “ill-governed zeal,” and who had agreed he should be punished, but who hadn’t stopped his behavior. That, of course, doesn’t answer the question of why they went to the Virginia government before that of Maryland.
Lewis then put forth his side of the story, and emphasized that he’d always allowed his servants to have whatever books they wanted, as long as they didn’t read them to deliberately offend or disturb him in his own house.
At the end of the day, though, it didn’t matter who was telling the truth. If the council let Lewis off the hook, Maryland as a whole would be scrutinized about the issue, and in a worst-case scenario, there could be Protestant rebellion in the colony supported by Matthews and Claiborne’s Virginia faction. They needed to make a statement regarding Lewis’s behavior.
The council did disagree on the nature of sentencing and punishment, though. Cornwallis emphasized that Lewis had disturbed the peace and violated the colony’s policy of suppressing religious disputes, and for that he favored a simple fine, and no further punishment. Lewger went further, saying Lewis had exceeded his rights by forbidding people to read a book which was legal according to English law, and that even if that accusation weren’t true, that Lewis had clearly said offensive things in the past and provoked disputes. For this reason, they should both fine him, and impose a security for good behavior. And, yet again, Calvert sided with Lewger.
They fined Lewis 500 pounds of tobacco, which translated to about 1.5 pounds at the time, which I’ll again put in perspective by saying 40 pounds was the average annual income for a non-gentry landowner, and told him they’d fine him 3x as much if he ever violated religious peace and freedom again.
And that sees us through the end of 1638. They then passed the final code of laws, that original Bill of Rights.
In 1639, though, attacks by the Susquehannocs and Nanticokes started to become more frequent. The Susquehannocs had been in the process of filling the void left by the Powhatan, but now these smaller tribes were entering the English sphere of influence instead. In the face of increased attack, the Marylanders started to really work to fortify their settlements. They started to push for harder training of the citizens, forbade the priests to continue living with the Indians, and the council authorized a raid on Susquehannoc territory. With Hawley now dead, his place on the council had been filled by Giles Brent, who was the brother of the two nuns whose property had been threatened last episode. They also officially declared that the Patuxents, who were particularly vulnerable, were under their protection. They weren’t just allies. They would attack anyone who harmed the Patuxents. These threats, however, would continue for the next several years, well into the era of the War, itself.
Of course, within England, 1639 was an important year, because it was the year of the First Bishop’s War, which would ultimately lead the King to call a new Parliament in 1640, putting an end to the era of Personal Rule, and swiftly pulling England into Civil War.
And in 1640, Claiborne tried again to re-establish himself at Kent Island, giving a power of attorney to George Scovell to act on his behalf, because he would still be arrested if he went to Maryland himself. Calvert and the Council denied his claims, saying his remaining property had been confiscated as punishment for the crimes of piracy and murder.
And, in 1640, Father White recorded the most dramatic, most famous and in many ways important conversion story in the colony so far. It involved Tayac, leader of the Piscataways, whose land stretched from St. Mary’s to Susquehannoc territory.
White and Altham went to visit him on one of their regular missionary trips, and Tayac immediately welcomed them, inviting them to stay in his house. Tayac explained to White that he’d had a dream about people approaching who would love his people and confer great blessings upon them. And, soon after they arrived, Tayac fell sick. None of his doctors was able to heal him, but White did a bloodletting and gave him some English medicine, and the werowance almost immediately recovered. At that point, Tayac agreed to be baptized, along with his wife and daughter, and White worked to teach him the details of scripture, as well as the English language. For Tayac, this was a thoroughly enjoyable intellectual experience.
As he discussed things with White, he also grew to have more and more convinced that White’s interpretation of God was true. At one point he rather shockingly kicked a stone which his people had formerly worshipped, saying it was nothing but the humblest of God’s works. And, the missionaries had been thorough in their work. Most of the onlookers actually applauded the action.
So, there was a gradual shift in mindset. One day, though, Tayac acted as an interpreter while White ministered to one of his subjects who was about to be executed for murder. That man chose to be baptized, and as he was being executed, he was completely calm, not just stoic, but simply at ease. After seeing this, Tayac told White he wanted to be baptized, immediately, but White said they should wait to plan an appropriately ornate celebration. They built a chapel for the occasion, brought over Maryland’s leading citizens, and baptized Tayac and his family, and then gave Tayac and his wife a Catholic wedding ceremony. For their Christian names, Tayac and his wife chose Charles and Mary. Then, Calvert, Tayac-now Charles, Lewger and others carried a big cross while Copley and another priest preceded them, chanting the Litany of the Virgin, and they ceremonially raised the cross to commemorate the occasion.
After the ceremony, lots of other people were baptized, and Tayac sent his daughter to St. Mary’s to go to school. He died about a year later, and his daughter took over leadership of the tribe. Under her leadership, more tribe members sent their children to be educated by the English, nearby tribes followed suit.
Altham died soon afterward, but news of this event helped White recruit more priests to come to the colony. The Piscataways were also a strategically located tribe, so the conversion helped increase Maryland’s security. And, after the conversion, White continued to spend a lot of time there, seemingly preferring to live among the Indians to living among the English.
The conflict about Church and state hadn’t gone away, though. In the face of increasing Puritan power within England, and himself a fairly moderate Catholic, Baltimore started working to reign the Jesuits in. His secretary pushed him to expel the Jesuits and replace them with secular clergy, and Baltimore started to move in that direction.
In 1641, Baltimore issued a new set of Conditions of Plantations, which said that no land should be held by anyone, including the Church, without special license from the Proprietary. The new Conditions also made it illegal for priests to live with the Indians, and put Maryland priests under secular law. The priests protested, but with no success, even the English Jesuit leader Father More ordered them to give up their lands and obey Baltimore’s orders.
Then, Baltimore wrote to Rome, asking leadership there to replace the Jesuits with secular clergy. Copley was furious, saying the Jesuits had helped build Maryland, and that Catholicism had been a reason that people had moved to Maryland in the first place. The only thing that made Maryland a better place to live than England or other colonies was the ability to worship as a Catholic, and Baltimore was threatening that by putting the Church under the state. Cornwallis threatened to leave the colony entirely, and Baltimore entered into a full-blown feud with the Jesuits. The feud became so bitter that even Governor Calvert urged his brother to ease up and repair his relations with the Jesuits, but Baltimore refused, and told Calvert that the Jesuits had criticized his leadership, too, and went on to explain that by the Law of Nature, he had the right to defend his temporal property, even from people who sought his spiritual wellbeing. Those were pretty radical words for a 17th Century person, particularly a Catholic.
And while the Catholics battled over the future of Maryland’s Catholic Church, Protestants were gradually increasing their majority in the colony. Some moved there, especially artisans, and others’ terms of indentured servitude came to an end. As their numbers increased, they began pushing for some of the political reforms which were being demanded in England. This put the colony even more on edge, at a time when England’s protection of Catholics was rapidly coming to an end.
A new session of the Assembly in 1641 passed three laws, one of which imposed a death penalty for any servant who tried to leave the colony, something which was shocking even by the standards of the time period, and which was most likely passed in an attempt to stop political agitation of the type that Sedgrave and Grey were trying to provoke with their petition to Virginia about the oppression of Protestants.
The burgesses pushed for greater control of the government by the lower house, by giving it veto power over anything the Council chose to do, and they also opposed fighting the Susquehannocs, who were attacking more and more aggressively. Giles Brent, lieutenant general under Cornwallis, told them they simply had no choice, because war had already been declared on them by the Susquehannocs. Once again, this reflected developments in England, where Parliament had just used rebellion in Ireland to vie for control of England’s trainbands, or militia, and won. The Maryland lower house could easily have been vying for control of the colony’s militia, rather than leaving it under the control of the Lord Proprietor. Meanwhile, the upper house proposed a law which would refine the colony’s democratic system.
A number of its provisions seem to have the primary intention of reducing conflict within the house, things like “none shall use indecent, taunting or reviling words, to the naming or impersonating of another member of the house,” and “no one shall speak more than once per day about any given bill without permission from the lieutenant governor,” and “no bill may be read more than once per day.” There were plenty more bills passed, and plenty more debated, most of them too dry even for this podcast, but many of which imitated political developments in England as Parliament entered the final pre-war stages of battle with the King. They wanted the legislature to have more control, and the Lord Proprietor less, over pretty much every aspect of the running of the colony, including its judicial proceedings. They passed laws dictating sentencing, and connected them explicitly to “the laws of England,” which everyone at that point knew were rapidly changing.
And, as we watch Maryland start to collapse internally, yet-more external pressure came in the form of Dutch, Swedish and New Englanders settling within the bounds of Baltimore’s patent.
To argue for their right, the New Englanders, who came from New Haven, referred to a now-void patent which had been based on the borders of Gorges’s old Virginia Company of Plymouth. In other words, the settlement was thoroughly illegal, and most likely again done with the goal of provoking conflict with Maryland. In 1641, anti-Catholic sentiment was at a new peak, because of rebellion in Ireland and Puritan opposition to the king’s wife and Arminian advisors. So, thanks to timing alone, they stood a good chance of doing more damage than Claiborne had. Conveniently, though, the Maryland settlers never needed to address the issue of the New Haven settlers, because the Dutch drove them out instead. But, that still left the Dutch and Swedes who laid claim to the territory.
Perhaps the one good thing for Maryland was the arrival of William Berkeley as the new governor of Virginia. Berkeley was a Protestant, but a fairly conservative one, the staunchest of Royalists and thoroughly anti-Puritan. At the same time, though, Claiborne was appointed treasurer of Virginia for life.
So, as Civil War loomed, Maryland found itself in an increasingly untenable situation. Catholics vs. Catholics, Catholics vs. Puritans, English vs. Dutch and Swedes, and English allies vs. Susquehannocs and Nanticokes. Plus, as the King raised his standard at Edgehill, less hope for help from home, and increased likelihood of damaging interference.
And, on that note, I’ll end the story of Maryland’s foundation. It’s not only the story of the dream of a group of colonists, and the reality of how it played out. It’s also the story of the beginning of troubles which would plague the colony for decades – or longer. I’ve tried to end these series with a sense of conclusion, and a big-picture reflection on the unique characteristics and culture of each colony at the end of these stories, but none of that really applies here. We’d have to take this story through the English Civil War and beyond to try to reach the same sort of endpoint that we’ve had in the other series. But, that’s part of what makes Maryland’s story so fascinating.
Next week, I won’t be releasing an episode, but if you want your weekly dose of Early Colonial American history, I was a guest on the latest episode of Steve Guerra’s podcast, Beyond the Big Screen, which uses movies to drive discussions about various topics. In this episode, we talk about the story of Jamestown, and the 2005 movie A New World, starring Colin Farrel. And, that’s actually perfect timing, because after next week, I’ll be starting a series on Virginia during the reign of Charles I, looking at what happened between the time Virginia became a Crown Colony and the English Civil War, and exploring the other side of this whole Claiborne mess.
Random thought: When you bake bread, and you’re kneading the bread, there’s a moment when the sticky mix of ingredients forms a cohesive dough, and most of these colonies have had a similar moment, when this random group of people becomes a colony. For Virginia, I’d say it was Yeardley’s term as governor, for Massachusetts, I’d say it was the Antinomian Controversy.