CHAPTER XIII.

MARYLAND’S VICISSITUDES.

[Sidenote: Virginia and Maryland.]

The accession of William and Mary, which wrought so little change in Virginia, furnished the occasion for a revolution in the palatinate of Maryland. To trace the causes of this revolution, we must return to 1658, the year which witnessed the death of Oliver Cromwell and saw Lord Baltimore’s government firmly set upon its feet through the favour of that mighty potentate. The compromises which were then adopted put an end to the conflict between Virginia and Maryland, and from that time forth the relations between the two colonies were nearly always cordial. For the next century the constitutional development of Maryland proceeded without interference from Virginia, although on many occasions the smaller colony was profoundly influenced by what went on in its larger neighbour, as well as by those currents of feeling that from time to time pervaded the English world and swayed both colonies alike. We shall presently see, for example, that marked effects were wrought in Maryland by Bacon’s rebellion, and we shall observe what various echoes of the political situation in England were heard in all the colonies, from the wild scare of the Popish Plot in 1678 down to the assured triumph of William III. in 1691, and even later.

[Sidenote: Fuller and Fendall.]

It will be remembered that when the Puritans of Providence, in March, 1658, gave in their assent to the compromises by which Lord Baltimore’s authority was securely established in Maryland, only three years had elapsed since their victory at the Severn had given them supreme control over the country. While the defeated Governor Stone languished in jail, the victorious leader, William Fuller, exercised complete sway and for a moment could afford to laugh at the pretensions of Josias Fendall, the new governor whom Baltimore appointed in 1656. But this state of things came abruptly to an end when it was discovered that Lord Baltimore was upheld by Cromwell. Virginia, with her Puritan rulers, Bennett and Claiborne and Mathews, was thus at once detached from the support of Fuller, so that nothing was left for him but to come to terms. Fendall’s policy toward his late antagonists was pacific and generous, so much so that in the assembly of 1659 we find the names of Fuller and other Puritan leaders enrolled among the burgesses. Associated with Fendall, and second to him in authority, was the secretary and receiver-general, Philip Calvert, younger brother of Cecilius, Lord Baltimore.

[Sidenote: The duty on tobacco.]

After the fires of civil dudgeon had briskly burned for so many years, it was not strange that their smouldering embers should send forth a few fitful gleams before dying. Apart from questions of religion or of loyalty, there were difficulties in regard to taxation that can hardly have been without their effect. There seems to have been more or less widely diffused a feeling of uneasiness upon which agitators could play. In 1647 the assembly had granted to the lord proprietor a duty of ten shillings per hogshead on all tobacco exported from the colony. This grant called forth remonstrances which seem to have had their effect, as in 1649 the act was replaced by another which granted to the proprietor for seven years a similar duty upon all tobacco exported on Dutch vessels if not bound to some English port.[101] This act seemed to carry with it the repeal of that of 1647, concerning which it was silent; if the first act continued in force, the second was meaningless. During the turbulence that ensued after 1650 it is not likely that the revenue laws were rigidly enforced. In 1659 Baltimore directed Fendall to have the act of 1647 explicitly repealed on condition that the assembly should grant him two shillings per hogshead on tobacco when shipped to British ports and ten shillings when shipped to foreign ports. Whether this demand was popular or not, we may gather from dates that are more eloquent than words. The act of 1647 was repealed by the assembly in 1660, but no grant in return was made to the proprietor until 1671, and then it was a uniform duty of two shillings. Unless the demand had been unpopular it would not have been resisted for eleven years.

[Sidenote: Fendall’s plot.]

When the assembly met on the last day of February, 1660, to consider this and other questions, memorable changes had occurred in England. The death of mighty Oliver, in September, 1658, threatened the realm with anarchy; and the prospect for a moment grew darker when in May, 1659, his gentle son Richard dropped the burden which he had not strength to carry. For nine months England seemed drifting without compass or helm. When our assembly met, one notable thing had just happened, early in February, when George Monk, “honest old George,” entered London at the head of his army, and assumed control of affairs. The news of this event had not yet crossed the ocean, and even if it had, our Marylanders would not have understood what it portended. To some of them it seemed as if in this season of chaos whoever should seize upon the government of their little world would be likely to keep it. So Governor Fendall seems to have thought, and with him Thomas Gerrard, a member of the council and a Catholic, but disloyal to Baltimore. Why should not the government be held independently of the lord proprietor and all fees and duties to him be avoided? In this view of the case Fendall had two or three sympathizers in the council, and probably a good many in the House of Burgesses, especially among the Puritan members, who were in number three fourths of the whole.

[Sidenote: Temporary overthrow of Baltimore’s authority.]

In the course of the discussion over the tobacco duty the burgesses sent a message to Governor Fendall and the council, saying that they judged themselves to be a lawful assembly without dependence upon any other power now existing within the province, and if anybody had any objections to this view of the case they should like to hear them. The upper house answered by asking the lower house if they meant that they were a complete assembly without the upper house, and also that they were independent of the lord proprietor. These questions led to a conference, in which, among other things, Fendall declared it to be his opinion that laws passed by the assembly and published in the lord proprietor’s name should at once be in full force. Two of the council, Gerrard and Utie, agreed with this view, while the secretary, Philip Calvert, and all the rest, dissented. In these proceedings the governor was plainly in league with the lower house, and this vote demonstrated the necessity of getting rid of the upper house. Accordingly the burgesses sent word to the governor and council, that they would not acknowledge them as an upper house, but they might come and take seats in the lower house if they liked. Secretary Calvert observed that in that case the governor would become president of the joint assembly, and the speaker of the burgesses must give place to him. A compromise was presently reached, according to which the governor should preside, with a casting vote, but the right of adjourning or dissolving the assembly should be exercised by the speaker. Hereupon Calvert protested, and demanded that his protest be put on record, but Fendall refused. Then Calvert and his most staunch adherent, Councillor Brooke, requested permission to leave the room. “You may if you please,” quoth Fendall, “we shall not force you to go or stay.” With the departure of these gentlemen the upper house was virtually abolished, and now Fendall quite threw off the mask by surrendering his commission from Lord Baltimore and accepting a new one from the assembly. Thus the palatinate government was overthrown, and it only remained for Fendall and his assembly to declare it felony for anybody in Maryland to acknowledge Lord Baltimore’s authority.

[Sidenote: Superficial resemblance to the action of Virginia.]

These proceedings in Maryland become perfectly intelligible if we compare them with what was going on at the very same moment in Virginia. In March, 1660, the assembly at Jamestown, in view of the fact that there was no acknowledged supreme authority then resident in England, declared that the supreme power in Virginia was in the assembly, and that all writs should issue in its name, until such command should come from England as the assembly should judge to be lawful. This assembly then elected Sir William Berkeley to the governorship, and he accepted from it provisionally his commission.[102]

[Sidenote: Profound difference in the situations.]

[Sidenote: Fendall’s error.]

[Sidenote: Collapse of the rebellion.]

Now in Maryland there was a superficial resemblance to these proceedings, in so far as the supreme power was lodged in the assembly and the governor accepted his commission from it. But there was a profound difference in the two situations, and while the people of Virginia read their own situation correctly, Fendall and his abettors did not. The assembly at Jamestown was predominantly Cavalier in its composition and in full sympathy with the expected restoration of the monarchy; and its proceedings were promptly sanctioned by Charles II., whose royal commission to Sir William Berkeley came in October of the same year. On the other hand, the assembly at St. Mary’s was predominantly Puritan in its composition, and one of its most influential members was that William Fuller who five years before had defeated Lord Baltimore’s governor in the battle of the Severn, and executed drumhead justice upon several of his adherents. The election had been managed in the interest of the Puritans, as is shown by Fuller’s county, Anne Arundel, returning seven delegates, whereas it was only entitled to four. The collusion between Fuller and Fendall is unmistakable. For two years the Puritans had acquiesced in Lord Baltimore’s rule, because they had not dared resist Cromwell. Now if Puritanism were to remain uppermost in England, they might once more hope to overthrow him; if the monarchy were to be restored, the prospect was also good, for it did not seem likely that Charles II. would befriend the man whom Cromwell had befriended. Here was the fatal error of Fendall and his people. Charles II. had long ago recovered from his little tiff with Cecilius for appointing a Parliamentarian governor, and as a Romanist at heart he was more than ready to show favour to Catholics. Thus with rare good fortune--defended in turn by a king and a lord protector, and by another king, and aided at every turn by his own consummate tact, did Cecilius triumphantly weather all the storms. When the news of Fendall’s treachery reached London it found Charles II. seated firmly on the throne. All persons were at once instructed to respect Lord Baltimore’s authority over Maryland, and Sir William Berkeley was ordered to bring the force of Virginia to his aid if necessary; Cecilius appointed his brother Philip to the governorship; the rebellion instantly collapsed, and its ringleaders were seized. Vengeance was denounced against Fendall and Fuller and all who had been concerned in the execution of Baltimore’s men after the battle of the Severn. Philip Calvert was instructed to hang them all, and to proclaim martial law if necessary, but on second thought so much severity was deemed impolitic. Such punishments were inflicted as banishment, confiscation, and loss of civil rights, but nobody was put to death. Such was the end of Fendall’s rebellion. In the course of the year 1661, Cecilius sent over his only son, Charles Calvert, to be governor of the palatinate, while Philip remained as chancellor; and this arrangement continued for many years.

[Sidenote: The Quakers.]

Fendall’s administration had witnessed two events of especial interest, in the arrival of Quakers in the colony and of Dutchmen in a part of its territory. Quakers came from Massachusetts and Virginia, where they suffered so much ill usage, into Maryland, where they also got into trouble, though it does not appear that the objections against them were of a religious nature. The peculiar notions of the Quakers often brought them into conflict with governments on purely civil grounds, as when they refused to be enrolled in the militia, or to serve on juries, or give testimony under oath. For such reasons, two zealous Quaker preachers, Thurston and Cole, were arrested and tried in 1658, but it does not appear that they were treated with harshness or that at any time there was anything like persecution of Quakers in Maryland. When George Fox visited the country in 1672, his followers there were numerous and held regular meetings.

[Sidenote: The Swedes and Dutch.]

[Sidenote: Augustine Herman.]

[Sidenote: Bohemia Manor.]

With the arrival of Quakers there appeared on the northeastern horizon a menace from the Dutch, and incidents occurred that curiously affected the future growth of Lord Baltimore’s princely domain. Since 1638 parties of Swedes had been establishing themselves on the western bank of the Delaware River, on and about the present sites of Newcastle and Wilmington. This region they called New Sweden, but in 1655 Peter Stuyvesant despatched from Manhattan a force of Dutchmen which speedily overcame the little colony. Stuyvesant then divided his conquest into two provinces, which he called New Amstel and Altona, and appointed a governor over each. It was now Maryland’s turn to be aroused. The governor of New Netherland had no business to be setting up jurisdictions west of Delaware River. That whole region was expressly included in Lord Baltimore’s charter. Accordingly the Dutch governors of New Amstel and Altona were politely informed that they must either acknowledge Baltimore’s jurisdiction or leave the country. This led to Stuyvesant’s sending an envoy to St. Mary’s, to discuss the proprietorship of the territory in question. The person selected for this business was a man of no ordinary mould, a native of Prague, with the German name of Augustine Herman. He came to New Amsterdam at some time before 1647, in which year he was appointed one of the Nine Men whose business it was to advise the governor. This Herman was a man of broad intelligence, rare executive ability, and perfect courage. He was by profession a land surveyor and draughtsman, but in the course of his life he accumulated a great fortune by trade. His portrait, painted from life, shows us a masterful face, clean shaven, with powerful jaw, firm-set lips, imperious eyes, and long hair flowing upon his shoulders over a red coat richly ruffled.[103] Such was the man whom Stuyvesant chose to dispute Lord Baltimore’s title to the smiling fields of New Amstel and Altona. He well understood the wisdom of claiming everything, and when the discovery of North America by John Cabot was cited against him, he boldly set up the priority of Christopher Columbus as giving the Spaniards a claim upon the whole hemisphere. To the Dutch, he said, as victors over their wicked stepmother Spain, her claims had naturally passed! One is inclined to wonder if such an argument was announced without something like a twinkle in those piercing eyes. At all events, it was not long before the astute ambassador abandoned his logic and changed his allegiance. Romantic tradition has assigned various grounds for Herman’s leaving New Amsterdam. Whether it was because of a quarrel with Stuyvesant, and whether the quarrel had its source in love of woman or love of pelf, we know not; but in 1660 Herman wrote to Lord Baltimore, asking for the grant of a manor, and offering to pay for it by making a map of Maryland. The proposal was accepted. The map, which was completed after careful surveys extending over ten years and was engraved in London in 1673, with a portrait of Herman attached, is still preserved in the British Museum. For this important service the enterprising surveyor received an estate on the Elk River, which by successive accretions came to include more than 20,000 acres.[104] It is still called by the name which Herman gave it, Bohemia Manor. There he grew immensely rich by trade with the Indians along the very routes which Claiborne had hoped to monopolize, and there in his great manor house, in spite of matrimonial infelicities like those of Socrates and the elder Mr. Weller, he lived to a good old age and dispensed a regal hospitality, in which the items of rum and brandy, strong beer, sound wines, and “best cider out of the orchard” were not forgotten. Herman’s tomb is still to be seen hard by the vestiges of his house and his deer park. Six of his descendants succeeded him as lords of Bohemia Manor, until its legal existence came to an end in 1789. The fact is not without interest that Margaret Shippen, wife of Benedict Arnold, counted among her ancestors the sturdy Augustine Herman.

[Sidenote: The Labadists.]

A noteworthy episode in the history of Bohemia Manor is the settlement of a small sect of Mystics, known as Labadists, from the name of their French founder, Jean de Labadie. Their professed aim was to restore the simplicity of life and doctrine attributed to the primitive Christians. Their views of spiritual things were brightened by an inward light, their drift of thought was toward antinomianism, they held all goods in common, and their notions about marriage were such as to render them liable to be molested on civil grounds. The persistent recurrence of such little communities, age after age, each one ignorant of the existence of its predecessors and supremely innocent of all knowledge of the world, is one of the interesting freaks in religious history. Even in the tolerant atmosphere of Holland these Labadists led an uneasy life, and in 1679 two of their brethren, Sluyter and Dankers, came over to New York, to make fresh converts and find a new home. One of their first converts was Ephraim, the weak-minded son of Augustine Herman, and it may have been through the son’s persuasion that the father was induced to grant nearly 4,000 acres of his manor to the community. A company settled there in 1683 and were joined by persons from New York. As often happens in such communities the affair ended in a despotism, in which the people were ruled with a rod of iron by Brother Sluyter and his wife, who set themselves up as a kind of abbot and abbess. On Sluyter’s death in 1722 the sect seems to have come to an end, but to this day the land is known as “the Labadie tract.”

[Sidenote: The Duke of York takes possession of the Delaware settlements.]

Long before Augustine Herman’s death, Lord Baltimore had granted him a second estate, called the manor of St. Augustine, extending eastward from Bohemia Manor to the shore of Delaware Bay; but to the greater part of it the Herman family never succeeded in making good their title, for the territory passed out of Lord Baltimore’s domain. Once more the heedlessness and bad faith of the Stuart kings, in their grants of American lands, was exhibited, and as Baltimore’s patent had once encroached upon the Virginians, so now he was encroached upon by the Duke of York and presently by William Penn. The province of New Netherland, which Charles II. took from the Dutch in 1664 and bestowed upon his brother as lord proprietor, extended from the upper waters of the Hudson down to Cape May at the entrance to Delaware Bay, but did not include a square foot of land on the west shore of the bay, since all that was expressly included in the Maryland charter. It was not to be expected that Swedes or Dutchmen would pay any heed to that English charter; but it might have been supposed that Charles II. and his brother James would have shown some respect for a contract made by their father. Not so, however. The little Swedish and Dutch settlements on the west shore were at once taken in charge by officers of the Duke of York, as if they had belonged to his domain of New Netherland, while the southern part of that domain was granted by him, under the name of New Jersey, to his friends, Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret.

[Sidenote: Charter of Pennsylvania.]

Nothing more of consequence occurred for several years, in the course of which interval, in 1675, Cecilius Calvert died and was succeeded by his son Charles, third Lord Baltimore. Not long afterward William Penn appeared on the scene, at first as trustee of certain Quaker estates in New Jersey, but presently as ruler over a princely domain of his own. The Quakers had been ill treated in many of the colonies; why not found a colony in which they should be the leaders? The suggestion offered to Charles II. an easy way of paying an old debt of £16,000 owed by the crown to the estate of the late Admiral Penn, and accordingly William was made lord proprietor of a spacious country lying west of the Delaware River and between Maryland to the south and the Five Nations to the north. His charter created a government very similar to Lord Baltimore’s but far less independent, for laws passed in Pennsylvania must be sent to England for the royal assent, and the British government, which fifty years before had expressly renounced the right to lay taxes upon Marylanders, now expressly asserted the right to lay taxes upon Pennsylvanians. This change marks the growth of the imperial and anti-feudal sentiment in England, the feeling that privileges like those accorded to the Calverts were too extensive to be enjoyed by subjects.

[Sidenote: Boundaries between Penn and Baltimore.]

According to Lord Baltimore’s charter his northern boundary was the fortieth parallel of latitude, which runs a little north of the site of Philadelphia. The latitude was marked by a fort erected on the Susquehanna River, and when the crown lawyers consulted with Baltimore’s attorneys, they were informed that all questions of encroachment would be avoided if the line were to be run just north of this fort, so as to leave it on the Maryland side.[105] Penn made no objection to this, but when the charter was drawn up no allusion was made to the Susquehanna fort. Penn’s southern boundary was made to begin twelve miles north of Newcastle, thence to curve northwestward to the fortieth parallel and follow that parallel. Measurement soon showed that such a boundary would give Penn’s province inadequate access to the sea. His position as a royal favourite enabled him to push the whole line twenty miles to the south. Even then he was disappointed in not gaining the head of Chesapeake Bay, and, being bent upon securing somewhere a bit of seacoast, he persuaded the Duke of York to give him the land on the west shore of Delaware Bay which the Dutch had once taken from the Swedes. By further enlargement the area of this grant became that of the present state of Delaware, the whole of which was thus, in spite of vehement protest, carved out of the original Maryland. In such matters there was not much profit in contending against princes.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Old manors in Maryland.]

In the course of this narrative we have had occasion to mention the grants of Bohemia and other manors. In order that we should understand the course of Maryland history before and after the Revolution of 1689, some description of the manorial system is desirable. One of the most interesting features in the early history of English America is the way in which different phases of English institutions were reproduced in the different colonies. As the ancient English town meeting reached a high development in New England, as the system of close vestries was very thoroughly worked out in Virginia, so the old English manor was best preserved in Maryland. In 1636 Lord Baltimore issued instructions that every grant of 2,000 acres or more should be erected into a manor, with court baron and court leet. “The manor was the land on which the lord and his tenants lived, and bound up with the land were also the rights of government which the lord possessed over the tenants, and they over one another.”[106] Such manors were scattered all over tidewater Maryland. Mr. Johnson, in his excellent essay on the subject, cites at random the names of “George Evelin, lord of the manor of Evelinton, in St. Mary’s county; Marmaduke Tilden, lord of Great Oak Manor, and Major James Ringgold, lord of the manor on Eastern Neck, both in Kent; Giles Brent, lord of Kent Fort, on Kent Island; George Talbot, lord of Susquehanna Manor, in Cecil county,” and he mentions a sale, in 1767, of “twenty-seven manors, embracing 100,000 acres.”

[Sidenote: Life in the manors.]

In the life upon these manors there was a kind of patriarchal completeness; each was a little world in itself. There was the great house with its generous dining-hall, its panelled wainscoat, and its family portraits; there was the chapel, with the graves of the lord’s family beneath its pavement and the graves of common folk out in the churchyard; there were the smoke-houses, and the cabins of negro slaves; and here and there one might come upon the dwellings of white freehold tenants, with ample land about them held on leases of one-and-twenty years. In establishing these manors, Lord Baltimore had an eye to the military defence of his colony. It was enacted in 1641 that the grant of a manor should be the reward for every settler who should bring with him from England twenty able-bodied men, each armed with a musket, a sword and belt, a bandelier and flask, ten pounds of powder, and forty pounds of bullets and shot.

[Sidenote: The court leet.]

These manors were little self-governing communities. The court leet was like a town meeting. All freemen could take part in it. It enacted by-laws, elected constables, bailiffs, and other local officers, set up stocks and pillory, and sentenced offenders to stand there, for judicial and legislative functions were united in this court leet. It empanelled its jury, and with the steward of the manor presiding as judge, it visited with fine or imprisonment the thief, the vagrant, the poacher, the fraudulent dealer.

[Sidenote: The court baron.]

Side by side with the court leet was the court baron, an equally free institution in which all the freehold tenants sat as judges determining questions of law and of fact. This court decided all disputes between the lord and his tenants concerning such matters as rents, or trespass, or escheats. Here actions for debt were tried, and transfers of land were made with the ancient formalities.

[Sidenote: Changes wrought by slavery.]

These admirable manorial institutions were brought to Maryland in precisely the same shape in which they had long existed in England. They were well adapted for preserving liberty and securing order in rural communities before the days of denser population and more rapid communication. In our progress away from those earlier times we have gained vastly, but it is by no means sure that we have not also lost something. In the decadence of the Maryland manors there was clearly an element of loss, for that decadence was chiefly brought about by the growth of negro slavery, which made it more profitable for the lord of the manor to cultivate the whole of it himself, instead of leasing the whole or parts of it to tenants. Slavery also affixed a stigma upon free labour and drove it off the field, very much as a debased currency invariably drives out a sound currency. From these causes the class of freehold tenants gradually disappeared, “the feudal society of the manor” was transformed into “the patriarchal society of the plantation,”[107] and the arbitrary fiat of a master was substituted for the argued judgments of the court leet.

[Sidenote: A fierce spirit of liberty.]

Among the people of Lord Baltimore’s colony, as among English-speaking people in general, one might observe a fierce spirit of political liberty coupled with engrained respect for law and a disposition to achieve results by argument rather than by violence. Such a temper leads to interminable parliamentary discussion, and in the reign of Charles II. the tongues of the Maryland assembly were seldom quiet. As compared with the stormy period before 1660, the later career of Cecilius and that of his son Charles down to the Revolution of 1689 seem peaceful, and there are writers who would persuade us that when the catastrophe arrived, it came quite unheralded, like lightning from a cloudless sky. A perusal of the transactions in the Maryland assembly, however, shows that the happy period was not so serene as we have been told, but there were fleecy specks on the horizon, with now and then a faint growl of distant thunder.

[Sidenote: Cecilius and Charles.]

That the proprietary government had many devoted friends is not to be denied, and it is clear that some of the opposition to it was merely factious. There is no doubt as to the lofty personal qualities of the second Lord Baltimore, his courage and sagacity, his disinterested public spirit, his devotion to the noble ideal which he had inherited. As for Charles, the third lord, he seems to have been a paler reflection of his father, like him for good intentions, but far inferior in force. The period of eight-and-twenty years which we are considering, from 1661 to 1689, is divided exactly in the middle by the death of Cecilius in 1675. Before that date we have Charles administering the affairs of Maryland subject to the approval of his father in London; after that date Charles is supreme.

[Sidenote: Sources of discontent.]

[Sidenote: The family party]

Now the circumstances were such that father and son would have had to be more than human to carry on the government without serious opposition. In the first place, they were Catholics, ruling a population in which about one twelfth part were Catholics, while one sixth belonged to the Church of England, and three fourths were dissenting Puritans. To most of the people the enforced toleration of Papists must have seemed like keeping on terms of polite familiarity with the devil. In the second place, the proprietor was apt to appoint his own relatives and trusted friends to the highest offices, and such persons were usually Catholics. As these high officers composed the council, or upper house of the assembly, the proprietor had a permanent and irreversible majority in that body. When we read the minutes of a council composed of Governor Charles Calvert, his uncle Philip, his cousin William, Mr. Baker Brooke, who had married cousin William’s sister, Mr. William Talbot, who was another cousin, and Mr. Henry Coursey, who was uncle Philip’s bosom friend, we seem to be assisting at a pleasant little family party. Again, when the governor marries a widow, and each of his five stepchildren marries, and we are told that “every one who became related to the family soon obtained an office,”[108] we begin to realize that there was coming to be quite a clan to be supported from the revenues of a small province. Nepotism may not be the blackest of crimes, but it is pretty certain to breed trouble.

[Sidenote: Conflict in the assembly.]

The governing power opposed to this family party was the House of Burgesses, or lower house of assembly. Those freeholding tenants and small proprietors who had brought with them from England their time-honoured habits of self-government in court leet and court baron, represented the democratic element in the constitution of Maryland, as the upper house represented the oligarchical element. The history of the period we are considering is the history of a constitutional struggle between the two houses. We have seen that it was not a part of the proprietor’s original scheme that the assembly should take an initiative in legislation, and that on this ground he refused his assent to the first group of laws sent to him in 1635 for his signature. Apparently it was his idea that his burgesses should simply comment on acts passed by their betters, as on old Merovingian fields of March the magnates legislated while the listening warriors clashed their shields in token of approval. If such was the first notion of Cecilius he promptly relinquished it and gracefully conceded the claim of the assembly to take the initiative in legislation. But the veto power, without any limitation of time, was a prerogative which he would not give up. At any moment he could use this veto power to repeal a law, and this was felt by the colonists to be a grievance. On such constitutional matters, when we read of antagonism between the proprietor and the assembly, it is the burgesses that we are to understand as in opposition, since the council was almost sure to uphold the proprietor.

[Sidenote: Rights of the burgesses.]

One point upon which the upper house always insisted was that the burgesses were not a house of commons with inherent rights of legislation, but that they owed their existence to the charter, with powers that must be limited as strictly as possible. But this point the burgesses would never concede. They were Englishmen, with the rights and privileges of Englishmen, and it was an inherent right in English representatives to make laws for their constituents; accordingly they insisted that they were, to all intents and purposes, a house of commons for Maryland.[109] On one occasion a clergyman, Charles Nichollet, preached a sermon, in which he warned the burgesses not to forget that they had no real liberty unless they could pass laws that were agreeable to their conscience; as a house of commons they must keep their hand upon the purse strings and consider if the taxes were not too heavy. The family party of the upper house called such talk seditious, and the parson was roundly fined for preaching politics.

[Sidenote: Cessation Act of 1668.]

But it would be grossly unfair to the proprietor to overlook the fact that on some important occasions he took sides with the representatives of the people against his own little family party. As an instance may be cited the act of 1666 concerning the “Cessation of Tobacco.” As the fees of public officials were paid in tobacco, a large crop was liable to diminish their value, and accordingly the upper house wished to contract the currency by an act stopping all planting of tobacco for one year. The lower house objected to this, but after a long dispute was induced to give consent, provided Virginia should pass a similar act. The speaker, however, wrote to Cecilius urging him to veto the act, and he did so.[110]

[Sidenote: Sheriffs.]

The occasions of difference between the two houses were many and various. One concerned the relief of Quakers. In Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Jamaica, they were allowed to make affirmations instead of taking oaths. When the Quakers of Maryland petitioned for a similar relief, the burgesses granted it, but the council refused to concur. A more important matter was the appointment of sheriffs. In addition to the ordinary functions of the sheriff, with which we are familiar in more modern times, these officers collected all taxes, superintended all elections, and made out the returns. These were formidable powers, for a dishonest or intriguing sheriff might alter the composition of the House of Burgesses. Sheriffs were appointed by the governor, and were in no way responsible to the county courts. The burgesses tried to establish a check upon them by enacting that the county court should recommend three persons out of whom the governor should choose one, and that the sheriff thus selected should serve for one year; but the upper house declared that such an act infringed the proprietor’s prerogative. No check upon the sheriffs, therefore, was left to the people except the regulating of their fees, and upon this point the burgesses were stiff.

[Sidenote: Restriction of suffrage, 1670.]

In 1669 the disputes between the houses were more stormy than usual, and in the election of the next year the suffrage was restricted to freemen owning plantations of fifty acres or more, or possessed of personal property to the amount of £50 sterling. This restriction was not accomplished by legislation; it must have been a sheer assertion of prerogative, either by Cecilius or by Charles acting on his own responsibility. All that is positively known is that the sheriffs were instructed to that effect in their writs. It is worthy of note that a similar restriction of suffrage had just occurred in Virginia. Perhaps Charles Calvert was imprudently taking a lesson from Berkeley. But still worse, in summoning to the assembly the members who had been elected, he omitted a few names, presumably those of persons whose opposition was likely to prove inconvenient. When the burgesses demanded the reason for this omission, Charles made a shuffling explanation which they saw fit to accept for the moment, and thus a precedent was created of which he was not slow to avail himself, and from which endless bickering ensued. For the present a house of burgesses was obtained which was much to the governor’s liking; accordingly, instead of allowing its term to expire at the end of a year, he simply adjourned it, and thus kept it alive until 1676,--another lesson learned from Berkeley.

[Sidenote: Death of Cecilius, 1675.]

[Sidenote: Rebellion of Davis and Pate, 1676.]

[Sidenote: Execution of Davis and Pate.]

It was this comparatively submissive assembly that in 1671 passed the act which for eleven years had been resisted, granting to the proprietor a royalty of two shillings on every hogshead of tobacco exported. In return for this grant, however, the lower house obtained some concessions. With the death of Cecilius, in 1675, the situation was certainly changed for the worse. Now for the first time the people of Maryland had their lord proprietor dwelling among them and not in England; but Charles was narrower and less public-spirited than his father, his measures were more arbitrary, and the feeling that the country was governed in the interests of a small coterie of Papists rapidly increased. In 1676 Maryland seemed on the point of following Virginia into rebellion. Lord Baltimore went to England in the spring, and by midsummer it had become evident that Bacon had able sympathizers in Maryland. A set of manuscript archives, recently recovered from long oblivion,[111] make it probable that but for Bacon’s sudden death in October and the collapse of the movement in Virginia, there would have been bloodshed in the sister colony. In August a seditious paper was circulated, alleging grievances similar to those of Virginia, and threatening the proprietor’s government. Two gentlemen named Davis and Pate, with others, gathered an armed force in Calvert county with the design of intimidating the governor and council, and extorting from them sundry concessions. When the governor, Thomas Notley, ordered them to disband, promising that their demands should be duly considered at the next assembly, they refused on the ground that the assembly had been tampered with and no longer represented the people. As Notley afterward wrote to Lord Baltimore, never was there a people “more replete with malignancy and frenzy than our people were about August last, and they wanted but a monstrous head to their monstrous body.” But this incipient Davis and Pate rebellion derived its strength from the Bacon rebellion, and the collapse of the one extinguished the other. Davis and Pate were hanged, at which Notley tells us the people were “terrified,” and so peace was preserved.

[Sidenote: George Talbot.]

An episode which occurred before the final catastrophe throws some light upon the relations of parties at the time. An Irish kinsman of Lord Baltimore’s, by name George Talbot, obtained in 1680 an extensive grant of land on the Susquehanna River, where he lived in feudal style, with a force of Irish retainers at his beck and call, hunting venison, drinking strong waters, browbeating Indians, and picking quarrels with William Penn’s newly arrived followers. In 1684 Lord Baltimore went again to England, leaving his son, Benedict Calvert, in the governorship; and as Benedict was a mere boy, there was a little regency of which George Talbot was the head. Now the exemption of Maryland from king’s taxes did not extend to custom-house duties. These were collected by crown officers and paid into the royal treasury; and the collectors were apt to behave themselves, as in all ages and countries, like enemies of the human race. Between them and the proprietary government there was deep-seated antipathy. They accused Lord Baltimore of hindering them in their work, and this complaint led the king to pounce upon him with a claim for £2,500 alleged to have been lost to the revenue through his interferences. One of these collectors, Christopher Rousby, was especially overbearing, and some called him a rascal. Late in 1684 a small ship of the royal navy was lying at St. Mary’s, and one day, while Rousby was in the cabin drinking toddies with the captain, Talbot came on board, and a quarrel ensued, in the course of which Talbot drew a dagger and plunged it into Rousby’s heart. The captain refused to allow Talbot to go ashore to be tried by a council of his relatives; he carried him to Virginia and handed him over to the governor, Lord Howard of Effingham. Talbot was imprisoned not far from the site where once had stood the red man’s village, Werowocomoco, where he was in imminent danger of the gallows, or perhaps of having to pay his whole fortune as a bribe to the greedy Howard. But Talbot’s brave wife, with two trusty followers, sailed down the whole length of Chesapeake Bay and up York River in a boat. On a dark winter’s night they succeeded in freeing Talbot from his jail, and returning as they came, carried him off exulting to Susquehanna Manor. For the sake of appearances his friends in the Maryland council thought it necessary to proclaim the hue and cry after him, and there is a local tradition that he was for a while obliged to hide in a cave, where a couple of his trained hawks kept him alive by fetching him game--canvas-back ducks, perhaps, and terrapin--from the river! It is not likely, however, that the search for him was zealous or thorough. For some time he staid unmolested in his manor house, but presently deemed it prudent to go and surrender himself. The council refused to bring him to trial in any court held in the king’s name, until a royal order came from England to send him over there for trial, but before this was done Lord Baltimore interceded with James II. and secured a pardon.

[Sidenote: A “Complaint from Heaven.”]

The general effect of this Talbot affair was to weaken the palatinate government by making it appear lukewarm in its allegiance and remiss in its duties to the crown. The custom-house became a subject of hot discussion, and the charges of defrauding the royal revenue were reiterated with effect. Some time before this, a remarkable pamphlet had appeared with the title, “Complaint from Heaven with a Huy and Crye and a petition out of Virginia and Maryland.” It was evidently written by some Puritan friend of Fendall’s. After a bitter denunciation of the palatinate administration some measures of relief were suggested, one of which was that the king should assume the government of Maryland and appoint the governors. The time was now at hand when this suggestion was to bear fruit.

[Sidenote: The anti-Catholic panic.]

The forced abdication of James II. in 1688, with his flight to France, was the occasion of an anti-Catholic panic throughout the greater part of English America. It was as certain as anything future could be that the antagonism between Louis XIV. and William of Orange would at once break out in a great war, in which French armies from Canada would invade the English colonies. There was a widespread fear that Papists in these colonies would turn traitors and assist the enemy. It was in this scare that Leisler’s rebellion in New York originated, although there too a conflict between democracy and oligarchy was concerned, somewhat as in Maryland. Everywhere the ordinary dread of Papists became more acute. It was soon after this time that the clause of an act depriving Roman Catholics of the franchise found its way into the Rhode Island statutes, the only instance in which that commonwealth ever allowed itself to depart from the noble principles of Roger Williams.[112]

[Sidenote: Causes of the panic.]

While there were absurdities in this anti-Catholic panic, it contained an element that was not unreasonable. Throughout the century the Papist counter-reformation had made alarming progress. In France, the strongest nation in the world, it had just scored a final victory in the expulsion of the Huguenots. In Germany the Thirty Years’ War had left Protestantism weaker than it had been at the death of Martin Luther. England had barely escaped from having a Papist dynasty settled upon her; nor was it yet sure that she had escaped. A caprice of fortune might drive King William out as suddenly as he had come. Ireland still held out for the Stuarts, and there in May, 1689, James II. landed with French troops, in the hope of winning back his crown. The officer who held Ireland for James was Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyrconnel, a distant relative and intimate friend of Lord Baltimore. Under these circumstances a panic was natural. There were absurd rumours of a plot between Catholics and Indians to massacre Protestants. More reasonable was the jealous eagerness with which men watched the council to see what it would do about proclaiming William and Mary. Lord Baltimore was prompt in sending from London directions to the council to proclaim them; whatever his political leanings might have been, he could in prudence hardly do less. But the messenger died on the voyage, and a second messenger was too late.

[Sidenote: Coode’s _coup d’état_, 1689.]

[Sidenote: Overthrow of the palatinate, 1691.]

Meanwhile, in April, 1689, there was formed “An Association in arms for the defense of the Protestant Religion, and for asserting the right of King William and Queen Mary to the Province of Maryland and all the English Dominions.” The president of this association was John Coode, who had married a daughter of that Thomas Gerrard who took a part in Fendall’s rebellion. Another leader, who had married another daughter of Gerrard, was Nehemiah Blackiston, collector of customs, who had been foremost in accusing the Calverts of obstructing his work. Others were Kenelm Cheseldyn, speaker of the house, and Henry Jowles, colonel of the militia. As the weeks passed by, and news of the proclaiming of William and Mary by one colony after another arrived, and still the council took no action in the matter, people grew impatient and the association kept winning recruits. At last, toward the end of July, Coode appeared before St. Mary’s at the head of 700 armed men. No resistance was offered. The council fled to a fort on the Patuxent River, where they were besieged and in a few days surrendered. Coode detained all outward-bound ships until he had prepared an account of these proceedings to send to King William in the name of the Protestant inhabitants of Maryland. Like the insurrection in Boston, three months earlier, which overthrew Sir Edmund Andros, this bold stroke wore the aspect of a rising against the deposed king in favour of the king actually reigning. William was asked to undertake the government of Maryland, and the whole affair met with his approval. He issued a _scire facias_ against the Baltimore charter, and before a decision had been reached in the court of chancery he sent out Sir Lionel Copley in 1691, to be royal governor of Maryland. In such wise was the palatinate overturned.

[Sidenote: Oppressive enactments.]

[Sidenote: Removal of the capital to Annapolis, 1694.]

If any party in Maryland expected the millennium to follow this revolution, they were disappointed. Taxes were straightway levied for the support of the Church of England, the further immigration of Catholics was prohibited under heavy penalties, and the public celebration of the mass was strictly forbidden within the limits of the colony. When Governor Nicholson arrived upon the scene, in 1694, he summoned his first assembly to meet at the Anne Arundel town formerly known as Providence; and in the course of that session it was decided to move the seat of government thither from St. Mary’s. The purpose was to deal a blow at the old capital, the social and political centre of Catholicism in Maryland. Bitter indignation was felt at St. Mary’s, and a petition signed by the mayor and other municipal officers, with a number of the freemen, was sent to the assembly, praying that the change might be reconsidered. The House of Burgesses returned an answer, brutal and vulgar in tone, which shows the wellnigh incredible virulence of political passion in those days.[113] The blow was final, so far as St. Mary’s was concerned. Her civic life had evidently depended upon the presence of the government. At one time, with its fifty or sixty houses, the little city founded by Leonard Calvert was much larger than Jamestown; but after the removal it dwindled till little was left save a memory. The name of the new capital on the Severn was doubtless felt to be cumbrous, for it was presently changed to Annapolis,[114] the first of a set of queer hybrid compounds with which the map of the United States is besprinkled. Nicholson wished to crown the work of founding a new capital by establishing a school or college there, and accordingly in 1696 King William School was founded. For many years the income for supporting this and other free schools was derived from an export duty on furs.[115]

[Sidenote: Unpopularity of the establishment of the Episcopal church.]

[Sidenote: Episcopal parsons.]

The change of the capital was perhaps bewailed only by the Catholics and others who were most strongly attached to the proprietary government. But the change in ecclesiastical policy disgusted everybody. Taxation for the support of the Episcopal church, of which only a small part of the population were members, was as unpopular with Puritans as with Papists. The Puritans, who had worked so zealously to undermine the proprietary government, had not bargained for such a result as this. The manner in which the church revenue was raised was also extremely irritating. The rate was forty pounds of tobacco per poll, so that rich and poor paid alike. A more inequitable and odious measure could hardly have been devised. The statute, however, with the dullness that usually characterizes the work of legislative bodies, forgot to specify the quality of tobacco in which the rates should be paid. Naturally, therefore, they were paid in the vilest unmarketable stuff that could be found, and the Episcopal clergymen found it hard to keep the wolf from the door. There was thus no inducement for competent ministers to come to Maryland, and those that were sent from England were of the poorest sort which the English Church in that period of its degradation could provide. Dr. Thomas Chandler, of New Jersey, who visited the eastern shore of Maryland in 1753, wrote to the Bishop of London as follows: “The general character of the clergy ... is wretchedly bad.... It would really, my lord, make the ears of a sober heathen tingle to hear the stories that were told me by many serious persons of several clergymen in the neighbourhood of the parish where I visited; but I still hope that some abatement may be fairly made on account of the prejudices of those who related them.”[116] The Swedish botanist, Peter Kalm, who visited Maryland about the same time, tells us that it was a common trick with a parson, when performing the marriage service for a poor couple, to halt midway and refuse to go on till a good round fee had been handed over to him.[117] On such occasions it may be presumed that the tobacco was of unimpeachable quality.

[Sidenote: Exemption of Protestant Dissenters from civil disabilities.]

The last decade of the seventeenth century was a period of ceaseless wrangling over church matters. Almost every year saw some new act passed from which its opponents succeeded in causing the assent of the crown to be withheld. The government of William III. was not ill-disposed toward a policy of toleration, except toward Papists. Accordingly, although the act of 1692 remained substantially in force until the American Revolution, it was so qualified in 1702 as to exempt Quakers and other Protestant Dissenters from civil disabilities, and to allow them the free exercise of public worship in their own churches or meeting-houses. They were not exempted, however, from the poll tax for the maintenance of the Episcopal church.

[Sidenote: Seymour’s reprimand to the Catholic priests.]

For the Catholics there was neither exemption nor privilege; they were shamefully insulted and vexed. In the autumn of 1704 two priests were summoned before the council: the one, William Hunter, was accused of consecrating a chapel, which he answered with a plea that was in part denial and in part “confession and avoidance;” the other, Robert Brooke, acknowledged the truth of the charge that he had said mass at the chapel of St. Mary’s. The request of these gentlemen for legal counsel was refused. As the complaint against them was a first complaint, they were let off with a reprimand, which the newly installed governor, John Seymour, thus politely administered: “It is the unhappy temper of you and all your tribe to grow insolent upon civility and never know how to use it, and yet of all people you have the least reason for considering that, if the necessary laws that are made were let loose, they are sufficient to crush you, and which (if your arrogant principles have not blinded you) you must need to dread. You might, methinks, be content to live quietly as you may, and let the exercise of your superstitious vanities be confined to yourselves, without proclaiming them at public times and in public places, unless you expect by your gaudy shows and serpentine policy to amuse the multitude and beguile the unthinking, ... an act of deceit well known to be amongst you. But, gentlemen, be not deceived.... In plain and few words, if you intend to live here, let me hear no more of these things; for if I do, and they are made good against you, be assured I’ll chastise you.... I’ll remove the evil by sending you where you may be dealt with as you deserve.... Pray take notice that I am an English Protestant gentleman, and can never equivocate.” After this fulmination the governor ordered the sheriff of St. Mary’s county to lock up the Catholic chapel and “keep the key thereof;” and for all these proceedings the House of Burgesses declared themselves “cheerfully thankful” to his excellency, whom they found “so generously bent to protect her majesty’s Protestant subjects here against insolence and growth of Popery.”[118]

[Sidenote: Cruel laws against Catholics.]

From 1704 to 1718 several ferocious acts were passed against Catholics. A reward of £100 was offered to any informer who should “apprehend and take” a priest and convict him of saying mass, or performing any of a priest’s duties; and the penalty for the priest so convicted was perpetual imprisonment. Any Catholic found guilty of keeping a school, or taking youth to educate, was to spend the rest of his life in prison. Any person sending his child abroad to be educated as a Catholic was to be fined £100. No Catholic could become a purchaser of real estate. Certain impossible test oaths were to be administered to every Papist youth within six months after his attaining majority, and if he should refuse to take them he was to be declared incapable of inheriting land, and his nearest kin of Protestant faith could supplant him. The children of a Protestant father might be forcibly taken away from their widowed mother and placed in charge of Protestant guardians. When extra taxes were levied for emergencies, Catholics were assessed at double rates.[119]

[Sidenote: Crown requisitions.]

These atrocities of the statute book were a symptom of the inflammatory effect wrought upon the English mind by the gigantic war against Louis XIV., and immediately afterward by the wild attempt of the so-called James III. to seize the crown of Great Britain. From the accession of William and Mary to the end of the reign of Anne, war against France was perpetual except for the breathing spell after the Peace of Ryswick. This state of things brought a fresh burden upon Maryland. War between France and Great Britain meant war between the Algonquin tribes and the English colonies aided by the Five Nations. The new situation was heralded in the Congress which met at New York in 1690, at Leisler’s invitation, when Maryland was called upon to contribute men and money toward the invasion of Canada. With the advent of the royal government came royal requisitions for military purposes; and although this new burden was due to the new continental situation rather than to the change in the provincial government, it was one thing the more to make Marylanders look back with regret to the days of the proprietary rule.

[Sidenote: Benedict Calvert becomes a Protestant.]

[Sidenote: Revival of the palatinate, 1715.]

For four-and-twenty years after 1691 the third Lord Baltimore lived in England in the full enjoyment of his private rights and revenues, though deprived of his government. His son, Benedict Leonard Calvert, was a prince who took secular views of public policy, like the great Henry of Navarre. He preferred his palatinate to his church, and abjured the Catholic faith, much to the wrath and disgust of his aged father, who at once withdrew his annual allowance of £450. Benedict was obliged to apply to the crown for a pension, which was granted by Anne and continued by George I. until on February 20, 1715, the situation was completely changed by the father’s death. On the petition of Benedict, fourth Lord Baltimore, the proprietary government of Maryland was revived in his behalf. But Benedict survived his father only six weeks, and on April 5 his son Charles Calvert became fifth Lord Baltimore. As Charles was a lad of sixteen, whose Romanist faith had been forsworn with his father’s, he was forthwith proclaimed Lord Proprietor of Maryland, and royal governors no more vexed that colony.

[Sidenote: Change in the political situation.]

Despite all troubles it had thriven under their administration. The population had doubled within less than twenty years, and on Charles’s accession it was reckoned at 40,700 whites and 9,500 negroes.[120] Oppressive statutes had not prevented the Catholics from increasing in numbers and the influence which ability and character always wield. They were preëminently the picked men of the colony. Entire suppression of their forms of worship had been recognized as impracticable. An act of 1704 had allowed priests to perform religious services in Roman Catholic families, though not in public. From this permission advantage was taken to build chapels as part of private mansions, so that the family with their guests might worship God after their manner, relying upon the principle that an Englishman’s house is his castle. By some of these people it was hoped that the restoration of the palatinate would revive their political rights and privileges. But this renewal of the palatinate was far from restoring the old state of things. The position of the fifth Lord Baltimore was very different from that of the second and third. They were Catholic princes, and were steadily supported by two Catholic kings of England. The new proprietor was a Protestant, dependent upon the favour of a Protestant king. The features of the old palatinate government, therefore, which lend the chief interest to its history, were never restored. Catholic citizens remained disfranchised, and continued to be taxed for the support of a church which they disapproved.

[Sidenote: Charles Carroll.]

An interesting project was entertained about this time, by Charles Carroll and other Catholic gentlemen, of leading a migration to the Mississippi valley, thus transferring their allegiance from Great Britain to France. Mr. Carroll, a descendant of the famous Irish sept of O’Carrolls, and one of the foremost citizens of Maryland, had long been agent and receiver of rents for the third Lord Baltimore. The scheme which he was now contemplating might have led to curious results, but it was soon abandoned. A grant of territory by the Arkansas River was sought from the French government,[121] but it proved impossible to agree upon terms, and that region remained a wilderness until several questions of world-wide importance had been settled.

[Sidenote: Seeds of revolution.]

Though the accession of the fifth Lord Baltimore did not reinstate the Catholics in their civil rights, it nevertheless did much to mitigate the operation of the oppressive statutes against them. An early symptom of Charles’s temper was shown by his reappointment of Carroll as his agent. He went on to do such justice to Catholics as was in his power, and under his mild and equitable rule the fierceness of political passion was much abated. The proprietary government retained its popularity until it came to an end with the Declaration of Independence. But the interval of crown government from 1691 to 1715 had for the first time made the connection with Great Britain seem oppressive, and had planted the seeds of future sympathy with the revolutionary party in Massachusetts and Virginia. As the long struggle with France increased in dimensions, the political questions at issue in the several colonies became more and more continental in character. All were more or less assimilated one to another, and thus the way toward federation was prepared. Thus the discussions in Maryland came more and more to deal with the rights of the colonial legislature and British interference with them. At the same time Maryland had a grievance of her own in the poll tax for maintaining a foreign and hated church. In 1772 an assault upon that tax was the occasion of one of the most remarkable legal controversies in American annals; and the leader in that assault, Charles Carroll’s grandson and namesake, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, soon afterward signed his name to the Declaration of Independence.

[Sidenote: End of the palatinate.]

In 1751, after a tranquil reign, only two years of which were spent in Maryland, Charles Calvert died in London, and was succeeded by his son Frederick, sixth and last Lord Baltimore. After a series of Antonines, at last came the Commodus. Frederick was a miserable debauchee, unworthy scion of a noble race. For Maryland he cared nothing except to spend its revenues in riotous living in London. One adventure of his, for which he was tried and acquitted on a mere technicality, fills one of the most loathsome chapters of the Newgate Calendar.[122] But this villain was represented in Maryland by two excellent governors, Horatio Sharpe from 1753 to 1768, and then Sir Robert Eden, who had married Frederick’s younger sister. Eden remained in authority until June 24, 1776, when he embarked for England with the good wishes of the people. The wretched Frederick died in 1771, without legitimate children, and the barony of Baltimore became extinct. By the will of Charles, the fifth baron, the proprietorship of Maryland was now vested in Frederick’s elder sister, Louisa, wife of John Browning. But Frederick had also left a will, in which he devised the province to an illegitimate son, called Henry Harford. This young man laid claim to the proprietorship, but before the chancery suit was ended the Palatinate of Maryland had become one of the thirteen United States.