LEAH AND RACHEL.

We have already had occasion to observe that, while from the outset Lord Baltimore's enterprise found many enemies in England, it was at the same time regarded with no friendly feelings in Virginia. We have seen the Virginians sending to London their secretary of state, William Claiborne, to obstruct and thwart the Calverts in their attempt to obtain a grant of territory in America. For Claiborne there were interests of his own involved, besides those of the colony which he represented. This William Claiborne, younger son of an ancient and honourable family in Westmoreland, had come to Virginia in 1621 and prospered greatly, acquiring large estates and winning the respect and confidence of his fellow planters. By 1627 he had begun to engage in trade with the natives along the shores of Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac and Susquehanna rivers. Such traffic, if well managed, was lucrative, since with steel knives and hatchets, or with ribbons and beads, one could buy furs which would fetch high prices in England. To the enterprising Claiborne it seemed worth while to extend this trade far to the north. His speculative vision took in the Delaware and Hudson rivers and even included New England and Nova Scotia. So he entered into an arrangement with a firm of London merchants, Clobery & Company, to supply them with furs and other such eligible commodities as might be obtained from the Indians, and in 1631 he obtained a royal license for trading in any and all parts of North America not already preËmpted by monopolies. This was done while he was in London opposing Lord Baltimore. The place most prominently mentioned in the license was Nova Scotia, and it was obtained under the seal of Scotland, from the Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir William Alexander, to whom Nova Scotia had some time before been granted. On returning to Virginia, where Sir John Harvey had lately superseded the convivial Dr. Pott as governor, Claiborne obtained a further license to trade with any of the English colonies and with the Dutch on Henry Hudson's river.

Armed with these powers, Claiborne proceeded to make a settlement upon an island which he had already, before his visit to London, selected for a trading post. It was Kent Island, far up in Chesapeake Bay, almost as far north as the mouth of the Patapsco River. Here dwellings were built, and mills for grinding corn, while gardens were laid out, and orchards planted, and farms were stocked with cattle.[134] A clergyman was duly appointed, to minister to the spiritual needs of the little settlement, and in the next year, 1632, it was represented in the House of Burgesses by Captain Nicholas Martian, a patentee of the land where Yorktown now stands.

When in that same year the news of the charter granted to Lord Baltimore arrived in Virginia, it was greeted with indignation. No doubt there was plenty of elbow-room between the old colony and the land assigned to the new-comers, but the example of Claiborne shows what far-reaching plans could be cherished down on James River. The Virginians had received a princely territory, and did not like to see it arbitrarily curtailed. There was no telling where that sort of thing might end. According to the charter of 1609, Virginia extended 200 miles northward from Old Point Comfort,[135] or about as far north as the site of Chester in Pennsylvania; which would have left no room for Maryland or Delaware. That charter had indeed been annulled in 1624, but both James I. and Charles I. had expressly declared that the annulling of the charter simply abolished the sovereignty that had been accorded to the Virginia Company, and did not infringe or diminish the territorial rights of the colony. Undoubtedly the grant to the Calverts was one of the numerous instances in early American history in which the Stuart kings gave away the same thing to different parties. Or perhaps we might better say that they made grants without duly heeding how one might overlap and encroach upon another. This was partly the result of carelessness, partly of ignorance and haziness of mind; flagrant examples of it were the grants to Robert Gorges in Massachusetts and to Samuel Gorton in Rhode Island. No serious harm has come of this recklessness, but it was the cause of much bickering in the early days, echoes of which may still be heard in silly pouts and sneers between the grown-up children of divers neighbour states. As regards the grant to Lord Baltimore, a protest from Virginia was not only natural but as inevitable as sunrise. It was discussed in the Star Chamber in July, 1633, and the decision was not to disturb Lord Baltimore's charter; the Virginians might, if they liked, bring suit against him in the ordinary course of law. From this decision came many heart-burnings between Leah and her younger sister Rachel, as a quaint old pamphleteer calls Virginia and Maryland.[136]

Viewed in the light of all the circumstances, it is difficult to avoid seeing in Claiborne's occupation of Kent Island a strategic move. Considered as such, it was bold and not ill-judged. With his far-reaching schemes the Susquehanna River was a highway which would enable him to compete with the Dutch for the northwestern fur trade. By establishing himself on Kent Island he might command the approach to that highway. The maxim that actual possession is nine points in the law was in his favour. If the Star Chamber had decided to uphold Virginia's wholesale claim to the territory granted her in 1609, Claiborne would have been master of the situation. Even with the decision as rendered, his own case was far from hopeless. In the autumn of 1633 he petitioned the king to protect his interests and those of Virginia in Kent Island. He contended that Baltimore's charter gave jurisdiction only over territory unsettled and unimproved,—hactenus in culta,—whereas Kent Island had been settled as a part of Virginia and heavy expenses incurred there before that charter had been issued. In sending this petition it was hoped that by resolutely keeping hold upon the strategic point it might be possible to make Lord Baltimore reconsider his plans and take his settlers to some other region than the shores of Chesapeake Bay. But this hope was dashed in February, 1634, when Leonard Calvert with the first party of settlers arrived in those waters. Claiborne's petition had not yet been answered, but Lord Baltimore's instructions to his brother were conceived in a conciliatory spirit. Leonard was to see Claiborne and offer him all the aid in his power toward building up the new settlement on Kent Island, at the same time reminding him that the place was in Baltimore's territory and not a part of Virginia. In other words, Claiborne was welcome to the property, only he must hold it as a tenant of the lord proprietor of Maryland, not as a tenant of the king in Virginia. While the Ark and the Dove were halting at anchor off Old Point Comfort, and while Leonard Calvert was ashore exchanging courtesies with Governor Harvey, he communicated this message to Claiborne. At the next meeting of the council, Claiborne asked his fellow-councillors what he should do in the matter. In reply they wondered that he should ask such a question. Was not the case perfectly clear? Was there any reason why they should surrender Kent Island, more than any other part of Virginia? No, they would keep it until his Majesty's pleasure should be known, and meanwhile they would treat the Maryland company civilly and expected to be so treated by them. Behind this answer there was much bad feeling. Not only were the Virginians angry at the curtailment of their domains, not only were they alarmed as well as angry at the arrival of Papists in their neighbourhood, but they were greatly disgusted because Lord Baltimore's charter gave him far more extensive trading privileges than they possessed. Calvert's message to Claiborne had signified that before trading any further in the upper parts of Chesapeake Bay he must obtain a license from Maryland. Assured now of support from Virginia, Claiborne returned an answer in which he refused in any way to admit Lord Baltimore's sovereignty.

Leonard's instructions had been in case of such a refusal not to molest Claiborne for at least a year. But soon complications arose. The settlers at St. Mary's observed indications of distrust or hostility on the part of a neighbouring Algonquin tribe, known as the Patuxents; so they appealed to one Captain Henry Fleete, who understood the Algonquin language, to learn what was the matter. This Captain Fleete wished to supplant Claiborne in the fur trade and may have welcomed a chance of discrediting him with the Marylanders. At all events, he reported that the Indians had been told that the Marylanders were not Englishmen but Spaniards, and for this calumny, which might have led to the massacre of the new-comers, he undertook to throw the blame upon Claiborne. In the substance of this story there is a strong appearance of truth. On the Virginia coast in those days common parlance was not nice as to discriminating between Papists of any kind and Spaniards, and one can easily see how from ordinary gossip the Indians may have got their notion. There is no reason for casting atrocious imputations upon Claiborne, who was examined in June, 1634, by a joint commission of Virginians and Marylanders, and completely exonerated. But before the news of this verdict reached London, the charge that Claiborne was intriguing with the Indians had been carried to Lord Baltimore and evidently alarmed him. Convinced that forbearance had ceased to be a virtue, he sent word to his brother to seize Kent Island, arrest Claiborne, and hold him prisoner until further instructions.

This was in September, 1634. News of the message came to the ears of Claiborne's London partners, Clobery & Company, and they petitioned the king for protection in the possession of their island. Charles accordingly instructed Lord Baltimore not to molest Claiborne and his people, and he sent a letter to the governor and council of Virginia, in which he declared that the true intention or the charter which he had granted to Baltimore would not justify that nobleman in any interference with Kent Island and its settlers. So the winter wore away without incident, but early in April, 1635, one of Claiborne's ships, commanded by one Thomas Smith, was seized in the Patuxent River by Captain Fleete; she was condemned for trading without a license, and was confiscated and sold with all her cargo. Claiborne then sent out an armed sloop, the Cockatrice, to make reprisals upon Maryland shipping; but Calvert was wide awake and sent Cornwallis with a stronger force of two armed pinnaces, which overtook the Cockatrice in Pocomoke River and captured her after a brisk skirmish in which half a dozen men were killed and more wounded. That was on April 23, and on May 10 there was another fight in the harbour of Great Wighcocomoco, at the mouth of the Pocomoke, in which Thomas Smith commanded for Claiborne and defeated the Marylanders with more bloodshed.

In the midst of these unseemly quarrels the kingdom of Virginia witnessed something like a revolution. We have already had occasion to mention Sir John Harvey, the governor who came in March, 1630, after the brief administration of that versatile practitioner, Dr. John Pott. Harvey was not long in getting into trouble. It was noticed at first that his manners were intolerably rude. He strutted about Jamestown as if he were on a quarter deck, and treated the august members of the council with as little ceremony as if they had been boot-blacks. On his own confession he once assaulted a councillor and knocked out some of his teeth "with a cudgel."[137] But it presently appeared that arrogance was not his worst fault. He was too fond of money, and not particular as to how it came to him. He had a right to make grants of land to settlers for a consideration to be paid into the public treasury; it was charged against him that part of the consideration found its way into his own pockets. Nor was this all, for it happened, after the fashion of his royal master, that some of the lands which he granted were already private property. Besides this, he seems to have undertaken to draw up laws and proclaim them of his own authority without submitting them to the assembly; he refused to render an account of the ways in which he spent the public money; he had excessive fees charged, multiplied the number of fines beyond all reason, and took the proceeds or a part of them for his private use and behoof. In short, he seems to have been a second and more vulgar Argall.

Five years of this sort of thing had driven the men of Virginia to the last pitch of desperation, when the Claiborne imbroglio brought on a crisis. In obedience to the king's instructions, Harvey showed such favour as he could to the Maryland settlers, and thus made himself the more fiercely hated in Virginia. The Kent Island question was one that bred dissension in families, separated bosom friends, and sowed seeds of distrust and suspicion far and wide. To speak well of Maryland was accounted little less than a crime. "Sell cattle to Maryland!" exclaimed the wrathful planters, "better knock them on the head!" From pious people this near approach of the Scarlet Woman drew forth strong words. We are told that one day Captain Samuel Mathews, that brave gentleman and decorous Puritan, on reading a letter from England, dashed his hat upon the ground and stamped in fury, shouting "A pox upon Maryland!"[138]

In such a state of things we can imagine what a storm was raised when Governor Harvey removed from office the able and popular secretary of state, William Claiborne, and appointed one Richard Kemp in his place. One lively gleam of vituperation lights up the grave pages of the colonial records, when Kev. Anthony Panton called Mr. Kemp a "jackanapes," and told him that he was "unfit for the place of secretary," and that "his hair-lock was tied up with ribbon as old as St. Paul's." We shall hereafter see how the outraged secretary nursed his wrath; what he might have done in its freshness was prevented by a sudden revolution. The assembly drew up a protest against the king's attempts at monopolizing the tobacco trade, and Harvey refused to transmit the protest to England. About the same time the news arrived of the seizing of Claiborne's ship in Maryland waters. On the petition of many of the people, a meeting of the assembly was called for May 7, to receive complaints against Sir John Harvey.[139] In the mean time, on April 27, an indignation meeting was held at the house of William Warren, in York, where the principal speakers were Nicholas Martian, formerly member of the House of Burgesses for Kent Island, Francis Pott, the doctor's brother, and William English, sheriff of York County. The house where this meeting was held in 1635 seems to have stood on or near the site of the house afterward owned by Augustine Moore, where in 1781 the surrender of Lord Cornwallis was arranged; and by a curious coincidence the speaker Nicholas Martian was a direct ancestor both of George Washington, who commanded the army of the United States, and of Thomas Nelson, who commanded the forces of Virginia, on that memorable occasion.[140]

Next morning Martian, Pott, and English were arrested, and when they asked the reason why, Governor Harvey politely told them that they "should know at the gallows." When the council met, the wrathful governor strode up and down the room, demanding that the prisoners be instantly put to death by martial law, but the council insisted that no harm should come to them without a regular trial. Then Harvey with a baleful frown put the question after the manner of Richard III., "What do they deserve that have gone about to dissuade the people from their obedience to his Majesty's substitute?" A young member, George Menefie, replied with adroit sarcasm that he was too young a lawyer to be ready with "a suddain opinion" upon such a question. Turning savagely upon him, Sir John asked what all the fuss was about. "Because of the detaining of the assembly's protest," said Menefie. Then the governor struck Menefie heavily upon the shoulder and exclaimed, "I arrest you on suspicion of treason," whereupon Captain John Utie, roughly seizing the governor, answered, "And we the like to you, sir!" Samuel Mathews threw his arms about Harvey and forced him down into a chair, while that connoisseur in beverages, Dr. Pott, waved his hand at the window, and in the twinkling of an eye the house was surrounded by armed men. Mathews then told the helpless governor that he must go to London to answer charges that would be brought against him. In vain did Harvey argue and storm. The sequel may best be told in the words of the terse and bleak entry in the colonial records: "On the 28th of April, 1635, Sir John Harvey thrust out of his government; and Capt. John West acts as governor till the king's pleasure known." When the assembly met on May 7, these proceedings of the council were approved, and commissioners were appointed to go to London and lay their complaints before the king. The indignant Harvey went by the same ship, in the custody of his quondam prisoner, Francis Pott, whom he had been so anxious to hang without ceremony.

Such were the incidents of the ever memorable "thrusting out of Sir John Harvey," the first revolutionary scene that was acted in English America. When King Charles heard the story he did not feel quite so much fondness for his trusty and well-beloved burgesses as when he had been seeking commercial favours from them. He would not receive their commissioners or hear a word on their side of the case, and he swore that Sir John Harvey should straightway go back to Virginia as governor, even were it only for one day. But when it came to acting, Charles was not quite so bold as his words. Harvey did not return until nearly two years had elapsed.[141] Then it was the turn of the rebellious councillors—Utie, Mathews, West, Menefie, and Dr. Pott—to go to London and defend themselves, while Harvey wreaked mean-spirited vengeances on his enemies. The day of reckoning had come for Anthony Panton, the minister who had called Mr. Secretary Kemp a "jackanapes," and had, moreover, as it seemed, spoken irreverently of Archbishop Laud. Panton's conduct was judged to be "mutinous, rebellious, and riotous,"[142] his estate was confiscated, and he was banished. A shameful clause was inserted in the sentence, declaring him outlawed if he should venture to return to Virginia, and authorizing anybody to kill him at sight; but Harvey afterward tried to disown this clause, saying that it had been wickedly interpolated by the vindictive Kemp.

But Harvey's new lease of power was brief. Enemies to the throne were getting too numerous for comfort, and we may well believe that Charles, having once vindicated his royal dignity in the matter, was quite ready to yield. The statements of the councillors under examination in London no doubt had weight, for no proceedings were taken against them, but in 1639 the king removed Harvey, and sent the excellent Sir Francis Wyatt once more to govern Virginia. Harvey's numerous victims forthwith overwhelmed him with law-suits, his ill-gotten wealth was quickly disgorged, his estates were sold to indemnify Panton and others, and the fallen tyrant, bankrupt and friendless, soon sank into the grave,—such an instance of poetic justice as is seldom realized.

It was in December, 1637, during Harvey's second administration, that the Kent Island troubles were renewed. After Claiborne's victorious fight at Great Wighcocomoco, in May, 1635, he retained undisturbed possession of the island, but a quarrel was now brewing between himself and his London partners, Clobery & Company. They were dissatisfied because furs did not come in quantities sufficient to repay their advances to Claiborne. The disputes with the Marylanders had sadly damaged the business, and the partners sent over George Evelin to look after their interests, and armed him with power of attorney. They requested Claiborne to turn over to him the island, with everything on it, and to come to London and settle accounts. Claiborne tried to get a bond from Evelin not to surrender the island to Calvert, but that agent refused to give any assurances, except to express in strong language his belief that Calvert had no just claim to it. Nothing was left for Claiborne but to leave Evelin in possession. He did so under protest, and in May, 1637, sailed for England, where Clobery & Company immediately brought suit against him. Evelin then went to Virginia and attached all of Claiborne's property that he could find. Presently, whether from policy or from conviction, he changed his views as to the ownership of Kent Island and invited Leonard Calvert to come and take it. After some hesitation, in December, 1637, Calvert occupied the premises with forty or fifty armed men and appointed Evelin commandant of the island. Forthwith so many people were arrested for debts owed to Clobery & Company that an insurrection ensued, and in February, 1638, Calvert had to come over again and enforce his authority. Among his prisoners taken in December was Thomas Smith, the victor in the fight at Great Wighcocomoco, who was now tried for piracy and hanged, while the Maryland assembly passed a bill of attainder against Claiborne, and all his accessible property was seized for the benefit of Lord Baltimore's treasury.

Soon afterward the final and crushing blow was dealt in London. A Board of Commissioners for the Plantations had lately been created there, a germ that in later years was to develop into the well-known body commonly called the Lords of Trade. To this board the dispute over Kent Island had been referred, and the decision was rendered in April, 1638. In the decision the claims of Virginia were ignored, and the matter was treated like a personal dispute between Claiborne and Lord Baltimore. The latter had a grant of sovereignty under the seal of England, the former had merely a trading license under the seal of Scotland, and this could not be pleaded in bar of the greater claim. Kent Island was thus adjudged to Lord Baltimore. Crestfallen but not yet conquered, the sturdy Claiborne returned to Virginia to await the turn of Fortune's wheel.

In curious ways the march of events was tending in Claiborne's favour. At first sight there is no obvious connection between questions of religion and the ownership of a small wooded island, but it would be difficult to name any kind of quarrel to which the Evil One has not contrived to give a religious colouring. By the year 1638 the population of Virginia had come to contain more than 1,000 Puritans, or about seven per cent. of the whole. They had begun coming to Virginia in 1611 with Sir Thomas Dale, whose friend, the Rev. Alexander Whitaker, the famous "Apostle of Virginia," was a staunch Puritan, son of an eminent Puritan divine who was Master of St. John's College, Cambridge. The general reader, who thinks of Whitaker correctly as a minister of the Church of England, must not forget that in 1611 the Puritans had not separated from the Established Church, but were striving to reform it from within. As yet there were few Separatists, save the Pilgrims who had fled to Holland three years before. The first considerable separation of Puritans occurred when the colony of Massachusetts Bay was founded in 1629. The great gulf between Puritans and Churchmen was dug by the Civil War, and the earliest date when it becomes strictly proper to speak of "Dissenters" is 1662, when the first parliament of Charles II. passed the Act of Uniformity. In the earliest days of Virginia, Puritan Churchmen were common there. When in 1617 the good Whitaker was drowned in James River, he was succeeded by George Keith, who was also a Puritan.[143] Under the administration of Sandys and Southampton many came. Their chief settlements were south of James River, at first in Isle of Wight County and afterwards in Nansemond. Among their principal leaders were Richard Bennett, son of a wealthy London merchant and afterwards governor of Virginia, and Daniel Gookin, noted for his bravery in the Indian massacre of 1622.

An act of the assembly in 1631 prescribed "that there be a uniformity throughout this colony both in substance and circumstances to the canons and constitution of the Church of England." This legislation probably reveals the hand of William Laud, who had three years before become bishop of London; and it may be taken to indicate that a large majority of Virginians had come to disapprove of Puritanism. Probably the act was not vigorously enforced, for Governor Harvey seems to have looked with favour upon Puritans, but it may have caused some of their pastors to quit the colony. In 1641 an appeal for more ministers was sent to Boston, and in response three clergymen—William Thompson of Braintree, John Knowles of Watertown, and Thomas James of New Haven—sailed from Narragansett Bay in December, 1642. Their little ship was wrecked at Hell Gate and their welcome from the Dutch at Manhattan was but surly; nevertheless they were able to procure a new ship, and so, after a wintry voyage of eleven weeks, arrived in James River.[144] They brought excellent letters of recommendation from Governor Winthrop to the governor of Virginia, but might as well have thrown them into the fire, for the new governor of Virginia, who arrived in 1642, was the famous Sir William Berkeley, a Cavalier of Cavaliers, a firm believer in the methods of Strafford and Laud, an implacable foe of Puritanism and all its advocates. At the next meeting of the assembly, in March, 1643, the following act was passed: "For the preservation of the purity of doctrine and unity of the Church, it is enacted that all ministers whatsoever, which shall reside in the colony, are to be conformed to the orders and constitution of the Church of England, and not otherwise to be admitted to teach or preach publicly or privately, and that the Governor and Council do take care that all non-conformists, upon notice of them, shall be compelled to depart the colony with all convenience."[145]

Armed with this fulmination, Berkeley was not long in getting rid of the parsons whom Winthrop had commended to his hospitality. Knowles and James went in April, after some weeks of incessant and successful preaching but Thompson, "a man of tall and comely presence" as we are told, stayed through the summer and made many converts, among them the wayward son of Daniel Gookin, a junior Daniel whose conversion was from worldliness or perhaps devilry rather than from prelacy. This brand snatched from the burning by Thompson went to Massachusetts, where for many years he was superintendent of Indian affairs and won fame by his character and writings. Thompson's work in Virginia is thus commemorated by Cotton Mather:—

The expulsion of the Boston ministers was the beginning of a systematic harassing of the Puritans in Virginia. It was strangely affected by the massacre perpetrated by the Indians in the spring of 1644.[146] We seem carried back to the times of John Smith when we encounter once more the grim figure of Opekankano alive and on the war-path. We have no need, however, with some thoughtless writers, to call him a hundred years old. It was only thirty-six years since Smith's capture by the Indians, although so much history had been made that the interval seems much longer. Though a wrinkled and grizzled warrior, Opekankano need not have been more than sixty or seventy when he wreaked upon the white men his second massacre, on the eve of Good Friday, 1644. The victims numbered about 300, but the Indians were quickly put down by Berkeley, and a new treaty confined them to the north of York River; any Indian venturing across that boundary, except as an envoy duly marked with a badge, was liable to be shot at sight. Opekankano was taken captive and carried on a litter to Jamestown, whence Berkeley intended to send him to London as a trophy and spectacle, but before sailing time the old chief was ignobly murdered by one of his guards. It was the end of the Powhatan confederacy.

Some worthy people interpreted this massacre as a judgment of Heaven upon the kingdom of Virginia for the sin of harbouring Puritans; rather a tardy judgment, one would say, coming a year after the persecution of such heretics had begun in earnest. In Governor Winthrop's opinion,[147] on the contrary, the sin which received such grewsome punishment was the expulsion of the Boston ministers, with other acts of persecution that followed. Rev. Thomas Harrison, the bigoted Berkeley's bigoted chaplain, saw the finger of God in the massacre, repented of his own share in the work of persecution, and upbraided the governor, who forthwith dismissed him. Then Harrison turned Puritan and went to preaching at Nansemond, in flat defiance of Berkeley, who ordered and threatened and swore till he was out of breath, when suddenly business called him over to England.

It was the year of Marston Moor, an inauspicious year for Cavaliers, but a hopeful time for that patient waiter, William Claiborne. The governor of Maryland, as well as the governor of Virginia, had gone to England on business, and while the cats were away the mice did play. The king ordered that any Parliament ships that might be tarrying in Maryland waters should forthwith be seized. When this order was received at St. Mary's, the deputy-governor, Giles Brent, felt bound to obey it, and as there seemed to be no ships accessible that had been commissioned by Parliament, he seized the ship of one Richard Ingle, a tobacco trader who was known to be a Puritan and strongly suspected of being a pirate. This incident caused some excitement and afforded the watchful Claiborne his opportunity of revenge. He made visits to Kent Island and tried to dispel the doubts of the inhabitants by assuring them that he had a commission from the king.[148] He may have meant by this some paper given him by Charles I. before the adverse decision of 1638 and held as still valid by some private logic of his own. When Governor Calvert returned from England in the autumn of 1644 he learned that Claiborne was preparing to invade his dominions, along with Ingle, who had brought upon the scene another ship well manned and heavily armed. It was a curious alliance, inasmuch as Claiborne had professed to be acting with a royal commission, while Ingle now boasted of a commission from Parliament. But this trifling flaw in point of consistency did not make the alliance a weak one. It is not sure that the invasion was concerted between Claiborne and Ingle, though doubtless the former welcomed the aid of the latter in reinstating himself in what he believed to be his right. The invasion was completely successful. While Claiborne recovered Kent Island, Ingle captured St. Mary's, and Leonard Calvert was fain to take refuge in Virginia. During two years of anarchy Ingle and his men roamed about "impressing" corn and tobacco, cattle and household furniture, stuffing ships with plunder to be exported and turned into hard cash. The estates of Cornwallis were especially ill-treated, the Indian mission was broken up, and good Father White, loaded with irons, was sent to England on a trumped-up charge of treason, of which he was promptly acquitted. Long afterward this Claiborne-Ingle frolic was remembered in Maryland as the "plundering time."

In 1645 Sir William Berkeley returned to Virginia, and from him the fugitive Calvert received effective aid and sympathy, so that late in 1646 he was able to invade his own territory with a force of Virginians and fugitive Marylanders. Claiborne and Ingle were soon expelled, and Leonard Calvert's authority was fully reËstablished. Not long afterward, in June, 1647, this able governor died. For his brother Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, this was a trying time. He was a royalist at heart, with little sympathy for Puritans, but like many other Catholics he thought it wise to keep on good terms with Parliament, in the hope of securing more toleration than heretofore. Such a course between Charybdis and Scylla was attended with perils. In 1648 Cecilius appointed to his governorship William Stone, a liberal-minded Protestant and supporter of Parliament. Soon after the king's beheading, the young Charles II., a fugitive in the island of Jersey, hearing of Stone's appointment, interpreted it as an act of disloyalty on Baltimore's part, and so in a fit of spite made out a grant handing over the palatinate of Maryland to Sir William Davenant, that poet-laureate who was said to resemble Shakespeare until ravening vanity made him pretend to be Shakespeare's illegitimate son. Sir William actually set sail for America, but was overhauled in the Channel by a Parliament cruiser and carried off to the Tower, where amid sore distress he found a generous protector in John Milton. It was not very long before Charles II. came to realize his mistake about Lord Baltimore.

In Maryland the great event of the year 1649, which witnessed the death of Charles I., was the passage on April 21 of the Act concerning Religion. This famous statute, commonly known as the "Toleration Act, was drawn up by Cecilius himself, and passed the assembly exactly as it came from him, without amendment. With regard to Cecilius, therefore, it may be held to show, if not the ideas which he actually entertained, at least those which he deemed it prudent to embody in legislation. It is not likely to have surpassed his ideals, but it may easily have fallen somewhat short of them. The statute is so important that the pertinent sections of it deserve to be quoted at length:[149]—

"That whatsoever person or persons within this Province and the Islands thereunto belonging, shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is curse him, or deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to bee the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity, the ffather sonne and holy Ghost, or the God head of any of the said three persons of the Trinity, or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachfull speeches, words or language concerning the said Holy Trinity, or any of the said three persons thereof, shall be punished with death, and confiscation or forfeiture of all his or her lands and goods to the Lord Proprietary and his heires.

"That whatsoever person or persons shall from henceforth use or utter any reproachfull words, or speeches, concerning the blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of our Saviour, or the holy apostles, or Evangelists, or any of them, shall in such case for the first offence forfeit to the said Lord Proprietary and his heires the sume of ffive pound sterling."—

"That whatsoever person shall henceforth upon any occasion, declare, call, or denominate any person or persons whatsoever inhabiting, residing, traffiqueing, trading or commerceing within this Province, or within any of the Ports, Harbors, Creeks or Havens to the same belonging, an heretick, Scismatick, Idolator, Puritan, Independent, Prespiterian, popish priest, Iesuit, Iesuited papist, Lutheran, Calvenist, Anabaptist, Brownist, Antinomian, Barronist, Roundhead, Sep'atist, or any other name or term in a reproachfull manner relating to matter of Religion, shall for every such offence forfeit the sume of tenne shillings sterling.—

"Whereas the inforcing of the conscience in matters of Religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those commonwealths where it hath been practised, and for the more quiet and peaceble government of this Province, and the better to preserve mutuall Love and amity amongst the Inhabitants thereof; Be it therefore also by the Lord Proprietary with the advice and consent of this Assembly, ordered and enacted (except as in this present act is before declared and sett forth,) that noe person or persons whatsoever within this Province, or the Islands: Ports, Harbors, Creeks or havens thereunto belonging, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth bee any waies troubled, molested or discountenanced for or in respect to his or her religion."

A statute which threatens Unitarians with death leaves something to be desired in the way of toleration, even though it fines a man ten shillings for calling his neighbour a Calvinist in a reproachful manner. Nevertheless, for the age when it was enacted this statute was eminently liberal, and it certainly reflects great credit upon Lord Baltimore. To be ruler over a country wherein no person professing to believe in Jesus Christ should be molested in the name of religion was a worthy ambition, and one from which Baltimore's contemporaries in Massachusetts and elsewhere might have learned valuable lessons. Such a policy as was announced in this memorable Toleration Act was not easy to realize in the seventeenth century. The very year in which it was enacted saw the grim wolf of intolerance thrusting his paw in at the door.

As had happened before, the woes of the Virginia Leah brought woe upon the Maryland Rachel. When Governor Berkeley returned from England, he did more than swear at the defiant chaplain Harrison and the other preachers of Puritanism south of James River. He banished the pastors and made life unendurable for the flocks. In 1648 two of the Nansemond elders, Richard Bennett and William Durand, fleeing to Maryland, were kindly received by Governor Stone, who extended a most hospitable invitation to their people to leave Virginia and settle in the Baltimore palatinate. Cecilius had complained that settlers did not come fast enough and his colony was still too weak, whereupon Stone had promised to do his best to bring in 500 new people. His opportunity had now come; early in 1649 an advance body of 300 Puritans came from Nansemond. The rest of their brethren hesitated, fearing lest Catholics might be no pleasanter neighbours than the king's men, but the course of events soon decided them. The news of the execution of Charles I. was generally greeted in Virginia with indignation and horror, feelings which were greatly intensified by the arrival of the Cavaliers who in that year began to flock to Virginia. One ship in September brought 330 Cavaliers, and probably more than 1,000 came in the course of the year. In October the assembly declared that the beheading of the king was an act of treason which nobody in Virginia must dare to speak in defence of under penalty of death. It also spoke of the fugitive Charles II. as "his Majesty that now is," and made it treason to call his authority in question. These were the last straws upon the back of the Puritan camel, and in the course of the next few months the emigration from Nansemond went on till as many as 1,000 persons had gone over to Maryland. They settled upon land belonging to the Susquehannocks, near the mouth of a stream upon which they bestowed the name of the glorious English river that falls into the sea between Glamorgan and the Mendip Hills, and the county through which this new-found Severn flowed they called Providence from feelings like those which had led Roger Williams to give that comforting name to his settlement on Narragansett Bay. Presently this new Providence became a county bearing Lady Baltimore's name, Anne Arundel, and the city which afterwards grew up in it was called Annapolis. This country had not been cleared for agriculture by the Indians, like the region about St. Mary's, and there was some arduous pioneer work for the Puritan colony.

In changing the settlement or plantation of Providence into the county of Anne Arundel, something more than a question of naming was involved. The affair was full of political significance. Puritans at first entertained an idea that they might be allowed to form an imperium in imperio, maintaining a kind of Greek autonomy on the banks of their Severn, instead of becoming an integral portion of Baltimore's palatinate. At first they refused to elect representatives to the assembly at St. Mary's; when presently they yielded to Governor Stone's urgency and sent two representatives in 1650, one of them was straightway chosen speaker of the House; nevertheless, in the next year the Puritans again held aloof. They believed that the Puritan government in England would revoke Lord Baltimore's charter, and they wished to remain separated from his fortunes. Their willingness to settle within his territory was coupled with the belief that it would not much longer be his.

This belief was not wholly without reason. The war-ships of the Commonwealth were about to appear in Chesapeake Bay. Such audacious proceedings as those of the Virginia Assembly could not be allowed to go unnoticed by Parliament, and early in 1652 four commissioners were sent to receive the submission of Berkeley and his colony. One of these commissioners was Richard Bennett, the Puritan elder who had been driven from Nansemond. Another was the irrepressible Claiborne, whom Berkeley had helped drive out of Maryland. The Virginians at first intended to defy the commissioners and resist the fleet, but after some parley leading to negotiations, they changed their minds. It was not prudent to try to stand up against Oliver Cromwell, and he, for his part, was no fanatic. Virginia must submit, but she might call it a voluntary submission. She might keep her assembly, by which alone could she be taxed, all prohibitions upon her trade should be repealed, and her people might toast the late king in private as much as they pleased; only no public stand against the Commonwealth would be tolerated. On these terms Virginia submitted. Sir William Berkeley resigned the governorship, sold his brick house in Jamestown, and went out to his noble plantation at Green Spring near by, there to bide his time. For the next eight years things moved along peaceably under three successive Roundhead governors, all chosen by the House of Burgesses. The first was Richard Bennett, who was succeeded in March, 1655, by Edward Digges; and after a year Digges was followed by that gallant Samuel Mathews who had once given such a bear's hug to the arrogant Sir John Harvey. As for Claiborne, he was restored to his old office of secretary of state.

In Maryland there was more trouble. As soon as Claiborne had disposed of the elder sister, Leah, he went to settle accounts with the youthful Rachel, who had so many wooers. There was Episcopal Virginia, whose pretensions to the fair damsel were based on its old charter; there was the Catholic lord proprietor, to whom Charles I. had solemnly betrothed her; there were the Congregational brethren of Providence on the Severn, whose new pretensions made light of these earlier vows; but the master of the situation was Claiborne, with his commission from Parliament and his heavily armed frigate. Mighty little cared he, says a contemporary writer, for religion or for punctilios; what he was after was that sweet and rich country. Claiborne's conduct, however, did not quite merit such a slur. In this his hour of triumph he behaved without violence, nor do we find him again laying hands upon Kent Island. On arriving with Bennett at St. Mary's, they demanded that Governor Stone and his council should sign a covenant "to be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England as it is now established without King or House of Lords." To this demand no objection was made, but the further demand, that all writs and warrants should run no longer in Baltimore's name, but in the name of the Keepers of the Liberty of England, was obstinately refused. For this refusal Stone was removed from office, a provisional government was established, and the commissioners sailed away. This was in April, 1652. After two months of meditation Stone sent word to Jamestown that he was willing to yield in the matter of the writs, whereupon Claiborne and Bennett promptly returned to St. Mary's and restored him to office.

But those were shifting times. Within a year, in April, 1653, Cromwell turned out of doors the Rump Parliament, otherwise called Keepers of the Liberty of England; and accordingly, as writs could no longer run in their name, Stone announced that he should issue them, as formerly, in the name of Lord Baltimore. He did this by order of Cecilius himself. Trouble arose at the same time between Stone and the Puritans of Providence, and the result of all this was the reappearance of Bennett and Claiborne at St. Mary's, in July, 1654. Again they deposed Stone and placed the government in the hands of a council, with William Fuller as its president. Then they issued writs for the election of an assembly, and once more departed for Jamestown. According to the tenor of these writs, no Roman Catholic could either be elected as a burgess or vote at the election; in this way a house was obtained that was almost unanimously Puritan, and in October this novel assembly so far forgot its sense of the ludicrous as to pass a new "Toleration Act" securing to all persons freedom of conscience, provided such liberty were not extended to "popery, prelacy, or licentiousness of opinion." In short, these liberal Puritans were ready to tolerate everybody except Catholics, Episcopalians, and anybody else who disagreed with them!

When Lord Baltimore heard how Stone had surrendered the government, he wrote a letter chiding him for it. The legal authority of the commissioners, Bennett and Claiborne, had expired with the Rump Parliament. Cromwell was now Lord Protector, and according to his own theory the Protectorate was virtually the assignee of the Crown and successor to all its rights and obligations. Baltimore's charter was therefore as sound under the Protectorate as it had ever been. Knowing that Cromwell favoured this view, Cecilius wrote to Stone to resume the government and withstand the Puritans. This led at once to civil war. Governor Stone gathered a force of 130 men and marched against the settlement at Providence, flying Baltimore's beautiful flag of black and gold. Captain Fuller, with 175 men, was ready for him, and the two little armies met on the bank of the Severn, March 25, 1655. Besides his superiority in numbers, Fuller was helped by two armed merchant ships, the one British, the other from New England, which kept up a sharp fire from the river. Stone's men were put to flight, leaving one third of their number in killed and wounded. One old Puritan writer tells us with keen enjoyment that the field whence they fled was strewn with their "Papist beads." Among the prisoners taken was Stone himself, who was badly wounded. Fuller at once held a court-martial at which Stone and nine other leading men were sentenced to death. Four were executed, but on the intercession of some kind-hearted women Stone and the others were pardoned.

The supremacy of the Puritans in Maryland thus seemed to be established, but it was of short duration. Some of the leading Puritans in Virginia, such as Bennett and Mathews, visited London and tried to get Baltimore's charter annulled. But their efforts soon revealed the fact that Cromwell was not on their side of the question, and so they gave up in despair, and the quarrel of nearly thirty years' standing was at last settled by a compromise in 1657. Lord Baltimore promised complete amnesty for all offences against his government from the very beginning, and he gave his word never to consent to the repeal of his Toleration Act of 1649. Upon these terms Virginia withdrew her opposition to his charter, and indemnified Claiborne by extensive land grants for the loss of Kent Island. Baltimore appointed Captain Josias Fendall to be governor of Maryland and sent out his brother Philip Calvert to be secretary. The men of Providence were fain to accept toleration at the hands of those to whom they had refused to grant it, and in March, 1658, Governor Fendall's authority was acknowledged throughout the palatinate. Peace reigned on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, the claims of Leah and Rachel were adjusted, and the fair sisters quarrelled no more.