the comforts, pomps, ambitions, distinctions, of the Old World, and they embraced the common destiny of a hopeful future in the New.[4] They had been persecuted for their opinions, but that did not make them tolerant of the opinions of their persecutors. It was better, then, that oppressor and oppressed should live apart in both hemispheres; and thus, in sincerity, if not in justice, their future history exhibits many bad examples of the malign spirit from which they fled in Europe. If they were, essentially, Republicans, their democracy was limited to a political and religious equality of Puritan sectarianism;—it had not ripened into the democracy of an all embracing Christianity.[5]

These occurrences took place during the reign of the prince who united the Scottish and English thrones. At the Court of James, and in his intimate service, during nearly the whole period of his sovereignty, was a distinguished personage, who, though his name does not figure grandly on the page of history, was deeply interested in the destiny of our continent.

Sir George Calvert, was descended from a noble Flemish family, which emigrated and settled in the North of England, where, in 1582, the Founder of Maryland was born. After taking his Bachelor's degree at Oxford and travelling on the Continent, he became, at the age of twenty-five, private Secretary to Sir Robert Cecil, the Lord Treasurer—afterwards the celebrated Earl of Salisbury. In 1609, he appears as one of the patentees named in the new Charter then granted to the Virginia Company. After the death of his ministerial patron, he was honored with knighthood and made clerk of the crown to the Privy Council. This brought him closely to the side of his sovereign. In 1619, he was appointed one of the Secretaries of State, and was then, also, elected to Parliament; first for his native Yorkshire, and subsequently for Oxford. He continued in office, under James, as Secretary of State, until near that monarch's death, and resigned in 1624.

Born in the Church of England, Sir George, had, in the course of his public career, become a Roman Catholic. With the period or the means of his conversion from the court-faith to an unpopular creed, we have now no concern. Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," asserts that Calvert resigned in consequence of his change of religion;—other writers, relying, perhaps, more on the obiter dicta of memoirs and history, believe that his convictions as to faith had changed some years before. Be that, however, as it may, the resignation, and its alleged cause which was well known to his loving master, James, produced no ill feeling in that sovereign. He retired in unpersecuted peace. He was even honored by the retention of his seat at the Privy Council;—the King bestowed a pension for his faithful services;—regranted him, in fee simple, lands which he previously held by another tenure; and, finally, created him Lord Baron of Baltimore, in Ireland.[6]

Whilst Sir George was in office, his attention, it seems, had been early directed towards America; and in 1620, he is still mentioned in a list of the members of the Virginia Company. Soon after, he became concerned in the plantation of Newfoundland, and finally, obtained a patent for it, to him and his heirs, as Absolute Lord and Proprietary, with all the royalties of a Count Palatine. We must regret that the original, or a copy of this grant for the province of Avalon, in Newfoundland, has not been recently seen, or, if discovered, transmitted to this country.

Here, Sir George built a house; spent £25,000 in improvements; removed his family to grace the new Principality; manned ships, at his own charge, to relieve and guard the British fisheries from the attacks of the French; but, at length, after a residence of some years, and an ungrateful return from the soil and climate, he abandoned his luckless enterprise.

Yet, it was soil and climate alone that disheartened the Northern adventurer:—he had not turned his back on America. In 1629 he repaired to Virginia, in which he had been so long concerned, and was most ungraciously greeted by the Protestant royalists, with an offer of the Test-Oaths of Allegiance and supremacy. Sir George, very properly refused the challenge, and departed with his followers from the inhospitable James River, where the bigotry of prelacy denied him a foothold within the fair region he had partly owned.

But, before he returned to England, he remembered that Virginia was now a Royal Province and no longer the property of corporate speculation;—he recollected that there were large portions of it still unoccupied by white men, and that there were bays and rivers, pouring, sea-like, to the ocean, of which grand reports had come to him when he was one of the committee of the Council for the affairs of the Plantations. Accordingly, when he left the James River, he steered his keel around the protecting peninsula of Old Point Comfort, and ascending the majestic Chesapeake, entered its tributary streams, and laid, in imagination, at least, the foundations of Maryland.

His examination of the region being ended, Calvert went home to England, and in 1632, obtained the grant of Maryland from Charles I, the son of his royal patron and friend. The charter, which is said to have been the composition of Sir George, did not, however, pass the seals until after the death of its author; but was issued to his eldest son and heir, Cecilius, on the 20th of June, 1632. The life of Sir George had been one of uninterrupted personal and political success; his family was large, united and happy; if he did not inherit wealth, he, at least, contrived to secure it; and, although his conscience taught him to abandon the faith of his fathers, his avowal of the change had been the signal for princely favors instead of political persecution.

Here the historic connexion of the first Lord Baltimore with Maryland ends. The real work of Plantation was the task of Cecilius, the first actual Lord Proprietary, and of Leonard Calvert, his brother, to whom, in the following year, the heir of the family intrusted the original task of colonial settlement. If anything was done by Sir George, in furtherance of the rights, liberties, or interests of humanity, so far as the foundation of Maryland is concerned, it was unquestionably effected anterior to this period, for we have no authority to say, that after his death, his children were mere executors of previous designs, or, that what was then done, was not the result of their own provident liberality. I think there can be no question that the charter was the work of Sir George. That, at least, is his property; and he must be responsible for its defects, as well as entitled to its glory.[7]

I presume it is hardly necessary for me to say what manner of person the King was, whom Calvert had served so intimately during nearly a whole reign. James is precisely the historical prodigy, to which a reflective