A History of the American People

Various attempts were made by religious enemies to sabotage the venture and in the end
Baltimore had to stay behind to protect its London end. Two Jesuits were taken aboard secretly
at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Baltimore, who had studied Captain John Smith's account of
Virginia, gave handwritten instructions to his brother Leonard, who was to act as governor, and
Jerome Halwey and Thomas Cornwallis, Catholic gentlemen, his co-commissioners. They were
to get on good terms with the Virginians, using their Protestant passengers as intermediaries.
They were not to disperse but to build a town and concentrate all their efforts on feeding
themselves and becoming self-sufficient as quickly as possible. They were to train a militia and
build a fort but to try and remain at peace with the Indians. The three leaders were to be very careful to preserve unity and peace' between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics: the Protestants were to receivemildness and favour', the Catholics to practice their faith as quietly
as possible.
One of the priests aboard, Father Andrew White, kept a record of the colony's foundation, and
found it full of splendid auguries for success. Of the Chesapeake he wrote: This baye is the most delightful water I ever saw ... two sweet landes, firm and fertile: plenty of fish, woods of walnuts, oakes, and cedars.' He notedsalad herbes and such like, strawberries, raspberries,
fallen mulbery vines, rich soil, delicate springs of water, partridge, deer, turkeys, geese, ducks,
and also squirrels, eagles and herons'-'the place abounds not only with profit but with pleasure.'
Maryland, he concluded, being halfway between the extremes of Virginia and New England, had
a middle temperature between the two, and enjoys the advantages, and escapes the evils, of each." The land was called Maryland after Charles I's French wife, Henrietta Maria, and the township was St Mary's. Father White had a cross set up and said a dedicatory mass on the shore,to take
solemn possession of the country.' They traded axes, hoes, hatchets, and cloth for 30 miles of
land below the Wicomico River., Strictly speaking, Baltimore's colony was, in English law, a
feudal fiefdom, with palatine powers like those of the Bishop of Durham. He was answerable
only to the King, owned all the territory granted, received rents, taxes, and fees, appointed all
officials, exercised judicial and political authority, could build forts and wage defensive war,
confer honors and titles, incorporate boroughs and towns, license trade, was head of the church,
could erect and consecrate chapels and churches, and these his ample rights, liberties, immunities and temporal franchises' were to be enjoyed by him and his heirs for ever. But this was theory, English lawyers' big talk. In practice none of these grandiose baronies based on feudal models worked as they were intended, quickly losing their gilding under the erosion of America's democratic rock. To begin with, Baltimore did not have perfect title to his land. A Kentish man called William Claiborne, who had been in Virginia since 1621 and had erected a fur-trading stockade on Kent Island, disputed it. In law he was in the right, for Baltimore's title excluded land already settled. Claiborne threatened to cause trouble, and did, once King Charles' power collapsed in the 1640s. The American coast was already dotted with difficult loners like Claiborne, ferociously opposed to authority of any kind, litigious, well armed, and ready to fight if necessary. Then again, Baltimore's charter specifically stated that the colonists were to enjoy the full rights of Englishmen.' That proviso was incompatible with the feudal trappings and was
far more likely to be turned into a reality. The first assembly of the colony met in January 1635,
consisting of all freemen, that is males not bound in service. Within two years, and after some
acrimonious arguments paralleling the debates in Westminster, it had won the legislative
initiative. Thereafter there was no chance of Baltimore exacting his feudal privileges in full-quite