so often did, they suspected the Indians of plotting retaliation and so
moved peremptorily to attack them. In June 1586, they killed the chief of
the Roanoke Indians. When they suspected the Indians of stealing a silver
cup, they conducted, as Ralph Lane reported, the first of countless search-
and-destroy missions (which they called “marches” and the French knew
aschevauchées): they “burnt, and spoyled their corne, and Towne, all the
people being fled.”
The experience of those Englishmen who went to Maryland differed in
important respects from what happened in Virginia. In Virginia, James-
town was set up and controlled until 1625 by a company of merchants; but
Maryland was granted to one man, Lord Baltimore. Except for having con-
verted to Catholicism, Baltimore was fairly typical of the English aristoc-
racy. As a young man, he became the private secretary of a leading public
figure, then clerk of the privy council, and a member of Parliament from
1609 to 1624. During that period, he was also an investor in and a member
of the Virginia Company of London. The grant King Charles gave him
in 1632 was for about 10 million acres of land uninhabited except by
“Barbarians, Heathen and Savages.” The original intent had been to locate
the grant south of Virginia, but to block the southward move of the Dutch,
who had already set up a small colony called New Amsterdam in the
Hudson valley, Baltimore’s grant was shifted to what became Maryland.
The king treated him royally: he was to get the rights of an absolute lord
with complete authority over every aspect of life in the colony; all writs
were to be in his name rather than the king’s; and in the event of a dispute,
the outcome was to be “beneficial, profitable and favorable” to him. In
return for all this, Baltimore was to pay a symbolic yearly “rent” of just two
Indian arrows.
Remarkable as these terms were, even more remarkable was the fact
that in an age of intense interfaith hostility, Protestant England made
Maryland a haven for Catholics. From the beginning, however, Protestants
outnumbered Catholics, and the disproportion between the Protestants’
status and their aspirations would later cause havoc in Maryland’s civic life.
After receiving his charter, Lord Baltimore soon died. His son,
Cecilius, as “lord proprietor,” then opened an office in London to register
would-be colonists. Merchants who had invested in the Virginia Company
118 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA