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MARYLAND MANUAL 83
first site, St. Mary's City, called then "Augusta Carolina," was available. A palisade was erected immediately. Government from St. Mary's City For upwards of sixty years, the Province centered around St. Mary's City. The Assembly, set up very soon after a food supply had been assured and protection against enemies provided, was made up of the freemen, i.e., plant- ers and settlers. The combined efforts of all the settlers were needed, moreover, to cope with the almost immediate difficulty that arose with white settlers from Virginia who had begun trading with the Indians before the Calvert party arrived. The foremost among these men was Cap- tain William Claiborne, a trader with headquarters on Kent Island. The dispute is sometimes known as the Cal-vert-Claiborne controversy. After a naval skirmish and slight loss of life, Claiborne was declared an outlaw March 24,1637. "Ingle's War" was another vexation in the peaceful order- ing of the new colony. Richard Ingle was a vigorous parti- san of Parliament in its victorious struggle with the King that was to produce the Commonwealth. Coming first to Maryland in 1642, he finally exceeded any legal powers he might have had and took possession of St. Mary's City, making prisoner members of the Assembly. The affair ended inconclusively in 1646, but Ingle, meanwhile, arrested Father Andrew White and Father Thomas Copley and took them in chains to England. Act of Toleration The bigotry implicit in Ingle's special irritation at Cath- olic priests and Royalists makes especially pointed the solici- tude Lord Baltimore showed at this period for religious freedom. As early as 1643, the Puritan Governor of Massa- chusetts, John Winthrop, had spoken approvingly of Gov- ernor Calvert as "for free liberty of religion." The Gov- ernor had taken a more liberal attitude on the question of Puritan settlers, certainly, than had the administrators of Virginia. The "Act concerning Religion," which the Mary- land Assembly passed in 1649, gives Maryland claim to being one of the first civil regimes to recognize freedom of religion. The fact that within sixty years after the passage of this law Catholics were repressed under an "Act to pre- vent the growth of popery" does not detract from the boldness of Lord Baltimore's action in the mid-seventeenth century. |
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Maryland Manual, 1971-72
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