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Maryland Manual, 1973-74
Volume 176, Page 35   View pdf image (33K)
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MARYLAND MANUAL 35
date of arrival of Maryland's first settlers. Not long after-
wards the Yoacomaco Indians, who held the surrounding
territory, sold their possessions to the newcomers, and the
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 freeman, i.e., planters 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 Captain William Clai-
borne, a trader with headquarters on Kent Island. The dis-
pute is sometimes known as the Calvert-Claiborne contro-
versy. After a naval skirmish and slight loss of life, Clai-
borne 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-

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Maryland Manual, 1973-74
Volume 176, Page 35   View pdf image (33K)
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