act after a Relation had been published in which the
accomplishment of that act was described in full detail.

   The subject matter of the Declaration is by no means
new to the student of Maryland history. About the year
1832, the Reverend William McSherry, S. J., copied
from the Roman archives of his Order several Latin
manuscripts relating to the early history of Maryland.
One of these was the celebrated "Relatio" that appeared
in part in an English version as the Relation of 1634, de-
scribed above, and which, it is generally agreed, must
have come from the hand of Father Andrew White.
Another was the "Declaratio Coloniae", long spoken of
as the work of an unknown writer, while still others com-
prised letters or reports from various Jesuit missionaries
to the General of the Order in Rome. This group of
copies, which for convenience may be referred to as the
McSherry Codex, has been translated and published
several times since Father McSherry brought it with
him to Maryland⁵. A comparison of the Declaration of
1633 with any of the several nineteenth century transla-
tions of the "Declaratio" in the McSherry Codex shows
immediately that the printed tract and the Latin manu-
script are two forms of the same document.

   This piece of writing served, it seems, two distinct
purposes: in its printed English form it conveyed to the
English public an account of the settlement Lord Balti-
more proposed to make in Maryland; in its Latin manu-
script form it conveyed the same information to the
Jesuit General in Rome. When in 1631, Father Blount,
the English Provincial, asked the General for authoriza-
tion "to despatch some of ours" with a company of
English gentlemen contemplating a new American
settlement, Vitelleschi deferred judgment and demanded

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