the less, a definite historical implication, for it is a fact
that until now investigators have never fully appre-
hended the activities of Lord Baltimore in the eighteen
months that elapsed between the granting of his Charter
and the sailing for Maryland of the Ark and the Dove.
The discovery of the Declaration in printed form lightens
the obscurity of this important period in the life of the
project. From it one learns that the Proprietary was
engaged in other things besides the defense of his
Charter and the removal of prejudice against a proposed
colony under the leadership of a Catholic nobleman.
One learns that he was busy advertising his plans, an-
nouncing his conditions of plantation and in general
attracting and securing adventurers in the approved
fashion of colony promoters of his own and later cen-
turies. One even has a glimpse of him at the business,
sitting in his house in Bloomsbury at the upper end of
Holborne in London, prepared to consult all and sundry
among intending adventurers. Furthermore, the very
fact of the existence of a printed advertisement in the
form of the Declaration clears away the imputation of
dark secrecy that attaches to the earliest settlement of
Maryland, removes the popular conception of that first
expedition as an almost furtive flight of a band of perse-
cuted Catholics to the Land of Sanctuary. It becomes
obvious that there was nothing of this nature associated
with the enterprise. The destination of the expedition
and its date and place of sailing were announced in
print for all to read, months in advance, and if my Lord
Baltimore's Maryland project did not become the talk
of London, it was hardly from lack of enterprise on the
part of its promoter.

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