ON ST. CECILIAS DAY, the 22 of November
   1633 with a gentle Northerne gale we set saile
   from the Cowes about 10 in the morninge." So
began the earliest English version of Father Andrew
White's narrative of the first expedition to found the
Province of Maryland.¹ More than a year of planning
had preceded this historic departure. Cecil Calvert, sec-
ond Baron of Baltimore, had received the grant of
Maryland from King Charles I on June 20, 1632. Since
that day, and for some time before, he had been seeking
investors and settlers, arranging for ships and supplies,
and by skillful political maneuvers defeating opponents
who hoped to persuade the king to rescind the charter
and kill the whole enterprise.²

Plans and Promotions

   Cecil Calvert and his father, George Calvert, the first
Lord Baltimore, shared two prime interrelated goals.³
As land developers they looked for profits, and as Cath-
olics they sought an escape from the legal disabilities
Catholics suffered in England. George Calvert had been
attracted to the possible profits of colonies when a pub-
lic servant at the court of James I and had begun devel-
oping a plantation on Newfoundland in the early 1620s.
His reconversion to Roman Catholicism, his childhood
religion, about 1625, ended his public career, but not his