THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE 23

Blakiston got three successive gratuities, but on April 20, 1703,
Queen Anne forbade the Governor's receiving any further pres-
ents. ²⁰ After Baltimore's restoration the Assembly in 1718 voted
John Hart £ 200 sterling for espousing the interest of the province
against the Catholics, and in 1769 they gave Robert Eden $800
currency as a mark of their esteem. ²¹

It will appear that, after 1691, the Governor's gross income
from all these sources, although it varied considerably, could
hardly have fallen much below £ 1500 sterling, and that it must
have risen at times to well above £ 2000. In his " Exact Estimate "
of 1767, Sharpe rated it at £ 1861. ²² This was not counting his
allowance for house rent.

In the early proprietary period each incumbent had had a house
of his own at St. Mary's. Lionel Copley, the first royal Governor,
lived there in a house provided by Lord Baltimore. ²³ Then after
removal of the capital to Annapolis, under Francis Nicholson, the
Assembly began to vote him an annual allowance for rent. This
was to be just a temporary expedient till an executive mansion
could be erected, but the parsimonious delegates refused to vote
money for such a structure until the Paper Currency Act of April,
1733. Building a palace then became a means of getting this
paper into circulation.

Unfortunately Governor Thomas Bladen, who had failed to
get on with the Assembly anyway, now undertook to erect too
large a house. In 1744, after laying out the whole sum of £ 4000
currency, he had to apply for half as much again, merely to
complete the fabric. This the Lower House refused. While the
Governor and delegates quarreled, the unfinished palace, now
called " Bladen's Folly, " sank into a long decay. ²⁴

²⁰ Ibid., XXII, 352; XXIV, 29. 229, 291, 329; XXIX, 357; Calendar of State
Papers, Colonial, 1702-03, loc. cit.

²¹ Archives, XXXIII, 274; LXII, 124.

²² See note 16 above. The French and Indian War caused "a prodigious
Decrease" in Gov. Sharpe's revenues. He estimated his entire income as chief
executive in 1756 at £ 1400 sterling and in 1761 at £ 1200. In 1757 he com-
plained that he was unable to save much over £ 300 a year. (Horatio Sharpe to
William Sharpe, May 2, 1756; Sharpe to Board of Trade, Dec. 21, 1761; Sharpe
to Lord Baltimore, June 30, 1757; Ibid., VI, 400; XXXII, 27; IX, 35),

²³ The mansion Copley occupied had been built by Thomas Cornwalleys and
was called "St. Peter's, " otherwise "the Great House" or "the Governor's
Castle. " Cf. Ibid., XX, 120; VIII, 382; H. C. Forman, Jamestown and St. Mary's,
Buried Cities of Romance (Baltimore, 1938), 233-36.

²⁴ For a history of this controversy see Mereness, op. cit., 349-53. A description
of the house in its unfinished state may be found in Andrew Burnaby, Travels