The Government of Maryland

AT the close of Chapter V of the Second Book, we have observed that in the year 1639, a representative government was established in Maryland. It was crude in form, but possessed the prolific seeds of a sturdy republicanism. The freemen chose as many representatives as they pleased. So did the proprietor. These, with the governor appointed by the proprietor, and a secretary, composed the government of Maryland.

In that first representative assembly, the people boldly asserted their rights and dignity. The proprietor presented to the Legislature a system of laws which he had framed. The representatives of the people, feeling that the inherent right to make laws resided in their constituents, rejected the whole system. They adopted a Declaration of Rights, defining the powers and duties of each branch of the government, and set to work to pass bills for the security to the people of every privilege that belonged to a British subject. This popular sovereignty was briefly contested by Lord Baltimore, by a series of vetoes or refusals to sign such bills. After vetoing more than forty, and finding the people firm, the proprietor gave up the contest and yielded gracefully to the popular will.

The province now had an aspect of profound repose, for the Indians regarded the new settlers as friends. Everything social and political promised for Maryland a long career of peace and prosperity, when personal ambition and greed, as usual, disturbed the serenity of society. A restless adventurer, named William Clayborne, had received authority from the governor of Virginia, so early as 1627, to explore the headwaters of Chesapeake Bay north of the 34th degree of latitude. Four years later, King Charles gave to Clayborne the privilege of making discoveries in the same region, and trafficking with the natives. He established a trading-post on Kent Island, in Chesapeake Bay, not far from Annapolis. When Governor Calvert visited Governor Harvey, while the colonists for Maryland were on their way to that province, Clayborne appeared and gave them ominous warnings of the hostilities of the Indians, to which they would be subjected. Not succeeding in frightening the emigrants, he insisted upon the exempation of Kent Island from the jurisdiction of the Maryland proprietor, because his grant was older than Lord Baltimore's thereto. The Virginia Assembly secretly supported his claim; and when Calvert insisted that Clayborn should either leave the island or take an oath of allegiance to the governor he would do neither, but fitted out an armed vessel to protect his doman and cruise against the colonists. His vessel was captured by a Marylan force, and Clayborne, who was not in the expedition, prudently fled to Virginia, and there effectually excited the hostility of the Indians against Calvert's colony, telling the savages that they were Spaniards. The governor of Maryland demanded the body of Clayborne as a rebel and traitor, and he was saved from arrest only by fleeing to England. The Maryland Legislature, in 1638, deprived Clayborne of his civil rights and property within their jurisdiction. He laid his case before the king, and it was decided against him. For a few years afterward he did not appear as are open enemy of the Maryland government.

During the lull in Clayborne's active hostility, he had secretly poisoned the minds of the Indians with suspicions of dark designs on the part of the settlers toward them. The king of the Patuxents showed much unfriendliness, and the colonists were disquieted. But the more powerful king of the Piscataways resolved to become a Christian. He had been very sick. His forty conjurors could not kill the malady and it was likely to kill him when Father White, the Roman Catholic priest already mentioned, by the judicious use of medicines, cured the monarch. With a grateful heart the king asked to be baptized. He urged his chiefs to receive the rite. On a warm summer's day in 1640, in a chapel made of bark for the occasion, the king, his queen, and their little child, with several of his council, were baptized in the presence of the governor and other distinguished citizens. The king was named Charles in honor of the British sovereign; and in the afternoon he and his queen were married, in accordance with Christian rites. His daughter, an intelligent young woman, followed her father's example and was sent to school at St. Mary's. His example was also followed by many other leading persons among the Indians; and they promised to be a shield for the colonists against outside barbarians. But the king soon afterward died, and his daughter at St. Mary's became queen. She could not protect the Christians against hostile pagans within their borders and beyond, with whom Clayborne and his emissaries had tampered.