Maryland at 400:
Revisiting the Maryland Charter and The meaning of
Liberorum Hominum (Free Men)
©Edward C. Papenfuse, Maryland state Archivist, Retired
Figure 1: Duke of Kent, Charter Day, June 23, 1984, St. Mary’s City, presenting
Governor Harry Hughes with a facsimile of the
Official Recorded Original of the Maryland Charter from
Patent Roll 8 Charles I, Part 3, no. 2594, British National Archives C 66/2594
On Charter Day, June 23, 1984, during the 350th anniversary celebrations of the founding of Maryland, the Duke of Kent, representing the British Crown, presented a facsimile of the Charter of Maryland to Governor Harry Hughes. As the 400th anniversary of the Charter approaches it is an auspicious time to revisit the Charter and especially the provision that calls for the passage of laws “of and with the advice assent and approbation of the Free-men of the said Province or the greater part of them, or of their delegates or deputies, whom for the enacting of the said Lawes, when, and as often as neede shall require, We will that the said now Lord Baltemore, and his heires shall assemble in such sort and forme, as to him or them shall seme best…”[1]
No other founding document in the history of the United States called in writing for such a broad base of participation and approbation (unqualified praise) of its revolutionary concept of participation of citizens in the legislative process. It proved to be a faltering beginning for Democracy, but a beginning never the less of a process of putting into written words what principals and laws should govern for the benefit of all, not just a rich ennobled elite of some defined social and economic standing. From that process launched by the words of the Charter there is much to be learned.
The phrase translated as Free Men, appears in the original of the June 20, 1632 charter as an abbreviation which intentionally is meant to expand to Liberorum Hominum :
Figure 2: Detail from the facsimile of the Maryland Charter to Maryland by the Duke of Kent,
June 23, 1984, Patent Roll 8 Charles I, Part 3, no. 2594, British National Archives C 66/2594
In 1811, in the first exceedingly detailed history of Maryland by John Leeds Bozman, he argues that the phrase “Free-men” did not mean what it said, but rather was intended to be restricted to “free-holders.”
Bozman wrote:
As the word “freemen,” so often repeated … , frequently also occurs in the early legislative proceedings of the province, and is moreover an expression used in the charter, of material import in the political constitution of the province, it will be proper that a correct idea should be annexed to it. … Now the word “freeman,” as well as the Latin expression “liberorum hominum,” were according to common law writers, cotemporary or nearly so with the date of the charter, understood as being synonimous to the word freeholder.
Bozman cites a number of sources to support his argument that ownership of property was essential to the definition of ‘freemen,’ but they are ambiguous at best. For example, he admits that tenants on the manor according to Lord Coke were “freemen,” as would those who inhabited Lord Baltimore’s manors, while he acknowledges that any freeman in the early assemblies had a right to participate without investigating who these individuals were and whether or not they were all freeholders of land.[2]
In 1912 Charles M. Andrews published volume I of a guide to the records for American History to 1783 in the Public Record Office, now the British National Archives at Kew. In it he detailed the process by which a charter passed through its various stages before being engrossed in the Charter Rolls and granted to the applicant. This through introduction was followed by an inventory of the earliest American charters whose warrants appear in the Privy Seal Docquets. Curiously, he notes only one charter for Maryland (there were two), dated April 1632. The second entry Andrews failed to note is for the second Charter ultimately granted in June, 1632 and appears several pages after the first.[3]
Figure 3a: British National Archives, PSO5/6, volume containing the initial instructions of the Privy Council for the issuance of the Maryland Charter.
Figure 3b: PRO5/6 entries for the issuance of the two Maryland Charters
The essential difference in the instructions for preparing the two Charters of Maryland in the official Latin relate to the boundaries of the grants.
Figure 3c: early 19th century engraving of George Calvert, image courtesy of Seth Kaller
The first order on the books of the Privy Council is to George Calvert, First Lord Baltimore, and encompasses the whole of the Eastern Shore down to Cape Charles. The second, occasioned by the death of George Calvert on April 15, 1632, is for the second charter to Maryland granted to Cecilius Calvert, the Second Lord Baltimore, and constrains the grant on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay to above Watkins Point, but still includes the whole of the Potomac River to its source.[4]
Figure 4, bundle of parchment containing Maryland’s first Charter, British National Archives, SP30/36, April 1632
Historians have ignored the first Maryland Charter of April 1632 as irrelevant, and have assumed that the second and official charter of June 20, 1632, is the same, except for the boundaries of the province which Cecil Calvert had to modify in the face of opposition from Virginia.
The coal dust is still thick on the parchment of the first Charter to Maryland, boldly signed by the King in April 1632, but never making it to the Great Seal and recordation on the Charter Rolls. It is safely boxed and available on demand at the British National Archives at Kew. Perhaps it is time to explore its contents and to see if it has anything of significance to offer.
Figure 5: the naming of Maryland in the first Maryland Charter, British National Archives, SP30/36
Here is to be found the first explicit and official attribution of the name “Maryland” spelled out in Latin and, then to be certain the translation would be correct, in bold English: “MARYLAND.”
British Museum, Sloane MS 3662, f. 25a, 1670, detail recounting the naming of Maryland.
In 1670 an unknown hand penned a chronology and summary history of Maryland which eventually found its way to the British Library, Sloane MS 3662, ff 25-26. There will be found the possibly apocryphal story as to when and how the name MARYLAND came to be attached to the new colony. The unknown author asserted that early in 1632, George Calvert solicited the name of the colony from the King, Charles the First. The King supposedly proposed Mariana first, but was reminded by Lord Baltimore that was the name of a Jesuit who had written against monarchy. The King then suggested the name of the Queen, Henrietta Maria, known as Queen Mary, and so it was that MARY LAND was written into the Charter.[5]
But far more important is the provision in this first Charter to Maryland with regard to whom was given the right to provide advice assent and approbation to the laws passed by the General Assembly.
In this first charter to Maryland of April 1632, the Latin words are distinct and clear and are nearly the same as to be found in the 1623 Charter to Avalon in Newfoundland: “Of and with the advice assent and approbation of the Freeholders of the sayd Province, …,” “consilio assensu et approbatione liberorum tenen …”:
Figure 6: detail from the Charter to Avalon, Newfoundland, 1623, British Library, Sloane Ms. 170
Figure 7: detail from the first Maryland Charter, April 1632, British National Archives, SP30/36
In both the Avalon Charter, 1623, and the first Maryland Charter, April 1632, the meaning is clear. The advice and consent to the laws is to come from property holders, freeholders, of the province who are to constitute the General Assembly.
In two months under the skilled supervision of the distinguished Attorney General, William Noy, that language, that wording, would be deliberately changed to Free Men in the second Maryland Charter of June 20, 1632:
Figure 8: Detail from the facsimile of the Maryland Charter to Maryland by the Duke of Kent,
June 23, 1984, Patent Roll 8 Charles I, Part 3, no. 2594, British National Archives C 66/2594
That the change in wording was deliberate and done at the instigation of Cecil Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore, in the weeks following his father’s death, and in the face of a further challenge from Virginia concerning the bounds of his province, is reinforced from two other documents that deserve closer examination, one of which has long been known since it was acquired by the Maryland Historical Society and published in transcription in 1889, and the other, surfacing in the twenty-first century, exported under license to the United States nearly twenty years ago, and currently offered for sale by the noted manuscript dealer, Seth Kaller.[6]
Figure 9: detail from Calvert Papers, Maryland Historical Society, Microfilm Reel 6, item 191, [1635] The Lo: Baltemores Declaration to the Lords.
The document now in the Calvert Papers of the Maryland Historical Society, docketed as Cecil The Lo: Baltemore’s Declaration to the Lords, is addressed to the Lords Comissioners for forreigne Plantations. From internal evidence and the Calendar of State Papers, it was composed about July, 1635, after death of Cecil’s brother George (1634), and before knowledge of the death of his brother Henry (1635).[7] In it Cecil Calvert defends his Charter and pleads with the Privy Council to prevent the Virginians from carrying their complaints any further. After a lengthy assessment of the laborious process through which both his father and he passed to acquire the Charter, including six draft warrants and two charters written on vellum signed by the King, he pointed out to the Privy Council that the final version “was made upon such mature deliberation upon so many several references, warrants, and certificates (the Copies whereof are ready to be presented unto your lordships).”
Broadening the base of participation in the process of “advice, assent, and approbation” to legislation passed in Maryland to include as burgesses or their proxies not only owners and tenants of land (freeholders) to all free men including tradesmen such as carpenters and craftsmen without free holds, was no accident or slip of the Attorney General’s scribe.
In order to ensure the broadest base of support possible and to encourage the migration of Roman Catholics and other opponents of the established church that claimed the King as its head all known as recusants, to populate his colony, Cecil Calvert proposed a law of toleration that his General Assembly in Maryland passed into law. Much has been written about his act of toleration, passed by the General Assembly of Maryland in 1649, but what was long buried was Cecil Calvert’s two-page defense of that act that he wrote as a rebuttal to Captain Richard Ingle’s efforts to have the Maryland Charter revoked.[8] Like the other documents discussed here, the manuscript now in the possession of Seth Kaller deserves a close reading for its insight and important relationship to a renewed celebration of the Charter of Maryland.
Figure 10a: excerpt from The Lord Baltemore’s Case concerning his Plantation in Mary:Land, 1650,
With permission from Seth Kaller, https://www.sethkaller.com/
The Kaller document consists of two folios and is an abbreviated precursor to the better known and much longer pamphlet published in 1653.[9] It provides a simple straight-forward defense of the Charter and of the Act Concerning Religion recently passed by the Maryland General Assembly which was intended to clarify the meaning of the Charter as it extended to all Free Men and Free Holders.[10] It also provides insight into the mind of Cecil Calvert with regard to what was the meaning of the language “liberorum hominum,” Free Men in the the language of the June 20, 1632 Maryland Charter. Cecil Calvert’s goal was to to broaden the base of participation in the process of creating the laws of Maryland and to welcome into the colony as participating citizens Catholics, Quakers, dissident Protestants and others who could obey the laws to which they assented.
Figure 10b: Excerpt from the Original Official Recording of An Act Concerning Religion (1649)
GOVERNOR AND COUNCIL (Proceedings) 1647-1650/1 MSA S1071-4 MdHR 3821-2
Figure 10c: 1689 printing of An Act Concerning Religion,
Great Britain, British National Archives, PRO30/24/49
The intent of the two folios of Cecil Calvert’s 1650 manuscript defense of his charter now offered by Seth Kaller, was to refute Richard Ingle’s contention that he was required to maintain the Protestant religion in Maryland and instead worked to root out and destroy it. In a response that was intended for the same Committee of the Privy Council before which he had appeared in 1635 and which was to be presented at “three or four of ye clock”on the 25th of February 1650, only a few short months after he had despatched the draft of the Act Concerning Religion and it had been enacted by the Maryland General Assembly, Cecil Calvert stressed that:
His Patent obliged him to maintain no particular profession in Religion, … That there is a Law published there for the Freedom of Religion to all such as profess to believe in Jesus Christ.
He also stressed his stand as a recusant which at the time meant one who refused to attend divine worship in Anglican churches, or to acknowledge the ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown, including dissident Protestants.[11] In his own words:
The Lord Baltimore has a Patent of the Province of Maryland (being on the Continent of America0 granted unto him and his heirs in ye eighth year of the late King’s Reign, with diverse privileges and jurisdictions for the Government of his Colony there ...He was at ye time of the granting the Laws-Patent known to be a Recusant, and it was then though a good expedient to remove deeds of that profession in Religion from hence to so remote a place. … For the government was ye chiefest encouragement he had to adventure a great part of his fortune thither. There being no Laws at ye time of his Grant to prohibit any Recusant from having ye command of his own in so desert a place of the world.[12]
Together the three documents, the second June 20, 1632 charter to Maryland, the 1635 Declaration, and the February 1650 defense of the Charter present a broader interpretation of Cecil Calvert’s motivation for pursuing his father’s vision of a self-sustaining plantation in the New World that has generally been the case. He was, of course, consumed by a desire to improve his own fortune and took the privileges granted him in the June 20, 1632 charter seriously. But he also was deeply concerned with obtaining as many settlers as possible, by defining who could participate in the creation of the laws of the province more broadly than his father. As an outspoken recusant he also sought to protect those recusants who were invited to join his Maryland venture whether they be tenants, servants, or in service occupations such carpenters, shipwrights, and barbers whether or not they owned or worked their own land. It would be interesting know if he had been influenced by those in Cromwell’s army who debated at Putney over their rights as Freemen. The Kaller document “The Lord Baltemore’s Case concerning his Plantation in Mary:Land” was once accompanied by a letter now apparently lost, from the outspoken Leveler, John Lilburne (known as Free Born John) when the American born Lord Fairfax purchased the two documents in 1937. Whether or not there was a connection between the two is unknown, but Lilburne’s definition of Free Men is not far from that as written in the Maryland Charter of June 20, 1632.
Figure 11: Cecil Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore, with his namesake grandson and a slave,
by Gerard Soest, late 1669 or early 1670,
courtesy of the Artistic Properties Commission of the Maryland State Archives[13]
In July of 1669 Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore’s son and who would be the third Lord Baltimore on the death of his father, returned to England from Maryland where he had been Governor for his father. He brought the agreement with Virginia that delineated the boundary between the two colonies on the Eastern Shore that in part was literally hacked through the trees to towards the Atlantic Ocean once the location of Watkins Point had been agreed upon. He took with him his two year old son Cecilius who is shown in this portrait pointing to Watkins Point. They would depart for Maryland in the fall of 1670, only to return to London permanently after the death of Cecil Calvert, the Second Lord Baltimore, in 1675.
Figure 12 detail from the Church Register of St. Giles in the Fields, London,
courtesy of Henry Miller
Young Cecilius would not live to follow his father as the Third Lord Baltimore, having died at the age of 14, and having been buried in July 1681 in the same churchyard as Oliver Plunkett, the recusant Roman Catholic Bishop of Armagh who was executed for treason for the non-existent Popish Plot conjured up by Titus Oakes as a threat to the life of King Charles the Second.[14]
The 1680s were difficult times for Charles Calvert, 3rd Lord Baltimore. By 1689 he had lost his political role in Maryland, while keeping ownership of the land and its associated income, and his father’s Act of Toleration would be repealed in 1694, spelling the end of Roman Catholic participation in the governance of the Colony until a new Charter or Constitution for Maryland was adopted in 1776.[15]
The painting of Cecilius Calvert and his grandson now hanging in the Maryland State House, contains three figures. The third is a slave apparently attendant on the young Cecilius. In 1664 slavery had been introduced into Maryland further defining the meaning of Free Men in a way that would not be dissolved in law until the adoption of the revised Constitution of Maryland three hundred years later in 1864. By 1672 Cecil Calvert was urging his son Charles to invest in slaves from Barbadoes. Charles’s reluctance was occasioned only by the lack of funds.[16]
In 2032 the Maryland Charter will be 400 years old. Perhaps it is time that we revisit the document and its consequences, intended and unintended. We have much to learn, especially in these times of what will undoubtedly be the consequences of a series of executive pronouncements and decisions that are bound to affect the lives and futures of those who will be living in 2032.
In this year of 2018 we seem to be abandoning the teaching of cursive writing and seem to pay less and less attention to the lessons of the past as we struggle politically to chart a course for our country’s future.
Over the next many months as we look to celebrating the 400th Anniversary of the founding of Maryland, there are at least three important steps we can take to ensure a meaningful and lasting contribution to those festivities.
We can find the means of placing the 1650 words of Lord Baltimore in defense of his charter in an accessible public institution.
We can pay heed to the warnings of writers like Diana Dinsick in her article entitled The Uncertain Future of Handwriting which appeared in the Sunday October 28 online edition of the Bay Weekly.[17] In that article she echoes the concerns of the staff of the Maryland State Archives about the increasing inability of citizens and non-citizens alike to read the writings of the past that are in cursive, no matter how bad the handwriting.
Figure 13: Letter of George Calvert, 1622, sold at Sotheby’s July 12, 2016 as Lot 9, displaying the very poor handwriting of the first Lord Baltimore.
Even King Charles complained that George Calvert’s handwriting at times could be nearly illegible.[18]
Figure 14: home page of Transkribus
In order to better read, transcribe, and as needed, translate the written documents of Maryland’s past there needs to be an online platform like that developed by the University of Norwich, or a Maryland based server hosting Transkribus. There group sourcing will help future generations to transcribe and read the words on paper and vellum of the past. Within that free and perpetual framework original documents could be viewed, transcribed and read by anyone who wished to contribute, including working their way through the latin of Maryland’s first Charter to determine if there are other hidden gems of understanding and wisdom.[19]
And finally the Work of Dr. Lois Carr, and the Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature needs to be expanded and continued on a permanent website on which anyone can edit and contribute according to a model not unlike Wikipedia. Already Lois Carr’s online notes point to the definition of a Free Man in the first assemblies in Maryland who owned no land but supported himself as a carpenter. A careful look at those who are noted as attending those first assemblies, as well as those who granted their proxies to participate to others begs our attention.[20]
Figure 15a: George Calvert by Daniel Mytens and
Cecil Calvert with grandson and slave by Gerard Soest[21]
While we will never be able to fully comprehend the thoughts and intent of those who toiled to make Maryland a viable presence in the New World including Free Men and those who were not permitted to be Free, we can enlarge the base of our understanding by making the surviving documents of the past come alive online, along with as much biographical information as we can glean from our ongoing journey of discovery and contemplation, not failing to ignore the women and slaves who through their labors, both intellectual and physical, contributed more than they have hitherto been credited.[22]
The documentary history of the Maryland Charter, and the political world that evolved from it, especially as it was interpreted in writing and action since the days the first settlers landed on St. Clement’s Island on March 25, 1634 and were read verbatim what the charter promised as well as what obligations it entailed, has instructive lessons to be examined and discussed with each succeeding generation. As Thomas Jefferson pointed out with regard to written constitutions, they require revisiting in full and focused debate at least every twenty years.[23]
The intentions of the Maryland Charter as spelled out in its words, did not always follow a straight and smooth course to the present. Cecil Calvert’s assembly did not always agree with his proposed laws and as early as 1638 would suggest to his Lordship that it would be better that the laws be proposed by the General Assembly in Maryland and not be delivered from his pen in London. Nor did his plans for an Assembly of all Free Men last long in Maryland. By 1723, Freeman no longer meant what Cecil Calvert has originally intended. By then the marginal annotation heading the section on advice and consent to laws equated Free Men with property owners and, since 1689, Roman Catholics and other recusants could neither vote nor hold office until 1776 and the adoption of Maryland’s first Constitution.[24]
As we look to celebrating the 400th anniversary of the granting of Maryland’s Charter in 2032, and the founding of Maryland nearly two years later, let us turn our attention to those written documents of 400 years ago to see what we can learn about then, and about ourselves now. We were an experiment of immigrants then, in which the door to participation in the political process opened slightly, only to be closed and then reopened again, if ever so slowly over an extended and often painful period of time. As we celebrate, let us not ignore the process of writing, debating and the bloody conflict that got us to where we are today. Let us return to the documents, learn what they have to say, and contemplate what the future can be through reasoned debate, and the strengthening of a legal process that calls for civility among us, care for the tired and poor and the masses yearning to be free, as well as for those who already are, and planning sensibly for the future. The Maryland Charter initiated that obligation in writing and laid out a path and a process that we could follow. It is up to us to meet that challenge both intellectually and in practice.
Thank you
[1] This translation was first published in 1635. See The Charter of Maryland, June 20, 1632 , published in 1982 by the Maryland Hall of Records Commission with an introduction by Edward C. Papenfuse, unpaginaged, f. 14, and “The Charter of Maryland” by Lois Green Carr and Edward C. Papenfuse in A Declaration of The Lord Baltemore’s Plantation in Mary-land, February 10, 1633, Annapolis: Maryland Hall of Records Commission, June 20, 1983. By far the best recent account of the founding of Maryland and the travails of the 17th century including the ending of the effort to provide religious freedom is John D. Krugler’s English and Catholic, Baltiimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Professor Krugler does not address the significance of the wording of the Charter in the political history of the colony.
[2] John Leeds Bozman, A Sketch of the History of Maryland …, Baltimore: Edward J. Coale, 1811, pp. 302-304.
[3] Charles M. Andrews, Guide to the Materials for American History, to 1783, in the Public Record Office of Great Britain, Washington, D. C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1912, pp. 268-273.
[4] For the history of Watkins Point and the efforts to locate it see: http://rememberingmaryland.
[5] This story is to be found in a number of histories of Maryland including Scharf and Andrews, but wrongly cited. William Warner, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Beautiful Swimmers secured copies of the originals from the British Library and sent them to me in June of 2000.
[6] “No. 13 Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, Declaration to the Lords, [1635],” Fund-Publication, no. 28, The Calvert Papers. Number One, Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1889, pp. 221-229 and “The Lord Baltimore’s Case concerning his Plantation in Maryland, [April 1649],” offered by Seth Kaller, https://www.sethkaller.com/
[7] “The late Lo: Baltemore’s first Grant of that part, above menconed (wch is now 3 yeares since)” and “Having sent two of his brother thither (one of whom he hath since lost upon the place) and having seated already above two hundred people there.” George Calvert’s first warrant referred to here is dated February 1631/2 The two brothers were Leonard, who was governor of the colony until his death in 1647, and George, who died at sea in 1634. Charles M. Andrews argues that in April of 1634 the Lords Commissioners, a committee of the Privy Council, was created and in operation until it was reconstituted in 1636 and was of little importance, although Cecil Calvert was called to defend his charter before it. His defense was referred to the Attorney General on July 2, 1635 (Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574-1660, p. 211). According to Andrews:
The first separate commission, though, in reality, a committee of the Privy Council, appointed to concern itself with all the plantations, was created by Charles I, April 28, 1634. It was officially styled the Commission for Foreign Plantations; one petitioner called it "the Lords Commissioners for Plantations in General," and another "the learned Commissioners appointed by the King to examine and rectify all complaints from the plantations." It is probable that the term "Committee of Foreign Plantations" was occasionally applied to it, as there is nothing to show that the committee of 1633 remained in existence after April, 1634.18 Recommissioned, April 10, 1636, it continued to sit as an active body certainly as late as August, 1641, and possibly longer,19 though there is no formal record of its discontinuance. Its original membership was as follows: William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury; Richard Neile, Archbishop of York; Sir Thomas Coventry, the Lord Keeper; Earl of Portland, the Lord Treasurer, Earl of Manchester, the Lord Privy Seal, Earl of Arundel, the Earl Marshall, Earl of Dorset, Lord Cottington, Sir Thomas Edmondes, the Master Treasurer, Sir Henry Vane, the Master Comptroller, and the secretaries, Coke and Windebank. Later the Earl of Sterling was added.20 Five constituted a quorum. The powers granted to the commission were extensive and almost royal in character: to make laws and orders for the government of the English colonies in foreign parts; to impose penalties and imprisonment for offenses in ecclesiastical matters; to remove governors and require an account of their government; [17]to appoint judges and magistrates, and to establish courts, both civil and ecclesiastical; to hear and determine all manner of complaints from the colonies; to have power over all charters and patents, and to revoke those surreptitiously or unduly obtained. Such powers clearly show that the commission was designed as an instrument for enforcing the royal will in the colonies, and furnishes no precedent for the later councils and boards of trade and foreign plantations. Called into being probably because of the continued emigration of Puritans to New England, the complaints against the Massachusetts charter, and the growth of Independency in that colony, it was in origin a coercive, not an inquisitory, body, in the same class with the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, and the Councils of Wales and the North. Unlike these bodies, it proved practically impotent, and there is nothing to show that it took any active part in the attempt to repeal the Massachusetts charter or in any important particular exercised the powers granted to it. It did not remove or appoint a governor, establish a court, or grant or revoke a charter. It received petitions either directly or from the Privy Council and made recommendations, but it never attempted to establish uniformity in New England or to bring the New England colonies more directly under the authority of the Crown. Whether it was the failure of the attempt to vacate the Massachusetts charter, or the poverty of the King, or the approach of civil war that prevented the enforcement of the royal policy, we cannot say, but the fact remains that the Laud commission played a comparatively inconspicuous part during the seven years of its existence and has gained a prominence in the history of our subject out of all proportion to its importance. BRITISH COMMITTEES, COMMISSIONS, AND COUNCILS OF TRADE AND PLANTATIONS, 1622–1675 BY CHARLES M. ANDREWS, Professor of History, BALTIMORE: THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS, PUBLISHED MONTHLY , January, February, March, 1908, https://www.gutenberg.org/
[8] See: https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/
[9] Narratives of Early Maryland 1634-1684, edited by Clayton Colman Hall, New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1910, The Lord Baltemore’s Case, 1653, pp. 163-185. This pamphlet was followed by a rebuttal Virginia and Maryland, or the Lord Baltamore’s Printed Case Uncased and Answered, 1655, also in Hall, pp. 187-230.
[10] For the 1649 Act Concerning Religion, see my introduction to https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/
Citizen Legislators: Imbedded in Maryland's 1632 charter is a remarkable provision, the first constitutional provision of its kind in any of the North American colonies. In Virginia, the private company governing that colony had recognized the need for some form of representative government by 1619, but at its very beginning the Maryland General Assembly consisted of all freemen. The Maryland charter specified that the laws of the province had to be "of and with the advise, assent, and approbation of the free-men of the said Province, or the greater part of them, or of their delegates or deputies." Whereas the 'freemen' who were called to assent to laws in Virginia and New England were a small, restricted number of individuals in a much larger disenfranchised population, at the outset in Maryland legislators were any adult male not bound by indenture or slavery. In time property qualifications would be added to the definition of what constituted freemen, and they would elect Delegates to represent them to pass laws "as if they were advised & assented unto by all the freemen of the province personally." Despite the one occasion in 1648 when a woman, Margaret Brent, unsuccessfully demanded the right to two votes as a landowner and attorney for Lord Baltimore, women would have to wait until 1920 for the right to vote, property would remain the basis of how free men choose their representatives until the first decades of the 19th century, and not until the second half of the 20th century would the word 'citizen' lose any qualification of race, although it might be well to remember that in those first years of settlement a black man, Mathias de Sousa not only voted but served as a member of the General Assembly.
In order to accommodate an assembly of freemen at St. Mary's and other public business, the first Governor of Maryland, Leonard Calvert, added a large room to his house that was twenty-two feet wide and about fifty feet long, with one large fireplace. It was called the St. Mary's Room, and after its purchase by the General Assembly in 1662, became the first official State House, known familiarly as the Country's House. The last known general assembly of all freemen in 1648 met elsewhere at another large house called St. John's. So many citizens attended that the clerk gave up listing the names and simply entered "& divers other inhabitants." With the next assembly, it was determined that representatives of the freemen should be elected, a practice that henceforth would become the rule. Summoned by a new Protestant governor, William Stone, the Assembly of April 1649 probably met in the St. Mary's Room of the dwelling that Stone would soon acquire from Leonard Calvert's estate. It would be this assembly that would take up Lord Baltimore's draft of An Act Concerning Religion.
The origins of the language of the act are obscure, although there were a number of precedents including the "Act Against Swearing and Cursing" that the British Parliament passed during the reign of King James I (21 Jacobi I. c. 20), three acts passed during the reign of his son and grantor of Maryland's charter, Charles I (1 Caroli I. c. 1, c. 4, and 3 Caroli I. c. 1), which regulated behavior in the taverns and on Sunday, and the "draconian Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648." The penalty for a conviction for blasphemy under the common and statute law of England had long been death. Some years later, Parliament itself would try one notorious blasphemer, James Naylor, deciding in the end not to hang him, but to brand his forehead "B" with a red hot iron and set him to ride through the streets of Bristol backwards on an ass for the sin of claiming he was the resurrected Christ.
No one knows for certain who originally drafted An Act Concerning Religion, or the degree to which it was altered by the Maryland Legislature. There is some evidence that Father Andrew White may have been available to help Lord Baltimore compose the draft he sent in 1648, and the letter transmitting the laws passed in 1649 back to Lord Baltimore for his consideration implies that the Legislature enacted Lord Baltimore's version unaltered. Recent research suggests that the intent of the law would have been in keeping with White's efforts to reconcile the Jesuits and English Catholics with Cromwell during the final stages of the English civil war. However, what is most important to remember, is that the law as a whole outlined a policy of punishment and fines for intolerant behavior that had no precedent elsewhere, and which sought to convince Marylanders that the best policy in matters of religion was to keep their criticisms of another's faith to themselves. The Act did not prohibit preaching and efforts to persuade others to a particular religious point of view (as long as it was a Christian point of view), but it did provide severe strictures and fines for those who would openly criticize or slander any belief, Christian or non-Christian. The language of the law is explicit:
...whatsoever person or persons shall from henceforth upon any occasion of offence otherwise in a reproachfull manner or way declare call or denominate any person or persons whatsoever inhabiting, residing, traficking, trading or comercing within this province or within any ports, harbours, creeks or havens to the same belonging, an Heretick, Schismatick, Idolator, Puritan, Independent Presbyterian, Antenomian, Barrowist, Roundhead, Seperatist, Popish Priest, Jesuit, Jesuited Papist, Lutheran, Calvenist, Anabaptist, Brownist or any other name or term in a reproachful manner relating to matters of Religion shall for every such offence foreit and lose the sum of ten shillings Sterling or the value thereof to be levied on the goods and chattels of every such offender and offenders...
and if they could not pay, they were to be "publickly whipt and imprisoned without bail" until "he, she, or they shall satisfy the party so offended or grieved by such reproachful language...."
This Maryland law of 1649 attempted to separate church and state, a constitutional principle that would have to wait another 150 years before it became accepted practice in America. With a minor interruption, the law remained in force in Maryland for forty of those years. Near the end of his life, Cecil Calvert would point to it as one of his singular achievements, making the claim that, by virtue of its enforcement, Maryland was a place where "every person who repaireth thither, intending to become an inhabitant finds himself secure, as well in the quiet enjoyment of his property, as of his Conscience."
As Baltimore Evening Sun editor Gerald Johnson pointed out on the 300th anniversary of An Act Concerning Religion, the version first officially recorded on April 21, 1649 concludes with the simple, but profoundly important words "The Freemen have assented." When it was repealed in 1692 and its principles forced to lay dormant until the American Revolution, it was an act of Parliament and the decrees of the crown that were the main culprits. Lord Baltimore, back in England in an unsuccessful attempt to retain his political power in Maryland, even had An Act Concerning Religion printed in full as evidence of toleration in his colony. At that point, however, neither he nor the colonists who supported him, were sufficiently strong to overcome the prevailing winds of political intolerance. Lord Baltimore lost his political powers, and the Citizen Legislators of Maryland lost sight of a basic lesson to be learned from their struggles to date to form an independent legislature. For democracy to be viable, vibrant, and tolerant, its representatives must be willing and able to pay persistent attention to reinforcing and reiterating basic constitutional principles that rise above the political fray. Otherwise discord, apathy and ignorance of past accomplishments intervene, and all citizens suffer.
[11] See Sir Edward Coke (in 1607) in Blunt, Annotated Book of Common Prayer, p. 24: As well those restrained … as generally all the papists in this kingdom, not any of them did refuse to come to our church, and yield their formal obedience to the laws established. And thus they all continued, not any one refusing to come to our churches, during the first ten years of her Majesty’s [Queen Elizabeth’s] government. And in the beginning of the eleventh year of her reign, Cornwallis, Bedingfield, and Silyarede were the first recusants, they absolutely refusing to come to our churches. And until they in that sort began, the name of recusant was never heard of amongst us.
[12] from The Lord Baltemore’s Case concerning his Plantation in Mary:Land, 1650, with permission from Seth Kaller, https://www.sethkaller.com/
[13] See Dr. Georgievska-Shine,as reported in Currents, the newsletter of the Society of the Ark and The Dove, Fall 2018 issue, for an abstract of her evaluation of this portrait.
[15] See the introduction to Maryland. The Decisive Blow Is Struck: A Facsimile Edition of the Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of 1776 and the First Maryland Constitution. Annapolis: Hall of Records Commission, Dept. of General Services, 1977 and also Lois Green Carr, and David William Jordan. Maryland's Revolution of Government, 1689-1692. Ithaca [N.Y.]: Cornell University Press, 1974.
[16] Two years after Cecil Calvert commissioned the Soest portrait in which a slave is attendant upon young Cecilius, he was urging his son to invest in slaves from Barbados. On the 24th of April 1672 Charles wrote his father “I wish I were able to buy some of Sr. Paule Painters negroes at Barbados and Could gett them hither when paid for, Butt I must not aim at such a purchase untill I have gott some Debts paid.” Calvert Papers, I, p. 273
[18] King Charles and the Duke of Buckingham permitted him to dictate or have his letters copied into legible script by a secretary. From Newfoundland in 1628 he explained to the Duke of Buckingham: I remember that his Majestie once told me that I write a fairer hand to look upon a farre as any man in England, but that when any man came neare it they were not able to read a word! Whereupon I got a dispensation both from His Majestie and your Grace to use another man's pen when I write to either of you, and I humbly thank you for it, for writing is a great pain to mee nowe. August 25, 1628, Ferryland, to the Duke of Buckingham from George Calvert, transcribed in Michael Francis Howley, Ecclesiastical History of Newfoundland, London: Burns and Oates, 1888, p. 112.
[19] See: http://transcribe.norwich.edu/
[20] See the online files of Lois Carr and Russ Menard relating to the first generations of Marylanders at https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/
[21] Source of image of George Calvert: https://commons.wikimedia.org/
[22] For a discussion of the role of the wives of the Calverts see: The Forgotten Mothers of Maryland, https://
[23] For Jefferson’s views on revisiting constitutions see: http://marylandarchivist.
[24] See the introduction to Maryland. The Decisive Blow Is Struck: A Facsimile Edition of the Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of 1776 and the First Maryland Constitution. Annapolis: Hall of Records Commission, Dept. of General Services, 1977.
