F 184 .D38 Copy 1 g J cs!g ^ sFa ^^ ! AlMr^! ^ r«'^^^»^ !r ^ iSoll^Jir^l^^^i8/->! ^-> g^^v^^r MB ! ^^l&-lM r ^ ' The Catholic and the Puritan Settler of Maryland. AN ADDF(E)$$ Delivered on Invitation of the Maryland Legislature, in the Hall of the House of Delegates, March 5, I894, at the Celebration of the Bi=Centennial of the REMOVAL OF THE STATE CAPITAL St. Mary's to Annapolis, By ALFRED PEARCE DENNIS, A. M. Instructor In History, Princeton College. BALTIMORE : Printed by King Brothers. 1894. The Catholic and the Puritan Settler of Maryland. AN ADDF^E)^$ Delivered on Invitation of the Maryland Legislature, in^ the Hall of the House of Delegates, March 5, 1 894, at the Celebration of the Bi^Centennial of the REMOVAL OF THE STATE CAPITAL St. Mary's to Annapolis, By ALFRED PEARCE DENNIS, A. M. Instructor lu History, Princeton Collei^re. BALTIMORE: Printed by King Brothers. 1894. GIFT BBS. WOODROW ^N^tSOH MOV. 23, 1939 Ladies and Gentlemen : It is most appropriate that the people of this imme- diate vicinity should publicly celebrate a day that chose this city above the fairest of her sisters, and exalted her to political headship. It is iitting that men selected for the honorable discharge of public duties should pause in the business of State to observe a day that rehearses the story of the first English colony governed by laws enacted in a provincial assembly. It is becoming that the citizens of a great commonwealth should commemo- rate an act which had its genesis in the resistance of a liberty-loving people to the paramount authority of an hereditary sovereign. Surrounded to-day by the pro- gressive spirit of the western world, with its exhaustless material resources, its matchless achievements of thouo-ht, the appeal is made to the past, with all it has given, with all it gives, as a pledge and inspiration for the future. If the records unearthed and deciphered by the Geolo- gist have forced us to add countless ages to the life of mankind, they have robbed us of a fair proportion of boasted antiquity. And yet our wholesome conscious- ness of the forces that gather by duration and persis- tence, loses nothing of its potency because our citizen- ship is cast in a land which antiquity rightly styles the "New World." Better a generation of political life, where an awakenin<^ human conscience has thrown off the fetters of nature and broken the bonds of the despot, than forty centuries of an organized society that schools man in the one lesson that status has placed him irre- deemably under the will of an inexorable master. Pop- ular assemblies met in the Province of the Calverts before the independence of any existing Republic of the Old World had been acknowledged. Democratic insti- tutions put forth their flower on the banks of the Chesa- peake, when the weeds of a feudal absolutism still grew rank on European soil. Laws were old upon our statute books when the vast country bevond the Alleghanies was as little known, and thought as little worth knowing, as the heart of Africa. These laws had run a century's course when native and alien hosts joined in vain strug- gle to plant on American soil the lilies of France. As two centuries look down upon us to day, from popular institutions planted on these shores, I point you not to a past that is dead, but to a past that lives. Our past is a record of life, life that has subdued the rough forces of nature; life that has braved a thousand perils and survived a thousand hardships ; life that has persisted unquenchable tlirough endless cycles of change, and survives abun- dantly to-day in the fuller development of a robust statehood. Royalty's fiction, that the King never dies, carries with it more than a half-truth. Generations pass away, society lives on. Human society is an organism, it grows from within, its roots lie deep in the past. It is not a contradiction to say that the individual may have an independent life, and at once be an expression of the general spirit of society. A thousand vain experiments in political mechanics have shown that constitutions are not manufactured, but grow. A thousand dismal failures have shown that no political alchemy can transform the baser into the nobler metals to perform the function of money. A thousand wretched blunders have shown that legislative bodies cannot make that law which does not reflect the common consciousness of society. Our statute books are choked today with laws which have not kept pace with the life of the community, and are as dead as the hands that penned them, or with laws that have so far run ahead of the common habit that they are as idle as the cries of the heathen prophets of Baal. The "bare ruin'd choirs" of even a Shakespeare's life remind us that the individual existence is at best a short career, whose history from preface to conclusion is largely a record of ideals missed. Hope for humanity cannot be founded upon what any individual can accomplish as a disconnected unit. Like the coral reef that springs impeiishable from ocean's depths, a monument to the countless toilers that gave their little lives in its construction, the organism which we call the state, has developed by successive increments through a hundred generations. The fleeting life of the unit has been built into the undying life of the aggre- gate. I purpose to-night to point out certain construc- tive elements built into the fabric of this commonwealth during the early and formati.ve period of our colonial history. The early colonizers of Maryland, though sprung from a common stock, were not a Iiomogeneous people in their sympathies and antipathies. Maryland soil had been occupied by three distinct classes of settlers before the middle of the seventeenth century. Clayborne was first in the field with his Protestant settlement on Kent island. Profit, and not piety, was the greatest object in life for Clayborne. Pre emption, and not redemption, gave pith and purpose to his enterprise. Between these Ohurch- of-England men, backed in tlieir possession by fair legal claims, and the later Catholic settlers in St. Mary's, there was no more CQinmunity of interest than is indicated in their armed conflict on the waters of the Chesapeake. Aside from the sporadic attempts of Clayborne to vindi- cate his property rights by arms, he and his band have no large formative influence in our early state life. Nor was there more community of interest between the planters on the Potomac and the Puritan band that settled fifteen years later on the banks of the Severn. Five years had not run their course before Old World animosities had burst into a flame and plunged "Papist'^ and "Precisian" into the flercer struggle of an appeal to arms. Distrust, prejudice, antipathy, doubly sealed the commission of every actor in this struggle, yet each party represented principles complemental and significant in the splendid development of civil and religious liberty in the Maryland Province. The Roman Catholic was tolerant in religion, but narrow in politics. The Puritan was narrow in religion, but in politics liberal. While historians have delighted to retouch the glowing picture of the religious toleration of the Roman Catholic colonists, the wholesome influence of these Puritan settlers in mould- ing the early political life of the Province has been largely ignored. They have been scouted as troublers of a well- ordered system— as Adullamites drawing into sympathy with themselves the disaffected, the chagrined, the Ishmael brood that takes to the wilderness in explosive self-asser- 8 tion rather than endure identification with a regime as distasteful to thetn as was ever the party and partisans of Luther to Pascal, Fenelon and the brilliant company of Port Royal. It has been pointed out that these Catho- lics of St. Mar3''s were expatriated, harried out of their •native land by a pioud Anglican hierarchy and a parlia- ment of Puritan temper. Assuredly upon the heads of the Protestants lies the l)ase sin of ingratitude. Their •example in religious matters becomes one of exclusive- ness, narrowness and ban. Catholics were disfranchised in the colony they had planted. Nor did the movement «top until the seat of government had been transferred from Catholic St. Mary's to the spot on which we stand. The more lurid tints of the foregoing picture fade in the light of closer investigation. A host of authorities ■contend that Maryland was intended as an asylum for Roman Catholics, who found upon the banks of the Potomac the Puritan Plymouth. This is the generally accepted view, yet this portion of our history remains to be rewritten. The Puritan settlers in Maryland, and noi the Catholics, were religious refugees. When George Calvert projected his scheme of a Proprietary, C(»lony across the sea, the Catholics — we use the term through- out in its popular meaning — in high good 'favor at Court, enjoyed a fuller indulgence than they had known for 9 more than half a century. (Granting for a moment that an asylum was needed, how exphiin the purpose of Calvert's Avalon Colony in Newfoundland, undertaken before his Catholic faith was considered worth the avowal ? If refugees — how account for Calvert's attempt to settle in A'irginia, where he would have encountered the church establishment from which he is supposed to have Hed? If refugees — how account for a very con- siderable number of Protestants in the first expedition to Maryland ? The theory can not stand. The purpose in the founding of the Maryland Colony by the Calverts was mainly economic, and not religious. Any theory that may be accepted in explanation of Calvert's purpose in the colonization of Maryland leads by a natural regress of canses to England under the first of the Stuarts. The dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII left the Church stricken and helpless. From this point may be dated the downfall of the Catholic hierarchy in England. The anti-Catholic party no longer represented the timid opposition of a few malcontents, but, fed by material interest and protected by royal authority, grew into the great party of the Reformation in England. Henry was in no wise a conscious reformer. His regard for the Pope declined as his affection for Anne Boleyn 10 increased. IIow he could have rejected papal authority^ and at the same time have sought to maintain Catholic doctrine, is a mysterj' of religious purpose which bailies all attempts at successful analysis. The common-place law of self-interest solves the seeming paradox. Strange contrasts are found in the dealings of Tudor Eojalty with the problems of the Reformation. Henry VIII and his progeny in turn cared nothing for toleration as a principle. Mary and Edward were fully convinced of their commission to do God's service. But Mary would have swept away the work of Edward had not her tierce zeal undermined the cause for which she would willingly have died. Tliey differed as widely in their attitude to dissent as they differed in creed. Both were intolerant. Bnt Mary was a persecutor. Like the founder of her family, Elizabeth took up. au independent political position betweeTi the two great powers, Erance and Spain. Like her father, she mas- queraded in a garb of independence between tiie two great religions. She did not concern herself with dogma for its own sake. Slie never allowed her mental vision to fix itself upon the small points of doctrine, to the neglect of a broad general policy. Of the political unity which from the dawn of the Reformation was destined to supersede ecclesiastical unity among the 11 (Tcrmatiic speaking peoples, she c(»uld know or cared nothing. She turned from the Pope to iier people for a vindication of her claims to legitiniacy. The struggle between the Crown and the Puritans scarcely widened beyond the Held of wordy ecclesiastical controversy. Puritanism was not yet a fighting force in England. On the other hand, Elizabeth's strife with the Catholics represented a grave political exigency in which the per- petuity of her government, no less than Protestant estab- lishment, was at stake. Justification of her deeds of blood, done under the impulse of political expediency, is a task which has never been accomplished by the most fulsome of Elizabeth's panegyrists. Three generations separated the Queen from the days of the undivided church. She was less hampered by tradition ; she was called upon to make no violent break witli the past. She looked upon Catholic intrigues as a challenge to royal authority, and met them with a policy of coercion which increased in severity until the day of her death. Under James, the first of the Stuarts, the old policy of religious coercion was continued, but with the important distinction that Catholic and Puritan exchanged positions as objects of royal hostility. The political considerations which had armed Elizabeth against the Catholics, turned James and his successor with equal consistency against 12 the Puritans. Precisely the causes which brought a relaxation of tiie penal laws against Catholics, induced increased severity toward the Puritans. The character- istic prejudice of the Puritan was his bigoted abhorrence of popery and prelacy. James' devotion to an erastian church is sunimod up in his favorite maxim — "No Bishop, no King." The struggle to preserve his autonomy took form in a contest with the Presbyterian clergy of Scotland before he came to the English throne. Melville, second only to Knox as a figure in Scottish ■ecclesiastical history, had assumed the leadership in a contest with the civil power, which culminated sixty years later in open rebellion against Charles I. Nor did the movement, essentially democratic, stay until it demanded the life of the King. Melville's doctrine of equality in things spiritual, imported from Geneva, and reared on the speculative basis that all laborers in Christ are equal, had been metamorphosed into the dogma of political equality. Political harangues from Scotch pulpits became the order of the day, James furnishing the mark for Pres- byterian diatribes. The atrabilious humor of the Scotch clergy found expression in studied insults to the King. When Melville, plucking James by the sleeve, addressed him as " God's sillie vassall," he conveyed a volume of unwholesome truth to a sovereign transported 13 with self-conceit and feverishly jealous of autliority. James has recorded his experience at tliis period in his reply to Dr. Reynolds, at the Hampton Court conference : "If you aim," said he, "at a Scottish Preshytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy as God with the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet and censure me and my council." The democratic drift of Melville and his co-religionist& had its genesis at Geneva — it was nourished in Scotland — extended across the border — spanned the ocean, and is read anew in the strife of the settlers on this spot for political equality. As the strength of the Puritan fac- tion in England increased, the apparently irreconcilable parties of the opposition were drawn together for com- mon defence. Long before Puritanism had gained absolute control in the overthrow and execution of Charles, the forces of the Court, the Established Church, the Catholics and the Arminians had practically joined hands against the common enemy. The hatred James bore to the Puritans, and his natural clemency to the Catholics, were further emphasized as early as 161G, when the King began negotiations for the " Spanish match." For seven years these negotiations for the marriage of Prince Charles to the Spanish Infanta dragged on through the tedious mazes of royal protocols and papal dispensa- tions. 14 It was precisely within these years, when the penal laws against Catholics had been suspended, when scores of popish lords and knights were in the enjoyment of high public trusts, and the royal purpose pointed to a wider indulgence than had been known for half a century, that C-reorge Calvert projected his plan of western empire. As early as 1620, he had obtained title in Newfoundland for the purpose of "drawing back yearly some benefits therefrom." jSTot a scintilla of evidence goes to show that Calvert obtained this grant as an asylum for persecuted Catholics. Indeed, a consider- able number of historians insist that Calvert was a Protestant when the grant was obtained. This plan of founding a Proprietary Colony for purposes of revenue only reached its development more than a decade later, when the charter of Maryland was penned. There was no break in policy or purpose. The Avalon venture proved a bad investment. When Calvert visited his Avalon plantation in 1627, he found the glowing pictures of its natural advantages highly overdrawn. The soil, alternately stiffened by frost and shadowed by fogs, banished all dreams of commercial success from this quarter. He writes a pitiful letter to King Charles, ask- ing for a grant in Virginia, with such privileges as King James had been pleased to grant him. These privileges 15 were granted in a charter modeled upon the Avalon patent. In their salient features the provisions of the two documents are identical. If it can not be insisted with reason that the Avalon colony was planted as a retreat for English Catholics, no more can the common opinion be justified that the Maryland grant was obtained with like design, unless it can be shown that a change of policy came with Calvert's supposed change of faith. A host of authorities aver that George Calvert became a convert to the Catholic faith about the year 1624, after the planning of his Avalon Colony. This generally accepted theory rests in the last resort upon the testimony of two contemporary authorities — Fuller and Goodman. Thomas Fuller, Prebendary of Sarum, stamps on every page his violent anti-( 'atholic bias. The retirement of Calvert from the high office of Secretary of State, took place on the failure of the Spanish match in 1624. In this same year fifty-four eminent Catholics were dis- lodged from public office by an ultra-Protestant Parliament. The creed of every high officer of State was scrutinized as never before. Things suddenly recognized are often mistaken as things that have suddenly come into existence. Fuller's mistake in attributing Calvert's retirement from oflice to a supposed conversion to Catholicism was a natural one. The testi- 16 mony of Dr. Thomas Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, to the same effect bears internal evidence of inaccuracy. He avers that Calvert was converted by Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador and the Earl of Arundel, whose daughter Calvert's son had married. When Gondomar was in England, Ann Arundel was a mere child, and could not have been married to Secretary Calvert's son. Furthermore, Arundel was not the man to make a successful missionary. It is not so much an open ques- tion as to whether he lield this creed or that, but as to whether he thought it of sufficient importance to hold any creed at all. In opposition to the commonly accepted theory of Cal- vert's conversion, may be set the testimony of reliable historians : Arthur Wilson plainly states that Calvert was a Catliolic when first made Secretary of State in 1619. This was at least a year before his private scheme of western empire was mooted. Twice in connection with events wliich could not have occurred later than 1621, Calvert is classed with the adherents of the Church of Eome. Rapin, in his invaluable history, accepts the same view. Oldmixon speaks of Calvert as a popish secretary, in connection with an event which could not have transpired later than October, 1621, and in another work states, authoritatively, that Sir George Calvert was 17 of the Romish religion when he obtained the grant in Newfoundhind. Independent of direct testimony, the theory of Calvert's late conversion is untenable. King James bore no especial ill-will to life-long Catholics, but was intensely hostile to such as changed from the new faith to the old. Read the King's bitter tirades against such, and then consider his life-long regard for Calvert. On the death of James, his son Charles desired to con- tinue Calvert, who had now been raised to the peerage, a member of the Privy Council — offering at the same time to dispense with the oath of supremacy. Furthermore, the sudden conversion of Calvert introduces the dilemma of explaining the Catholic faith of all his progeny of whom we have any knowledge. Can it be assumed that they were trained as Protestants, and as suddenly as their father, abandoned the faith in which they had been reared ? It is reasonably certain that George Calvert was an adherent of the Church of Rome when advanced to the secretaryship. The whole fabric of his tardy conversion to Catholicism, and retirement from office in consequence, must fall to the ground. The public acknowledgment of his fidelity to the mother church is generally accepted as the cause of his withdrawal from power. It was simply a mask to cover his defeat by Buckingham. The diver- gent aims of the two in the Spanish match, and the ulti- 18 mate triumph of Buckingham in his program of opposition, furnish conclusive evidence that Calvert's (political career received its death-blow on the termination ■of friendly negotiations with the Spanish Court. Cal- vert had everything to gain in securing the marriage of Prince Charles to the Infanta. Sensitive in the highest degree to the Ixeatli of royal favor, he would naturally have bent every energy to accomplish the union upon which Kino; James had set his heart. Aside from sub- servience to the wishes of the King, Calvert acted the iraore zealously in the matter, because of the wider indul- gence in religion which the marriage would confer. For years, a warm support of the Spanish match was a pass- port to royal favor. The opposition of l!^anton, the Protestant colleague of Calvert in the secretaryship, brought his downfall at an early stnge of the proceedings. In the reaction which followed the utter defeat of the Spanish policy, Calvert himself was swept from power. The Earl of Bristol was in full control of the negoti- ations with the Court at Madrid. But Calvert was the only Secretary employed in the Spanish match. The vigilance and penetration of Bristol were such that the most secret councils of the Spanisli Court did not escape him. The King was more than satisfied ; the accom- plished Infanta was soon to arrive in England with a magnificent dowry, and assurance was given that the 19 marriage would be the certain precursor of the restitu- tion of the Palatinate. At this happy juncture Buck- ingham appears upon the scene. Among all the strong band of uncrowned heads, that his generation could mar- shal no man was more potential than he. His sway was more unlimited than had been that of Gaveston at the council board of the Plantagenet King, or of Essex at the Court of the Tudor Queen. His was the potency of a Sejanus, the unrivaled control of a Madam Pompa- dour. As is often the case with the low-born advanced to high station, Buckingham was proud, insolent, and excessively jealous of authority. Bristol's success in the negotiation with Spain was at once a challenge. A rival may be eclipsed by a greater light blazing in the same field, or crushed by direct personal attack. Buckingham determined to meet Bristol at Madrid, out-dazzle him in the eyes of the Spanish, out bid him in the despatch of the royal commission. But not only did the favorite discover that the mine of popularity liad been worked to its utmost capacity, but even found himself the peculiar object of the Spaniards' aversion. He changed his tac- tics. Burst into an open quarrel with Bristol over the jidiculous matter of precedence in a royal pleasure party. For weeks he employed his fruitless artifices to break the match which Bristol had negotiated, and finally suc- ceeded by a preposterous demand that would have 20 affronted any sovereign in Europe. An open rupture was inevitable. Wedding jewels were returned, and active preparations made for war. The Infanta tearfully resigned her short-lived title of Princess of Wales, and abandoned the study of the English language. Buckingham returned to England the idol of the anti Catholic party. In the day of his power his triumph was not complete while yet a Mordecai sat at the King's gate. Upon Middlesex, Bristol and Calvert, the trio of the opposition, the heavy hand of the low-born Favorite fell witli blighting effect. Middlesex, who had "gained much credit with the King," during the Spanish negoti- ations, was stripped of public honors and thrust from his seat in the House of Lords. Bristol was flung into prison the day he set foot on native soil, and upon re- lease, retired to private life. Both these men recognized the hand that smote them, as is abundantly shown by the records. The fate of Calvert, who, as late as January 14th, 1624:, openly opposed in council a breach with Spain, could have been read in the fall of Middlesex and Bristol. "Mr. Secretary Calvert, writes a contemporary, hath never looked merrily since the Prince his coming out of Spain ; it was thought he was much interested in ^ the Spanish affairs ; a course was taken to rid him of all employments and negotiations." " Secretary Calvert, says a letter written August, 1021-, droops and keeps out 21 of the way." Though driven from power by Bucking- ham, Calvert continued to enjoy the regard of King James and his son. He was created Baron of Balti- more, permitted to sell his Secretaryship, and left free to pursue those plans, on which his mind had been set for years, of empire beyond the sea. A decade of costly experiment closed with the grant of Maryland. A grant, the "most ample and sovereign in its character that ever emanated from the English Crown." George Calvert's son Cecilius, " heir to his father's in- tentions not less than to his father's fortunes," sent over his first colonists to Maryland in 163i. More than half of the members of the first expedition were Protestants. Out of two hundred and twenty, one hundred and twenty-eight on sailing refused the test oaths. Father More writes to Rome that " by far the greater part of the colony were heretics." Father White writes from the colony of St. Mary's, that of twelve who died from illness on the voyage, but two were Catholics. The Father Provincial laments in a letter to Pome that " three parts of the people, or four, at least, are heretics." Twenty years after the landing at St. Mary's, Hammond wrote that there were " but few papists in Maryland." While the first colony was numerically Protestant, Chan- cellor Kent is correct when he speaks of the colony as " the Catholic planters of Maryland," and Judge Story, 22 when he says they " were chiefly Roman Catholics," and Bancroft, when he writes that the religious toleration of the early period of settlement was the work of Catholics. The physical balance of power was with the Protestants ; the social, political and intellectual control was with the Catholics. Court .-ecords, council proceedings, the names given to towns, to Hundreds, to creeks, to manors, all offer testimony to Catholic control. In bold relief above the portals of an arch at the Columbian Exposition is traced the inscription : " Tolera- tion in Religion — the Best Fruit of the Last Four Centuries." The impartial verdict of history must con- cede to Calvert's (Catholic colony the proud distinction of being the lirst, and, for a generation, the sole champion of religious freedom on the Western Hemisphere. Controversy has centered about the famous Toleration Act of 1649. Protestants, as well as Catholics, have claimed the honor of its passage. The early religious freedom of which we boast had neither genesis nor sup- ports in legislative enactments. Religious toleration prevailed as a habit of the settlers of St. Mary's, forceful and wholesome, as an inchoate law years before the hybrid statute of 1649 was submitted to vote. Un- friendly critics have further urged that this Catholic toleration had its genesis in political necessity, and was nurtured by a broad policy of far-sighted self-interest. 23 We reject the nnwortliy imputation that the colonists of St. Mary's knew no higher sanction for their tolerance than the restrictions of a charter or the dictates of the common-place law of self-interest. The course of history prior to the seventeenth century has been sufKcient to show the irrelation between low ideals of conduct and religious persecution. Toleration was the child of force, not of philosophic calm. The mediaeval mind shaped action in countless instances to mean and un- worthy ends, the medijpval heart sanctioned enormities of conduct which deeply tincture the annals of Europe with shameful and bloody revivals of lawlessness. Cruel and unusual punishments for wrong acts, as well as heretical opinions, are passing away. Sheep-stealing was punish- able by death under the old . English law. Wrong views of transubstantiatiun were met by the argument of the gibbet. While all the homilies of two centuries have not suf- ficed to bring out a new moral truth, it must be borne in mind that moral standards are continuallv chansrino'. We must look into the spirit of bygd^ne times in order to appreciate the true worth and meaning of the great principle upheld by these settlers of St. Mary's. They had to suffer much, to surrender much, to obey, in the land of their nativity; with true nobility thej^ welcome their former oppressors to their new found lands beyond 24 the sea; with true nobility they pledge their officers not to molest any "person professing to believe in Jesus Christ for or in respect of religion." Whatever the motive, the •world had not in that daj'^ seen the like. As early as 1631, the government of the Virginia Colony became openly intolerant. Under the hand of Berkeley, the bigoted Church of-England Governor, distress the most adverse fell upon the Puritan settlers on the Nanse- mond river. Under fire of persecution two Puritan elders fled to Maryland in 164S. It was probably at their sug- gestion that Governor Stone issued an invitation to the entire Nansemoiid church to cross over into Maryland. Stone's liberal promises of local self-government and freedom in religion stimulated the Puritan exodus from Virginia, and caused the refugees to indulge the dream •of an independent colony in the new land of promise. At the outset they flatly refused to take the oath of alle- giance. They haggled at the words "absolute dominion." And demurred at the obedience due Ronian Catholic officers. For a year these refugees remained outside the pale of Baltimort^'s government, in the full determination to erect upon the shores of the Chesapeake a ''Ci vitas Dei" — a church state, to which they gave the reverential name of "Providence." In 1^551, they became again recalcitrant and refused to send delegates to the provincial assembly. They protested against the governor's hostile 25 advance upon the Indians of the Eastern Shore. Stone regarded the act as rebellions, and required them to take the first oath of fidelity, on penalty of forfeiture of lands. The Puritans protested against the oath as repugnant to their consciences as Christians and contrary to their rights as free subjects of England. They denounced the power of the Lord Proprietor, for, said they, he is liable to make null that done in the "Assemblies for the good of the people." On notice by Stone that writs and warrants should no longer run in the name of the Commonwealth, but in that of the Lord Proprietor, the Puritans prepared for war. The gained a bloodless victory and summoned a legislative assemblj'. One of its first acts was the disfranchisement of Catholics. The act, thouorh never rigidly enforced, has left an indelible stain upon their records. Both sides were now arming for a greater con- test. The drama of Marston Moor was to be re-enacted in the New World. Questions were mooting far wider than the sphere of religious controversy. The princi- ple of self-government and civil equality was at stake. The battle of the Severn was to determine whether the mediaeval institution of a feudal princi- pality should persist upon Maryland soil. The defeat of the royalists of St. Mary's was the vindication of the democratic principle in Maryland. Within a generation after the battle of the Severn, the Puritan 26 settlement as a political aggregate had become a memory. At the restoration of monarchy in England, the Puritan combined with the more numerous Episcopalians and his less extreme brethren of Charles County, and .completely lost his identity. Yet tlie last word of his movement has not yet been spoken. From the days of the Puritan challenge to the absolute authority of a feudal Lord, St. Mary's was doomed as the political centre of the Province. Just two hundred years ago the theatre of the Puritan struggle received the name of "Annapolis," and was formally advanced to the political headship of the Province. Three forms of relationships place us in communion with our fellows — the family, the State, property. Men have been slaves to all. To the family, as under the caste system of India; to the State, as under certain forms of the Spartan or Roman society; to property, as under the regime of tlie feudal middle ages. Christi- anity became the gateway of emancipation by teaching new lessons of the dignity and worth of man, and of his personal responsibility to God. Luther reiterated these half- forgotten truths. His was a reaction against the doctrine of corporate responsibility for opinion. The Protestant conception of individual responsibility .to God has naturally given birth to a multitude of creeds and churches; all generically Protestant, because all are intol- erant of the cardinal principle of tlie Iloman Court, namely, allegiance to its authority. Vet it remained for these champions of self-magistracy in matters of faith to learn the first lesson in the practice of religious toleration from the Catholic settlers of Maryland. Dr. Dexter in his History of Congregationalism, claims for Robert Browne, the leader of the ultra-Puritan Separatists, the proud distinction of being the first writer to state and defend, in the English tongue, the true and now accepted doctrine of the relation of the civil magis- trate to the church. The voice of Browne w^as as of one crying in the wilderness; there was no practical appli- cation of his theories among his Puritan brethren, either in Geneva or England or Massachusetts or Maryland. Geneva is said to have been at once the strength and weakness of the Puritan, "llis strength, because here he saw his ideal realized ; his weakness, because it taught him to try to get his reforms through the State." Calvin instituted at Geneva a Theocracy, the like of which the world has never seen. It was not a State church, bnt a church State. For self-control was substituted State control — a control that became inquisitorial, exacting, unjust. Laced in by catechismal formularies, the free circulation of new ideas was impeded. The Puritan was the last to see the injustice of purging away heresy by the shedding of blood, he was the last 28 to perceive the itmdequacy of force to crush a man's opinions, lie inclined a complacent ear to the dogma of exclusive salvation for those of his own sect — persecution followed as a corollary. In the years of Catholic toleration in Maryland, the question of religious toleration in Massachusetts was decided in the negative. Adverse opinions were exposed by the Synod of 1637, and in the white light of Puritan orthodoxy, and became heresies most foul. These Puritans had eaten of the bitter bread of persecution, they had sailed the seas and subdued the wilderness as victims of religious intolerance. When, however, they encountered a Quaker with wrong views — they proceeded to argue him into orthodoxy. Failing of this, they hung him. Intolerance and perse- cution do not stand upon the same plane. The one is rather a thing of necessity, consequent upon positiveness of opinion. The other is a thing of expediency. In our own day the power of the sword has happily departed from every form of religious opinion. This triumph is based on expediency rather than morality. Persecution does not neccessarily imply low ideals of conduct. The best Roman Emperors, as Trajan, Decius, Julian and Marcus Aurelitis, were precisely those who singled out the early Christians for persecution. The extremest bigots, as St. Dominic, Carlo Borromeo, Calvin and Caraffa, have been men of the purest intentions and of unimpeachable 29 morality. As doubt is the antecedent of new knowledge, so a spirit of intolerance is a necessary condition of prog- ress. Men will not labor and incur sacrifice to discover* the truth of subjects in respect to which they are perfectly content. John the Baptist, the uncouth proclaimer of a new dispensation, was intolerant — denouncing unsparingly thei regime of the Scribe and Pharisee. Isaiah, that other great reproacher and mouth piece of the desert, was intol- erant. Paul, the orthodox Jew of the polite world, with the inbreaking of the light becomes a "pestilent fellow and a mover of sedition." Only the person who holds that religious beliefs are essentially uncertain or essentially unimportant, can sweepingly condemn the religious intol- erance of earlier ages. Persecution has few apoloo-ists and deserves none. We utterly condemn the narrowness of the persecuting Puritan, while acknowledging that it was a high, but not too great a price to pay for his splendid legacy to the cause of civil liberty. It was the political intolerance of the Puritan which overthrew the tyranny of hereditary power in England and in Amei-ica. The Puritan who trod these walks boldly set about to redress the balance of the Old World — in the widenino- struggle for civil liberty. The spirit of the Puritan spoke again in the rejection of stamped paper. It flashed anew in the destruction of tea in yonder harbor. It echoed 30 once more in the ban put vpon the claims of great East- ern States to Western territory. The toleration which rests upon respect for adverse opinion, lives on in the true courtesy of our citizens. For the nobility of a landed aristocracy, has been sub- stituted among the sous of Maryland, the nobler title of the "grand old name of gentleman." The generation is now passing away which bore the griefs and devastations of a long and cruel war. In these years of peace, some have arisen who have never heard the call of grave political exigency ; some who have never known the sac- rifice for which a great public crisis pleads ; some who may never understand the priceless worth of the free institutions under which they live, unless with heart aflame, they read the cost of liberty in the devoted hearts, the noble purpose, the spent lives of the genera- tions that have gone before. Men sparing not them- selves in years of eminent public service — men struggling to heal the awful breach between brethren — men relin- quishing friends and fortune as the champions of an alien race — men placing their lives in pawn for their country's liberties. Such have been the sons of this Commonwealth, known in the councils of their State and nation. Honored of the world. Genius, nobleness, patriotism, have ever found a meeting place on this historic spot. The deeds of the men who have made us 31 what we are, but mock the feeble breatli of speech. Their work hves on, perpetuated by the strong men who even to-day gather within tliese historic walls. "Tho' much is taken, uuich abides; and tlio' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven ; that which we are, we are : One equal temper of heroic hearts. Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." <^-» LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 366 668 2 %