The Glorious Revolution in America

5 Maryland: Colonists’ Rights and Proprietary Power

5 Maryland: Colonists' Rights and Proprietary Power Maryland and Virginia had a lot more in common than a sharing of Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. Dependence upon tobacco was as much a part of one's existence as the other's, and with tobacco went all the difficulties which accompanied a staple crop. For Maryland's tobacco brought no better price in London than Virginia 's; settlers of both colonies were familiar with poverty when the price plummeted under the burden of their combined harvests. Marylanders may well have fared even worse, for while both colonies paid customs to the King and supported their governments out of duties against exports, Lord Baltimore demanded further his due from every hogshead of tobacco which left the province. Maryland, with some 20,000 inhabitants in the 1670's, was much smaller than Virginia in both population and square miles. But like Virginians the planters had spread out their settlement in order to live on the land and take advantage of the splendid waterways. Baltimore was embarrassed to call any of his settlements towns, let alone cities, 70 Maryland: Colonists' Rights and Proprietary Power 71 but St. Mary's, the provincial capital, came closest in the English sense of the word. Most shipping resorted there first before visiting the planters' wharves, where the real business of the colony was transacted . St. Mary's was on the river of the same name which flowed south into the Potomac a few miles upstream from where the larger river joined Chesapeake Bay. In 1678 it measured about five miles along the river but spread back from the shore no more than a mile. All told, there were about thirty houses, none close together, and "very meane and Little" except for the proprietor's home and the few public buildings where the assembly and courts met.1 Convenient as scattered living may have been for raising and loading tobacco, it inhibited the growth of social institutions, such as schools and churches. Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, kept a schoolmaster for his own children, but the remoteness of plantations discouraged the establishment of regular instruction which the province badly needed. Counties would never be subdivided into parishes or precincts, Baltimore commented, until it pleased God to increase the number of settlers, which in turn would force them to change their trading habits and live together in towns. Besides education, religion suffered, too; at least Protestant churches suffered from the thinness of the people.2 But the deplorable condition of religion, according to the Reverend John Yeo, was caused more by a lack of an established ministry than the manner which people settled the land. Yeo's reports home about the dearth of Anglican priests— he found only three in 1676 who conformed to the discipline of the Church of England—painted Maryland in very sorry terms. When the Bishop of London and the Lords of Trade queried the proprietor about the state of religion, he argued the blessings of toleration and claimed it the basis of the colonists' liberty, peace, and prosperity. But toleration did not help the thousands of unchurched people in Maryland who were not Catholic. The Bishop of London came up with the improbable estimate that Catholics numbered only one in a hundred, and that the remainder lived dissolute lives for want of a settled church.3 A problem in Maryland, not shared with Virginia, was a continuing conflict between Protestant and Catholic. And although the issue was 1. W. H. Browne, et. al, eels., Archives of Maryland (65 vols., Baltimore, 18831952 ), V, 266-67. 2. Charles Calvert to Baltimore, June 2, 1673, Calvert Papers, No. I, FundPublic ., #28, Maryland Hist. Soc., 286; Arch, of Md., V, 267. 3. Ibid., 130-34, 260-69; C.O. 324/4, p. 48; CSPCoL, 1675-1676, #1105; ibid., 1677-1680, #340, #348, #349; ibid., 1681-1685, #252, #256. 72 The Glorious Revolutionin America often exaggerated, it was an enduring difficulty which made impossible a harmonious working arrangement between a government predominantly Catholic and a Protestant majority of settlers.4 Baltimore did little if anything to encourage Protestants except to defend the colony's religious toleration. What he did do was to weight his government heavily with Catholics, way out of proportion to their number in the total population. Patronage followed religious lines, as did the granting of land, two very sore points with the local Protestant...