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George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore

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George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore
The Lord Baltimore
Secretary of State
In office
1619–1625
Proprietor of the Avalon Colony
In office
1620–1632
Personal details
Bornc. 1580
Kiplin, Richmondshire
Died15 April, 1632
Baltimore Hall, County Longford
Height300px

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (c. 1580 – 15 April, 1632) was an English politician and coloniser. He achieved domestic political success as a Member of Parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I, though he lost much of his political power after his support for a failed marriage alliance between Prince Charles and the Spanish royal family. Rather than continuing in politics, he declared his Catholicism publicly in 1625 and resigned his political offices, though he was granted the title of the 1st Baron Baltimore upon his retirement.

Calvert took an interest in the colonisation of the new world, partly as a result of his conversion to Catholicism and his ensuing interest in creating a refuge for English Catholics. He became the proprietor of the first succesful English settlement on the island of Newfoundland, Avalon. Dismayed by the conditions of the Newfoundland settlers, his dreams took him south along the coast, and he eventually sought a new royal charter to settle the region that was to become the state of Maryland. Two months before the charter was granted, Calvert passed away, and the settlement of the Maryland colony was left to his son, Cecilius Calvert.

Early life and political success

Little is known of the extraction of the Yorkshire Calverts, although upon George's knighting the claim would be made that his family derived originally from Flanders.[1] Calvert's father Leonard was a country gentleman comfortable enough to take a gentlewoman, Alicia Crossland, for a wife and to establish his family on the estate of Kiplin near Catterick in Richmondshire.[2] George Calvert was born around 1580 at Kiplin and was later educated as a commoner at Trinity College, Oxford, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1597.[2] For young common men at the end of the 16th century, political success required the support of a noble patron. Calvert found that support in the person of Sir Robert Cecil, an ambassador for Queen Elizabeth I and eventual 1st Earl of Salisbury whom he met while traveling the continent after completing his time at Oxford.[2] When Elizabeth died in 1603, Cecil was made Secretary of State and Calvert, now part of Cecil's circle of political acquaintances, held a seat in James I's first parliament representing the borough of Bossiney.[3]

There followed a busy few years for Calvert. In 1604, he was married to his first wife, Anne Mynne.[4] The following year, he received a master's degree from Oxford in the midst of an elaborate ceremony where the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Oxford and Northumberland, and Sir Cecil also received degrees. Understandably given the prestige of those other graduates, Calvert's degree was the last awarded during the ceremony.[4] In 1606, Anne gave birth to their first son, Cecilius, named for Sir Cecil.[4][5] That same year, he became private secretary to Cecil, and was soon after made Clerk of the Crown and of Assize in County Clare, Ireland.[4]

With Cecil's support, Calvert came into his own as an advisor and supporter of King James. He was appointed an ambassador to the French court during the coronation of Louis XIII in 1610.[6] By 1612, Calvert's star had risen enough in the King's eye that the death of Sir Cecil did no harm to his political career, and he was made a Clerk of the Privy Council in 1613.[7] In his new position, Calvert was assigned by the King to go to Ireland and review the results of English policies there, the failures of which Calvert blamed on the Jesuits.[6] Calvert was knighted in 1617 for his service to the King and only two years later completed his remarkable rise to power when he was appointed one of two Secretaries of State, a position similar to the modern role of Prime Minister.[8][5]

Titles were not enough to maintain the residence of a powerful English politician. Calvert's personal fortune was secured, though, when he was appointed to yet another role in government attached to a £1,000 pension and a subsidy of raw silk, the latter of which would later be converted to an additional £1,000 pension.[9] Meanwhile, a political crisis was developing around the question of who the Prince of Wales, who would become King Charles I, was to marry.[9] Calvert, who at the time held a seat in Parliament representing Yorkshire, supported the King's interest in an alliance with the now declining power of Spain against the majority of Parliament who wanted to assure a Protestant succession.[10] As a reward for his loyalty, Calvert was granted a 2,300 acre estate in County Longford, Ireland, though this triumph was tempered somewhat by the death of his wife Anne the following year.[11] Her death on August 8, 1622, left Calvert as the single father of ten children, the oldest of whom, Cecilius, was only 16 years old.[11]

The Arms of the Barons Baltimore

Calvert had reached the apex of his political career in 1621. Much of his reputation had been staked on the success of a marriage alliance with the Spanish royal family, which failed upon the empty-handed return of Prince Charles from Spain.[12] The King finally caved to popular support for a French match, and Calvert very quickly fell out of favour.[13] Whether as a way to save face upon exiting the political arena or due to a true turn of faith, in 1624 or 1625 Calvert claimed to be a convert to Catholicism and resigned from his Secretaryship.[14][5] The King, who suddenly remembered his fondness for Calvert, raised him to the peerage in Ireland as the 1st Baron Baltimore of Baltimore Manor in County Longford.[14] Just a few weeks later, King James died, but the newly crowned King Charles maintained Calvert's Baronet and his honored place on the Privy Council.[15][16]

Avalon colony

Calvert had long maintained an interest in the exploration and settlement of the new world, beginning with his participation in the second Virginia Company in 1609 and his later participation in the New England Company in 1622.[17] In 1620, Calvert purchased a tract of land in Newfoundland from one Sir William Vaughan and named it Avalon after the mythical legendary spot where Christianity was introduced to Britain.[18] The plantation lay between the modern towns of Fermeuse and Aquaforte on what is now known as the Avalon Peninsula, and included the fishing station at Ferryland.[16] In 1621, Calvert sent Captain Edward Wynne and a group of Welsh colonists to found a settlement, and received good reports from them concerning the local fisheries and the success of the saltworks, the latter of which were necessary to preserve fish for export.[18] Seeking greater control over the settlement, Calvert was granted a Royal Charter in 1622 for the entirety of Newfoundland, though this land grant was reduced in 1623.[19] The final charter made the province a palatinate under Calvert's rule and officially named it the Province of Avalon.[19]Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). He first arrived in July of 1627 and stayed for only two months before returning to Europe.[20] The land he saw there was not the paradise that had been described by some early settlers, but was a marginally productive rocky island that had, unknown to Baltimore or his contemporaries, been too difficult for even Viking settlers from Greenland to stay.[21] In 1628 he returned with his second wife, his children, and 40 more settlers to take over as Proprietary Governor of Avalon from his agent.[22][23]

A modern image of the coastline along the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland

Baltimore soon became disenchanted by conditions in the settlement, and wrote to his old acquaintances in England of his troubles.[24] Among those troubles were the depradations of French cruisers who regularly attacked English settlements and the smaller fishing stations scattered along the Newfoundland coast.[25][23] Trying to defend his lands, Baltimore sent two ships, the Ark and the Dove, against one French raider.[26] He was also attacked by a Puritan minister named Stourton for his practice of Catholicism and for the celebration of mass at the Avalon colony. Stourton went to the Privy Council to complain about Baltimore, though the Council dismissed the charges.[27][23] Soon after, he was deprived of his second wife's company as she fled south to Virginia.[28] Further, the winter of 1628-1629 was a disaster, and like many early settlers the residents of Avalon suffered terribly from cold and malnutrition.[28][23]

Attempt to found a mid-Atlantic colony

In response to what he saw as the failure of the Avalon settlement, Baltimore wrote King Charles to complain of his depradations at the hands of the French and mother nature, and to request a new charter further to the south.[29] Before he received the King's response, which suggested that he abandon his dreams of colonisation altogether, he sailed south to the Virginia colony in search of new and fertile lands.[30] Arriving in Jamestown in October of 1629, Baltimore did not receive a warm welcome from the Virginians, who suspected that he was interested in assuming control over some of their territory and who vehemently opposed Catholicism.[30][31] The Virginians happened upon a cunning way to force him out; they asked him to take the Oath of Supremacy swearing fealty to the King of England as the supreme ecclesiatical power, an oath which he could not take as a good Catholic.[30][32] The suspicions of the Virginians were unfounded; Baltimore's interest lay in creating an entirely new colony which would be a haven for English Catholics who felt persecuted in England and the other colonies.[33][34] Spurned by Virginia, Baltimore returned to England, unaccountably leaving his wife and children in Jamestown to follow him later.[35]

His health declining, Baltimore continued to pursue his dream of a Catholic colony in the new world in the early 1630's.[36] The King first granted him a location south of Jamestown, but Baltimore asked the King to reconsider in response to opposition from other investors who were interested in settling the new land of Carolina into a sugar plantation.[37] He was instead granted the lands to either side of the Chesapeake Bay, including the western shore as far south as the Potomac River and the entirety of the eastern shore.[19] Tragically, before the grant could become official, Baltimore's health gave out, and he died on April 15, 1632.[38] His eldest son Cecilius inherited all estates, the title of Lord Baltimore, and received the grant of Maryland in his stead.[38][39] Perhaps more importantly, he left to his sons Cecilius, Leonard, and George the dream of a Catholic refuge along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.

Legacy

Baltimore's two colonies in the new world continued under the proprietorship of his family.[40] Avalon, which remained a prime spot for the salting and export of fish, was finally absorbed into Newfoundland in 1754.[41] Maryland, as the colony along the shores of the Chesapeake would be called, became a prime tobacco exporting colony in the mid-Atlantic. It would also, for a time, become just the refuge for Catholic settlers that George Calvert had hoped for.[42] Under the rule of the Lords Baltimore, thousands of British Catholics emigrated to the tobacco plantations of Maryland and established some of the oldest Catholic communities in what would become the United States.[42] Although Catholic rule in Maryland was eventually nullified by the re-assertion of royal control over the colony, only a few decades following that event Maryland joined twelve other British colonies along the Atlantic coast in declaring their independence from British rule and the right to freedom of religion for all citizens of the new United States.[43]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Browne, Page 2
  2. ^ a b c Browne, Page 3
  3. ^ Browne, Pages 3-4
  4. ^ a b c d Browne, Page 4
  5. ^ a b c Fiske, Page 255
  6. ^ a b Browne, Page 5
  7. ^ Browne, Pages 4-5
  8. ^ Browne, Page 6
  9. ^ a b Browne, Page 8
  10. ^ Browne, Pages 8-10
  11. ^ a b Browne, Page 11
  12. ^ Browne, Pages 11-12
  13. ^ Browne, Page 12
  14. ^ a b Browne, Page 13
  15. ^ Browne, Page 14
  16. ^ a b Fiske, page 256
  17. ^ Browne, Page 15
  18. ^ a b Browne, Page 16
  19. ^ a b c Browne, Page 17
  20. ^ Browne, Page 18
  21. ^ Browne, Page 18-19
  22. ^ Browne, Page 19
  23. ^ a b c d Fiske, page 261
  24. ^ Browne, Pages 19-20
  25. ^ Browne, Page 20
  26. ^ Browne, Page 23
  27. ^ Browne, Page 23-24
  28. ^ a b Browne, Page 24
  29. ^ Browne, Page 24-25
  30. ^ a b c Browne, Page 27
  31. ^ Fiske, page 263
  32. ^ Fiske, page 264
  33. ^ Browne, Pages 27-28
  34. ^ Fiske, pages 263-264
  35. ^ Browne, Page 28
  36. ^ Browne, Page 30
  37. ^ Fiske, page 265
  38. ^ a b Browne, Page 31
  39. ^ Fiske, pages 265-266
  40. ^ Browne, Page 31-32
  41. ^ Browne, Page 32
  42. ^ a b Hennesey, 36-45
  43. ^ Hennesey, 55-68

References

External links

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Government offices
Preceded by Secretary of State
1619–1625 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Proprietary Governor of Newfoundland
1627 — 1629 		Succeeded by
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
New Creation
 Lord Baltimore Succeeded by
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