Cecil Calvert

Maryland Historical Society

Cecil Calvert, eldest son of George Calvert and Anne Mynne, was born late in 1605 or early in 1606 in Kent County, England, and baptized in the Church of England on March 2, 1606. One of his god parents was his namesake, Sir Robert Cecil, the earl of Salisbury. Cecil attended Trinity College, Oxford, but did not take a degree. In 1624 he received a pass to visit Europe and may have traveled to Rome, contrary to the prohibition in his pass. He may have converted to Roman Catholicism in advance of his father, Sir George Calvert, who resolved his religious commitment in November 1624. Calvert took the name Cecilius when he was confirmed in the Catholic Church. His 1628 marriage to Anne Arundell, the daughter of Lord Arundell of Wardour, a prominent Catholic lawyer, affirmed the Calvert identification with the small Catholic minority. They had at least five children, two of whom lived to adulthood. In 1632, on the death of his father, Calvert become the second baron of Baltimore, the Irish title his father had received in 1625. Soon after, the government granted the Maryland Charter and he became the colony's first proprietor. As proprietor, Baltimore had to launch the expedition, implement his vision, the "Maryland designe," and then maintain it in a hostile environment.

Cecil intended to establish a prosperous colony where he would implement his princely powers. His lack of experience as an administrator or colonizer, limited financial resources, and his religion complicated his objective. As a Catholic, he identified with a small, but significant, minority of the English who refused to conform to the state religion. An elaborate set of penal laws, dating to the reign of Elizabeth I, proscribed their activities and forced Catholics either to worship in private or conform to the Church of England. Cecil had only limited success in attracting investors to supplement his inheritance, which had been depleted by his father's attempt to colonize in Newfoundland. He found attracting recruits, especially Catholics, arduous. He recruited less than half the intended number of colonists. Baltimore had to defend his expedition from a hostile coalition that supported the claims of the defunct Virginia Company. While they did not prevent the Ark cand Dove from sailing, his adversaries delayed the ships' departure until November 22, 1633. The impoverished proprietor, living at Hook House on his father-in-law's generosity, remained behind to defend his charter from his adversaries.

Cecil Calvert

Maryland Historical Society

From afar, he had to implement a complicated plan that coupled capitalism with a manorial system and paired religious freedom with proprietary loyalty. A number of circumstances made this a chancy proposition. He had to govern his colony through his younger brother Leonard Calvert and other friends and co-religionists. In turn, they had to govern a religiously diverse population. Baltimore required Catholics, who were a minority of the population, to worship as privately as possible and avoid all disputations with Protestants. Controversies abounded. The fur trade failed to produce needed revenues but generated conflict with the Virginians. The freemen challenged Baltimore's exclusive right to initiate legislation. Priests from the Society of Jesus, who came to convert the natives, accepted land from them without proprietary consent. Jesuit demands for the privileges accorded priests in Catholic countries further alienated the proprietor and divided the small Catholic community. The crisis climaxed in 1642 when Baltimore came close to expelling the defiant priests.

During the English civil wars and the Interregnum, Baltimore faced his severest challenges. In 1645 an interloper named Richard Ingle, claiming authority from the Protestant Parliament,invaded the colony, forced Governor Calvert to flee, plundered the colony, and kidnapped a number of priests and prominent Catholics. The governor restored order but died soon after. With the triumph of Parliament at hand and to stem further challenges based on spurious religious claims, in 1648 Baltimore revolutionized his government by appointing a Protestant governor and council. To ensure that the Catholics who ventured to Maryland would continue to enjoy their property and civil rights Baltimore required his officers to take an oath not to interfere with Christians' free exercise of religion and sent the Act Concerning Religion to the Maryland Assembly. After concerted debate the freemen passed a much revised act that guaranteed all Christians their right to worship without molestation from secular authorities.

This first restoration was short-lived. Radical Protestants from Virginia, denied freedom in their own colony, accepted Baltimore's offer to immigrate to Maryland. In 1652 parliamentary commissioners, who had reduced Virginia, used the former Virginians to overthrow Baltimore's liberal rule. Catholics and Episcopal Protestants no longer enjoyed political or religious liberty under the restrictive 1654 Act Concerning Religion. In 1658 Baltimore used his influence with the government of Oliver Cromwell to regain control of his colony. With the restoration of Charles II in 1660 and a more relaxed attitude toward Catholics in England, Baltimore's little colony began to flourish as new immigrants prospered by growing tobacco on small farms. Under his leadership an effort was made to develop St. Mary's City into a baroque city with the building of a brick Roman Catholic chapel and a brick statehouse.

He died in November 1675, never having visited the colony he brought into existence. To his son, Charles, he left a prospering, peaceful colony based on the concept of liberty of conscience. This bold experiment of colonizing with a religiously pluralistic population lasted until a Protestant-led rebellion in 1688 overthrew the proprietorship.

Krugler, John D. English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.