Sir George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore

From The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010:

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/ca...

CALVERT, George (1579/80-1632), of St. Martin's Lane, Westminster and Kiplin Hall, Catterick, Yorks.

• MP for BOSSINEY - 20 Oct. 1609
• MP for YORKSHIRE - 1621
• MP for OXFORD UNIVERSITY - 1624

Family and Education

• b.1579/80, 1st son of Leonard Calvert of Kiplin, Yorkshire, and Alice, daughter of John Crossland of Crossland, Yorkshire. [1]
• educated:
  • Linton, Yorks. (Nicholas Anderson) c.1592;
  • Bilton, Yorks. (Mr. Fowberry), 1592-4;[2]
  • Trinity College, Oxford 1594 (aged 14), BA 1597, MA 1605;[3]
  • Lincoln's Inn 1598;[4]
  • travelled abroad (France) 1603, (Low Countries, Germany, France) 1610.[5]
• married
  • (1) 22 Nov. 1604, Anne (d. 8 Aug. 1622), daughter of George Mynne of Hertingfordbury, Herts., 6 sons 5 daughters. (1 d.v.p.);[6]
  • (2) by 17 Sept. 1625, Joan (d.1630), 1 son.;[7]
  • (3) ?1631, Mary, daughter of Capt. Edward Wynne, probably 1 child.[8]
• Knighted 29 Sept. 1617;[9]
• created Baron Baltimore [I] 16 Feb. 1625.[10]
• died 15 Apr. 1632.[11]
• sig. Geo[rge] Calvert.

Offices Held

• Sec. to Robert Cecil†, 1st earl of Salisbury by 1604-10.[12]
• Member,
  • East India Company 1609,
  • Virginia Company 1610;[13]
• farmer, raw silk duties 1610-13.[14]
• Surveyor revenues, Yorks. (N. Riding) 1609;[15]
• commissioner oyer and terminer, the Verge 1615-25, London and Mdx. 1616-25, Westminster 1618-25;
• justice of the peace Middlesex 1616-25, Westminster 1618-25, N. Riding 1622-5;[16]
• commr. musters, Middlesex 1617-20,
• commr. new bldgs., London 1618,
• commr. sewers, Middlesex 1619, London 1621, 1623, Great Fens 1621, N. Riding 1623,
• commr. subsidy, London, Mdx. and king’s Household 1621-2, 1624,
• commr. enclosure, Gt. Fens 1622, 1624.[17]
• Clerk, Privy Council 1610-19;[18]
• Secretary of state 1619-25;[19]
• Privy Council 1619-25.[20]
• Clerk of the Crown, Connaught and co. Clare [I] ?1614-d.;[21]
• commissary (jt.) of musters [I] 1611;[22]
• commr. inquiry [I] 1613,
• commr. military cess, co. Wexford [I] 1627.[23]
• Ambassador (extraordinary), Palatinate 1615.[24]

Notes

• 1.Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 500.
• 2. J.C.H. Aveling, Northern Catholics, 176-7.
• 3.Al. Ox.
• 4.LI Admiss.
• 5.HMC Hatfield, xv. 54; Add. 11402, f. 160; HMC Downshire, ii. 348.
• 6.Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 500; St. Martin-in-the-Fields (Harl. Soc. reg. lxvi), 183; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 449.
• 7.Newfoundland Discovered ed. G.T. Cell (Hakluyt Soc. ser. 2. clx), 276.
• 8.Newsletters from the Caroline Court ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. ser. 5. xxvi), 50-1, 55-8, 122.
• 9. Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 166.
• 10.CP.
• 11. C142/555/82.
• 12.HMC Hatfield, xvi. 370; Chamberlain Letters, i. 306.
• 13.CSP Col. E.I. 1513-1616, p. 192; Recs. Virg. Co. ed. S.M. Kingsbury, iii. 81.
• 14. E214/1372.
• 15. E315/310, f. 59.
• 16. C231/4, f. 26; C181/2, f. 331v.
• 17. C66/2137; C181/2, f. 235v, 262v, 280v, 347; 181/3, ff. 35v, 49, 96, 103v, 126v; C212/22/20-3.
• 18. Add. 11402, f. 159.
• 19.CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 14.
• 20.APC, 1618-19, p. 373; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 609.
• 21.CSP Ire. 1603-6, pp. 514-15.
• 22.CSP Ire. 1611-14, p. 183.
• 23.CPR Ire. Jas. I, 396-401; CSP Ire. 1625-32, p. 251.
• 24.Handlist of Brit. Diplomatic Representatives comp. G.M. Bell, 141.

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From his Wikipedia page:

Sir George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, 8th Proprietor Governor of Newfoundland (1579 – 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 continue in politics, he resigned all of his political offices in 1625 except for his position on the Privy Council and declared his Catholicism publicly. He was granted the title of 1st Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage upon his resignation.

Calvert took an interest in the colonisation of the New World, at first for commercial reasons and later to create a refuge for English Catholics. He became the proprietor of Avalon, the first sustained English settlement on the island of Newfoundland. Discouraged by the climate and the sufferings of the settlers there, Calvert looked for a more suitable spot further south and sought a new royal charter to settle the region that was to become the state of Maryland. Calvert died five weeks before the new charter was sealed, leaving the settlement of the Maryland colony to his son Cæcilius. His son Leonard Calvert was the first colonial governor of Maryland. Historians have long recognized George Calvert as the founder of Maryland, in spirit if not in fact.

Little is known of the extraction of the Yorkshire Calverts, although at George Calvert's knighting it was claimed that his family originally came from Flanders. Calvert's father, Leonard, was a country gentleman who had achieved some prominence as a tenant of Philip Lord Wharton, and was wealthy enough to marry a gentlewoman, Alicia Crossland, and establish his family on the estate of Kiplin, near Catterick in Richmondshire, North Yorkshire. George Calvert was born at Kiplin in late 1579. His mother died on 28 November 1587, when he was eight years old. His father then married Grace Crossland, Alicia's first cousin. A decade before George was born, Sir Thomas Gargrave had described Richmondshire as a territory where all gentlemen were "evil in religion", by which he meant Roman Catholic; it appears Leonard Calvert was no exception. During the reign of Elizabeth I, the royal government over the church and of compulsory religious uniformity were enacted by parliament and enforced through penal laws. The Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity of 1559 included an oath of allegiance to the queen and an implicit denial of the Pope's authority over the church. This oath was required of any common citizen who wished to hold high office, attend university, or take advantage of opportunities controlled by the state.

The Calvert household was not spared the intrusion of the Elizabethan penal laws. From the year of George's birth onwards, Leonard Calvert was subjected to repeated harassment by the Yorkshire authorities, who in 1580 extracted a promise of conformity from him, compelling his attendance at church. In 1592, when George was twelve, the authorities denounced one of his tutors for teaching "from a popish primer" and instructed Leonard and Grace to send George and his brother Christopher to a Protestant tutor, and, if necessary, to present the children before the commission “once a month to see how they perfect in learning”. As a result, the boys were sent to a Protestant tutor called Mr Fowberry at Bilton. Once again, Leonard was obliged to give a bond of conformity; he was also banned from employing Catholic servants and forced to purchase an English Bible, which was to "ly open in his house for everyone to read".

To what extent Leonard's conformity was genuine cannot be determined; but in 1593, records show that Grace Calvert was committed to the custody of a "pursuivant", an official responsible for identifying and persecuting Catholics, and in 1604, she was described as the "wife of Leonard Calvert of Kipling, non-communicant at Easter last". George Calvert went up to Trinity College, Oxford, matriculating in 1593/94, where he studied foreign languages and received a bachelor’s degree in 1597. As the oath of allegiance was compulsory there after the age of sixteen, he would almost certainly have pledged conformity while at Oxford.

The same pattern of conformity, whether pretended or sincere, continued through Calvert’s early life. After Oxford, he moved to London in 1598, where he studied municipal law at Lincoln’s Inn for three years. In November 1604, he married Anne Mynne (or Mayne) in a Protestant ceremony at St Peter’s, Cornhill, where his address was registered as St Martin in the Fields. His children, including his heir, Cæcilius, who was born in the winter of 1605–6, were all baptized as Protestants, and when Anne died in 1622, she was buried at Calvert’s local Protestant church, St Martin in the Fields.

Political success

Calvert named his son Cæcilius for Sir Robert Cecil, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth, whom Calvert had met during an extended trip to Europe between 1601 and 1603, after which he became known as a specialist in foreign affairs. Calvert carried a packet for Cecil from Paris, and so entered the service of the principal engineer of James VI of Scotland’s succession to the English throne in 1603. James was keen to reward Cecil, whom he made a privy councillor and secretary of state, earl of Salisbury in 1605, and in 1608 Lord High Treasurer, making him the most powerful man at the royal court. And as Cecil rose, Calvert rose with him. Calvert’s foreign languages, legal training, and discretion made him an invaluable aide to Cecil, who, no lover of Catholics, seems to have accepted Calvert’s conformity as beyond question. Working at the centre of court politics, Calvert exploited his influence by selling favours, an accepted practice for the times. One by one, Calvert accumulated a number of small offices, honours, and sinecures. In August 1605, he attended the king at Oxford, and received an honorary master-of-arts degree in an elaborate ceremony at which the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Oxford and Northumberland, and Cecil received degrees. Given the prestige of the other graduates, Calvert's was the last awarded, but his presence in such company signalled his growing stature.

In 1606, the king made Calvert clerk of the Crown and Assizes in Connaught, County Clare, Ireland, his first royal appointment, and in 1609, appointed him a clerk of the Signet office, a post which required the preparation of documents for the royal signature and brought Calvert into close contact with the king. Calvert also served in James’s first parliament as a member for the borough of Bossiney, Cornwall, installed there by Cecil to support his policies. In 1610, Calvert was appointed a clerk of the Privy Council. All these positions would have required an oath of allegiance.

With Cecil's support, Calvert came into his own as an advisor and supporter of King James. In 1610 and 1611, Calvert undertook missions to the continent on behalf of the king, visiting a number of embassies in Paris, Holland, and Cleves, and acting as an ambassador to the French court during the coronation of Louis XIII in 1610. A correspondent from France reported that Calvert gave “everyone great contentment with his discreet conversation”. In 1615, James sent him to the Palatinate, whose impoverished elector, Frederick V, had married James’s daughter Elizabeth in 1613. One of Calvert’s tasks was to convey the king’s disapproval that Elizabeth, for lack of money, had given away expensive jewels to a gentlewoman leaving her employ. Frederick’s decision in 1619 to accept the throne of Bohemia triggered a war with the powerful Habsburgs which James attempted to end through a proposed alliance with Spain.

In 1611, James employed Calvert to research and transcribe his tract against the Dutch theologian Conrad Vorstius. The following year, Cecil died, and Calvert acted as one of the four executors of his will. The king’s favourite, Sir Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, assumed the duties of secretary of state and recruited Calvert to assist with foreign policy, in particular the Latin and Spanish correspondence. Carr, soon raised to the earldom of Somerset, was not a success in the job, however, and fell from favour partly as a result of the murder of Thomas Overbury, to which Carr's wife, Frances, the former Countess of Essex, pleaded guilty in 1615. Carr's place as James’s principal favourite was now taken by the handsome George Villiers, with whom James was said to have been infatuated.

In 1613, the king commissioned Calvert to investigate Catholic grievances in Ireland, along with Sir Humphrey Wynch, Sir Charles Cornwallis, and Sir Roger Wilbraham. The commission spent almost four months in Ireland, and its final report, partly drafted by Calvert, concluded that conformity should be enforced more strictly in Ireland, Catholic schools be suppressed, and bad priests removed and punished. The king resolved not to reconvene an Irish parliament until the Catholics "shall be better disciplined". In 1616, James endowed Calvert with the manor of Danby Wiske in Yorkshire, which brought him into contact with Sir Thomas Wentworth, who became his closest friend and political ally. Calvert was now wealthy enough to buy the Kiplin estate in his home parish; and in 1617, his social status received a further boost when he was knighted.

In 1619, Calvert completed his rise to power when James appointed him as one of the two principal secretaries of state, after Sir Thomas Lake's dismissal following scandals, including his wife’s indiscretions with state secrets. Calvert did not emerge as a candidate until the end of the selection process, his appointment coming as a surprise to most observers, including to Calvert himself. Assuming he owed his promotion to the king’s increasingly powerful favourite, George Villiers, he sent him a great jewel as a token of thanks. Villiers returned the jewel, however, saying he had had nothing to do with the matter. Calvert's personal fortune was secured when he was additionally appointed a commissioner of the treasury with a £1,000 pension and a subsidy on imported raw silk which would later be converted to a further £1,000 pension.

Secretary of state

James made Calvert the 1st Baron Baltimore in 1625, in recognition of his service to the Crown.In Parliament, a political crisis developed over the king's policy of seeking a Spanish wife for Charles, Prince of Wales, as part of a proposed alliance with the Habsburgs. In the Parliament of 1621, it fell to Calvert to advocate this "Spanish match", as it came to be called, against the majority of Parliament, who feared an increase in Catholic influence on the state. As a result of his pro-Spanish stance and defence of relaxations in the penal laws against Catholics, Calvert became estranged from many in the Commons, who were suspicious of his close familiarity with the Spanish ambassador's court. Calvert also faced difficulties in his private life: his wife's death on 8 August 1622, left him the single father of ten children, the oldest of whom, Cæcilius, was sixteen years old.

Although King James rewarded Calvert in 1623 for his loyalty by granting him a 2,300-acre (9.3 km2) estate in County Longford, Ireland, where his seat was known as the Manor of Baltimore, Calvert found himself increasingly isolated from court circles as the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Buckingham wrested control of policy from the ageing James. Without consulting the diplomatically astute Calvert, the prince and the duke travelled to Spain to negotiate the Spanish marriage for themselves, with disastrous results. Instead of securing an alliance, the visit provoked a hostility between the two courts which quickly led to war. In a reversal of policy, Buckingham dismissed the treaties with Spain, summoned a war council, and sought a French marriage for the prince.

Resignation and conversion to Catholicism

As the chief parliamentary spokesman for an abandoned policy, Calvert no longer served a useful purpose to the court, and by February 1624 his duties had been restricted to placating the Spanish ambassador. The degree of his disfavour was made clear to him when he was reprimanded for supposedly delaying diplomatic letters. Calvert bowed to the inevitable. On the pretext of ill health, he began negotiations for the sale of his position, finally resigning the secretariat in February 1625. No disgrace was attached to Calvert's departure from office: the king, to whom he had always remained loyal, confirmed his place on the Privy Council and appointed him Baron Baltimore, in County Longford, Ireland. Immediately after Calvert's resignation, it emerged, to the surprise of most, that he had converted to Catholicism.

The connection between Calvert's resignation and his conversion to Catholicism was a complex one. George Cottington, a former employee of Calvert, suggested in 1628 that Calvert's conversion had been in progress a long time before it was made public. George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, reported that opposition to Calvert, combined with his loss of office, had "made him discontented and, as the saying is, Desperatio facit monachum, so hee apparently did turne papist, which hee now professeth, this being the third time that he hath bene to blame that way [sic]". Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, later claimed Calvert had been a secret Catholic all along ("infinitely addicted to the Catholic faith"), which explained his support for lenient policies towards Catholics and for the Spanish match.

However, such interpretations of his motives were retrospective: no one had questioned Calvert's conformity at the time, and if he had indeed been secretly Catholic, he had hidden it well. It seems more likely Calvert converted in late 1624, since a Discalced Carmelite priest reported to the Congregation Propaganda Fide in Rome on November 15 that he had converted two Privy Councillors to Catholicism, one of whom historians are certain was Calvert. Calvert, who had probably met Stock at the Spanish embassy in London, later worked with the priest on a plan for a Catholic mission in his Newfoundland colony.

When King James died in March 1625, his successor Charles I maintained Calvert's barony but not his place on the Privy Council. Calvert now turned his attention to his Irish estates and his overseas investments. He was not entirely forgotten at court, however. After Buckingham's dabblings in wars against Spain and France had ended in failure, he recalled Baltimore to court, and for a while may have considered employing him in the peace negotiations with Spain. Though nothing came of Baltimore's recall in the end, he was able to renew his rights over the silk-import duties, which had lapsed with the death of James I, and secure Charles' blessing for his venture in Newfoundland.

Avalon colony

Calvert had long maintained an interest in the exploration and settlement of the New World, beginning with his investment of twenty-five pounds in the second Virginia Company in 1609, and a few months later a more substantial sum in the East India Company which he increased in 1614. In 1620, Calvert purchased a tract of land in Newfoundland from Sir William Vaughan, who had failed to establish a colony on the island. He named it Avalon, after the legendary spot where Christianity was introduced to Britain.The plantation lay on what is now called the Avalon Peninsula and included the fishing station at Ferryland. Calvert almost certainly had a fishery project in mind at this stage.

Calvert dispatched Captain Edward Wynne and a group of Welsh colonists to Ferryland, where they landed in August 1621 and set about constructing a settlement. Calvert received positive reports from Wynne concerning the potential for local fisheries and for the production of salt, hemp, flax, tar, iron, timber and hops. Wynne also praised the climate, declaring, "It is better and not so cold as England" and predicting that the colony would become self-sufficient after one year. Others corroborated Wynne's reports: for example, Captain Daniel Powell, who delivered a further party of settlers to Ferryland, wrote: "The land on which our Governor planted is so good and commodious, that for the quantity, I think there is no better in many parts of England"; but he added ominously that Ferryland was "the coldest harbour in the land".[56] Wynne and his men began work on various building projects, including a substantial house and the shoring up of the harbour. To protect them against marauding French ships, a recent hazard in the area, Calvert employed the pirate John Nutt.

The settlement appeared to be progressing so well that in January 1623, Calvert obtained a concession from King James for the whole of Newfoundland, though the grant was soon reduced to cover only the Avalon peninsula, owing to competing claims.[58] The final charter constituted the province as a palatinate, officially titled the "Province of Avalon", under Calvert's personal rule.

After resigning the secretariat in 1625, the new Baron Baltimore made clear his intention to visit the colony himself: "I intend shortly," he wrote in March, "God willing, a journey for Newfoundland to visit a plantation which I began there some few years since." However, his plans were disrupted by the death of King James, and by the crackdown on Catholics with which Charles I began his reign in order to appease his opponents. The new king required all privy councillors to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance; and since Baltimore, as a Catholic, could only refuse, he was obliged to step down from that cherished office. Given the new religious and political climate, and perhaps also to escape a serious outbreak of plague in England, Baltimore moved to Ireland; and his expedition to Newfoundland set sail without him in late May 1625 under Sir Arthur Aston, who became the new governor of Avalon. A reference by David Rothe, bishop of Ossary, in Ireland, to a "Joane [also recorded as Jane] Baltimore now wife" of Calvert, reveals that Baltimore had recently remarried.

There is no evidence from before 1625 that Baltimore's colonial ambitions possessed a religious dimension, but from the time of his conversion onwards, he took care to cater for the religious needs of his colonists, both Catholic and Protestant. He had asked Simon Stock to provide priests for the 1625 expedition, but Stock's recruits arrived in England after Aston had sailed. Stock's own ambitions for the colony appear to have exceeded Baltimore's: in letters to De Propaganda Fide in Rome, Stock claimed the Newfoundland settlement could act as a springboard for the conversion of natives not only in the New World but also in China, the latter via a passage he believed existed from the east coast to the Pacific Ocean.

Baltimore in Avalon

Baltimore was by now more determined than ever to visit his colony in person. In May 1626, he wrote to Wentworth:

“ Newfoundland...imports me more than in Curiosity only to see; for I must either go and settle it in a better Order than it is, or else give it over, and lose all the Charges I have been at hitherto for other Men to build their Fortunes upon. And I had rather be esteemed a Fool for some by the Hazard of one Month’s journey, than to prove myself one certainly for six Years by past, if the Business be now lost for some want of a little Pains and Care. ”

Aston's return to England in late 1626, along with all the Catholic settlers, failed to deter Baltimore, who finally sailed for Newfoundland himself in 1627, arriving on July 23 and staying only two months before returning to England. He had taken both Protestant and Catholic settlers with him, as well as two secular priests, Thomas Longville and Anthony Pole (also known as Smith), the latter remaining behind in the colony when Baltimore departed for England. The land Baltimore had seen was by no means the paradise described by some early settlers, being only marginally productive; but the summer climate was deceptively mild, and his brief visit gave Baltimore no reason to alter his plans for the colony.

In 1628, he sailed again for Newfoundland, this time with his second wife, most of his children, and forty more settlers, to officially take over as Proprietary Governor of Avalon. He and his family moved into the house at Ferryland built by Wynne, a sizeable structure for the time, by colonial standards, and the only one in the settlement large enough to accommodate religious services for the community.

Matters connected to religion were to bedevil Baltimore's stay in "this remote part of the worlde where I have planted my selfe [sic]". He sailed at a time when military preparations were underway to relieve the Huguenots at La Rochelle, and was dismayed to find that the war with France had spread to Newfoundland, and that he was obliged to spend most of his time fighting off French attacks on English fishing fleets with his own ships the Dove and the Ark. As he wrote to Buckingham, "I came to builde, and sett, and sowe, but I am falne to fighting with Frenchmen [sic]". His settlers were so successful against the French that they captured several ships, which they escorted back to England to help with the war effort. Baltimore was granted the loan of one of the ships to aid in his defence of the colony, as well as a share of the prize money.

Adopting a policy of free religious worship in the colony, Baltimore allowed the Catholics to worship in one part of his house and the Protestants in another. This novel arrangement proved too much for the resident Protestant priest, Erasmus Stourton—"that knave Stourton", as Baltimore referred to him—who, after altercations with Baltimore, was placed on a ship for England, where he lost no time in reporting Baltimore's practices to the authorities, complaining that the Catholic priests Smith and Hackett said mass every Sunday and "doe use all other ceremonies of the church of Rome in as ample a manner as tis used in Spayne [sic]". and that Baltimore had even had the son of a Protestant forcibly baptised as a Catholic. Although Stourton's complaints were investigated by the Privy Council, he had not reckoned on Baltimore's support in high places and the case was dismissed.

Meanwhile, Baltimore had become disenchanted with conditions in "this wofull country", and he wrote to his old acquaintances in England lamenting his troubles.[78] The final blow to his hopes was dealt neither by the French nor by the likes of Stourton but by the Newfoundland winter of 1628–9, which did not release its grip until May. Like others before them, the residents of Avalon suffered terribly from the cold and from malnutrition. Nine or ten of Baltimore's company died that winter, and with half the settlers ill at one time, his house had to be turned into a hospital. In addition, the sea froze over, and nothing would grow before May. "Tis not terra Christianorum", Baltimore wrote to Wentworth. He confessed to the king: "I have found...by too deare bought experience [that which other men] always concealed from me...that there is a sad face of wynter upon all this land".

Baltimore now solicited a new charter from the king. In order to found an alternative colony in a less hostile climate further south, he requested "a precinct" in Virginia, where he could grow tobacco. He wrote to his friends Francis Cottington and Thomas Wentworth enlisting their support for this new proposal, admitting the impression his abandonment of Avalon might make in England: "I shall rayse a great deal of talke and discourse and be censured by most men of giddiness and levity [sic]". The king, perhaps guided by Baltimore's friends at court, replied expressing concern for Baltimore's health and gently advising him to forget colonial schemes and return to England, where he would be treated with every respect: "Men of your condition and breeding are fitter for other imployments than the framing of new plantations, which commonly have rugged & laborious beginnings, and require much greater meanes, in managing them, than usually the power of one private subject can reach unto".

Baltimore sent his children home to England in August. By the time the king's letter reached Avalon, he had departed with his wife and servants for Virginia.

Attempt to found a mid-Atlantic colony

In late September or October 1629, Baltimore arrived in Jamestown, where the Virginians, who suspected him of designs on some of their territory and vehemently opposed Catholicism, gave him a cool welcome and tendered him the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, which he refused to take—upon which they ordered him to leave. After no more than a few weeks in the colony, Baltimore left for England to pursue the new charter, leaving his wife and servants behind. In early 1630, he procured a ship to fetch them, but it foundered off the Irish coast, and his wife was drowned. Baltimore described himself the following year as "a long time myself a Man of Sorrows".

Baltimore spent the last two years of his life constantly lobbying for his new charter, though the obstacles proved difficult. The Virginians, led by William Claiborne, who sailed to England to make the case, campaigned aggressively against separate colonising of the Chesapeake, claiming they themselves possessed the rights to that area. Baltimore also found himself short of capital, having exhausted his fortune, and was sometimes forced to depend on the assistance of his friends. To make matters worse, in the summer of 1630, his household was infected by the plague, which he survived. He wrote to Wentworth: "Blessed be God for it who hath preserved me now from shipwreck, hunger, scurvy and pestilence..."

His health declining, Baltimore's persistence over the charter finally paid off in 1632. Notwithstanding renewed objections from the Virginians, the king first granted him a location south of Jamestown, but Baltimore asked the king to reconsider in response to opposition from other investors interested in settling the new land of Carolina into a sugar plantation. Baltimore eventually compromised by accepting redrawn boundaries to the north of the Potomac River, on either side of the Chesapeake Bay. The charter was about to pass when the fifty-two-year-old Baltimore died in his lodgings at Lincoln's Inn Fields, on 15 April 1632. Five weeks later, on 20 June 1632, the charter for Maryland passed the seals.

Legacy

In his will, written the day before he died, Baltimore beseeched his friends Wentworth and Cottington to act as guardians and supervisors to his son Cæcilius, who inherited the title of Lord Baltimore and the imminent grant of Maryland. Baltimore's two colonies in the New World continued under the proprietorship of his family,[96] though Avalon, which remained a prime spot for the salting and export of fish, was expropriated by Sir David Kirke, with a new royal charter which Cæcilius vigorously challenged, and was finally absorbed into Newfoundland in 1754. Although Baltimore's failed Avalon venture marked the end of an early era of attempts at proprietary colonisation, it laid the foundation upon which permanent settlements developed in that region of Newfoundland.

Maryland became a prime tobacco exporting colony in the mid-Atlantic and, for a time, a refuge for Catholic settlers, as George Calvert had hoped. Under the rule of the Lords Baltimore, thousands of British Catholics emigrated to the tobacco plantations of Maryland, establishing some of the oldest Catholic communities in what would later become the United States. Although Catholic rule in Maryland was eventually nullified by the re-assertion of royal control over the colony, only a few decades later 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 in the new United States.

The City of Baltimore, Maryland was named for his son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. Numerous other place names in America honored the Lords Baltimore.

The "Heavy metal" rock music band "Sir Lord Baltimore" was also named in honor of the Barons Baltimore.

The state flag of Maryland, too, is the banner of Baltimore's coat-of-arms (Calvert, his father's family, in the first and fourth quarters, and Crossland, his mother's family, in the second and third quarters).[101]

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Calvert,_1st_Baron_Baltimore

• ______________________________

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore was born in 1578/79 at Kipling, Yorkshire, England.1 He was the son of Leonard Calvert and Alice Crossland.1 He married, firstly, Anne Mynne, daughter of George Mynne and Elizabeth Wroth, on 22 November 1604 at St. Peter's, Cornhill, Banffshire, Scotland.1 He married, secondly, Joan (?) before 1627.1 He died on 15 April 1632.1 He was buried at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West Church, London, England.1 His will was probated on 21 April 1632.1

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford University, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, on 12 July 1594.1 He graduated from Trinity College, Oxford University, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, in February 1597 with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.).1 He held the office of Under-Secretary of State.1 He held the office of Clerk of the Privy Council in 1605.1 He held the office of Member of Parliament (M.P.) for Bossiney between 1609 and 1611.1 He was on a special diplomatic mission to France in 1611.1 He was on a special diplomatic mission to the Elector Palatine in 1615.1 He was invested as a Knight on 29 September 1617.1 He held the office of Secretary of State between 1618 and 1625.1 He was invested as a Privy Counsellor (P.C.) on 16 February 1618/19.1 He received a life pension of £1,000 a year, and a grant of the province of Avalon in Newfoundland. However after expending £25,000 on the province, he had to abandon it owing to the severity of the winters there.1 He held the office of Member of Parliament (M.P.) for Yorkshire between 1620 and 1622.1 He held the office of a Secretary of the Treasury between January 1620 and December 1620.1 He held the office of Member of Parliament (M.P.) for the University of Oxford from 1624 to 1625.1 In February 1624/25 he resigend his preferments having become a Roman Catholic.1 He was created 1st Baron Baltimore, of Baltimore [Ireland] on 16 February 1624/25.1 He obtained from King Charles I a grant of Maryland, on similar terms to that of Avalon.1 He lived at Danbywiske, Yorkshire, England.1 His last will was dated 14 April 1632. He has an extensive biographical entry in the Dictionary of National Biography.3

Child of George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore and Anne Mynne

Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore+1 b. 2 Mar 1605/6, d. c Dec 1675

Citations

[S6] G.E. Cokayne; with Vicary Gibbs, H.A. Doubleday, Geoffrey H. White, Duncan Warrand and Lord Howard de Walden, editors, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed., 13 volumes in 14 (1910-1959; reprint in 6 volumes, Gloucester, U.K.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 2000), volume I, page 393. Hereinafter cited as The Complete Peerage.

[S3409] Caroline Maubois, "re: Penancoet Family," e-mail message to Darryl Roger Lundy, 2 December 2008. Hereinafter cited as "re: Penancoet Family."

[S18] Matthew H.C.G., editor, Dictionary of National Biography on CD-ROM (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1995), Calvert, George. Hereinafter cited as Dictionary of National Biography.

From: http://thepeerage.com/p7298.htm#i72977

• --------------------
• 'Sir George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, Under-Secretary & Secretary of State1,2,3
• 'M, #90244, b. circa 1578, d. 15 April 1632
• Father Leonard Calvert4,2 b. c 1550, d. a 1611
• Mother Alice Crossland4,2 b. c 1558
• ' Sir George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, Under-Secretary & Secretary of State was born circa 1578 at of Kyling Creek Parish in Bolton, North Ridway, Yorkshire, England.1,2 He married Anne Mynne, daughter of George Mynne, Esq. and Elizabeth Wrothe, on 22 November 1604 at St. Peter's, Cornhill, London, Middlesex, England; They had 6 sons (Cecil, 2nd Lord Baltimore; Leonard; George; Francis; Henry; & John) and 5 daughters (Anne, wife of William Peasley; Dorothy; Elizabeth; Grace, wife of Sir William Talbot; & Ellen/Helen, wife of James Talbot, Esq.).4,5,2,3 Sir George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, Under-Secretary & Secretary of State left a will on 14 April 1632.2 He died on 15 April 1632 at London, Middlesex, England; Buried at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, London.2 His estate was probated on 21 April 1632.2
• 'Family Anne Mynne b. 20 Nov 1579, d. 8 Aug 1622
• Child
  • Gov. Cecil Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore, Proprietor of Maryland+1,3 b. 8 Aug 1605, d. 30 Nov 1675
• Citations
• 1.[S4078] Unknown author, The Complete Peerage, by Cokayne, Vol. VI, p. 197-199; Lineage and Ancestry of HRH Prince Charles by Paget, Vol. II, p. 410.
• 2.[S16] Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry, 2nd Edition, Vol. I, p. 393.
• 3.[S6] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry: 2nd Edition, Vol. I, p. 466.
• 4.[S61] Unknown author, Family Group Sheets, Family History Archives, SLC.
• 5.[S5] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, p. 183.
• From: http://our-royal-titled-noble-and-commoner-ancestors.com/p3004.htm#...
• _________________

1st Lord Baltimore 1625-1632: Received the title Baron of Baltimore, a town on the souther coast of Ireland, from King James I of England February 1625 and thus became the 1st Lord Baltimore. He petitioned for and received a grant of land north ofthe Potomac River; an area now known as Delaware and Maryland. He died before it was granted officially. Maryland was names for King Charles' wife, Queen Henrietta Maria of England. In latin, Maryland is "Terra Mariae".From SOMD.com:The oldest son of an obscure Yorkshire gentleman, George Calvert used ability and an Oxford education to gain wealth, status, and influence in the England of his time. Knighted in 1617, and a member of Parliament for Yorkshire in 1621, Calvertserved as one of James I's two secretaries of state and a Privy Councilor from 1619 to 1625. As a recent convert to Catholicism, Calvert resigned from his government posts in the latter year, when anti-catholic legislation was being debated inParliament. Created Baron Baltimore of Baltimore in 1625, with large estates in County Longford, Ireland, Calvert devoted the next seven years of his life to colonization projects in America. Having sponsored a small colony at Ferryland in hisProvince of Avalon, Newfoundland, Canada, as early as 1620, Lord Baltimore visited his American possessions in 1627 and 1629, and by the latter date, wasdetermined to obtain lands in a friendlier climate. His petition for a large colonial Grant with unprecedented powers, located north of the Potomac River, was agreed to by Charles I, but Calvert died almost two months to the day before the charterfor Maryland was officially granted (on 20 June 1632).

3. GEORGE CALVERT 8 (Leonard,2 John1), b. 1578/9, near Bolton Castle, Yorkshire; d. in London, April 15, 1632, in his fifty-third year. He graduated from Oxford in 1597, receiving the degrete of B. A. (eight years later he was created M. A.) and traveled extensively on the Continent, where he met Sir Robert Cecil (afterward Earl of Salisbury), whose private secretary he later became and through whose influence he began his career as a statesman. He was a Member of Parliament for Bosmay, Cornwall in 1603 and at Hampton Court he was knighted by King James L, on September 29, 1617, after having served as Clerk of the Crown and Assize in County Clare, Ireland. In 1613 he had become Clerk of the Privy Council and was later a member of the Commission for winding up the affairs of the Virginia Company in 1624. In 1619 he had been appointed by the King to the high office (resembling the present Prime Ministership) of Principal Secretary of State, succeeding Sir Thomas Lake and being associated with Sir Robert ISTaunton. This office he resigned on February 9, 1625, and. one week later he was created by the King, in gratitude for his services, Baron Baltimore of Baltimore, in the County of Longford, Ireland, in which County the King had granted him February 18, 1621, a Manor of 2,300 acres (Baltimore). In 1624 he represented Oxfordshire in Parliament and retired to private life the year following. (Other offices he had held, such as one of the commissioners for the office of Treasurer and a member of Parliament forYorkshire). As a young man he had been interested in the colonization of the New World and was a member of the Virginia Company in 1609. In 1622 the King had granted him the island of Avalon (Ferryland), a part of Newfoundland, where he had purchased an estate two years preceding. Here he attempted a settlement— which was unsuccessful—and spent a fortune in the attempt . About this time he became a Roman Catholic and offered his resignation (&s Secretary of State) to the King, which His Majesty refused to accept on account of Calvert's valuable services. He next turned his attention southward, sailed for Virginia (taking with him his second wife), and returned to England, where he besought the King (Charles I., who had succeeded his father, James I., in 1625) for a new grant of land. The King, who continued his father's friendship for Lord Baltimore, then granted him the territory which was later called Maryland (L e., in Latin, Terra Mariae) in honor of the Queen of England (Henrietta Maria, an aunt of Louis XIV., of France). The settlement of Maryland needs no further mention. Lord Baltimore's life was cut short in his fifty- third year by his death, April 15, 1632—before the Charter of Maryland has passed the great Seal (so it was made out in the name of Cecil, the second Baron)—and was buried in the Chancel of St. Dunstan's in the West, London, which church was later destroyed by fire. His Lordship had been twice married: firstly, at St. Peter's, Corn-hill, London, "Thursday, November 22, 1604, Mr. George Calvert of St. Martin's in the Fields, Gent., and Mrs. Anne Mynne, of Bexley in Hertfordshire." (So reads the Parish records!) His second wife—the first Lady Baltimore—was named Joan (mentioned as "Dame Joane Baltimore" by her husband in a deed under date of 1627), but of her parentage or history nothing is known. Lady Calvert (Anne Mynne), who was born November 20, 1579 and died August 12, 1622, was a daughter of George Mynne of Hertfordshire (who d. May 20, 1581) and Elizabeth Wroth, his wife (who d. August 14, 1614), dau. of Sir Thomas Wroth of Durance in Enfield, Middlesex, and his wife, the Lady Mary Rich, a dau. of Richard, Lord (Chancellor) Rich, of Henry VIII.'s reign. Sir Thomas Wroth (1519-1573) was at Court during the brief reign of King Edward VI., and that youthful monarch expired in his arms. His great- great-grandfather was Sir John Wroth, Lord Mayor of London in 1361. The Wroth Lineage is interesting: The mother of this Sir Thomas Wroth was Joane Haute, widow of Thomas Goodyere of Hadley and daughter of Sir Thomas and Lady Haute (Elizabeth Frowicke) of Hautesbourne, whose grandfather, William Haute, married Elizabeth Woodville, sister of Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers, and aunt of Elizabeth (Woodville) Grey, Queen of Edward IV., of England. William Haute was descended from Piers Fitz Haut, one of the soldiers of William the Conqueror. To return to Lady Calvert (Anne Mynne) : her father was buried in St. Mary's Church, Hertingfordbury, Hertfordshire. His tomb bore the following inscription (with the Mynne and Wroth coats-of-arms empaled) : "Here lies buried the bodies of George Mynne, of Hertingfordbury, Esq., and Elizabeth, his wife, daughter of Sir Thomas Wroth, of Durance in Enfield, in the County of Middlesex, Knight; they had issue, three sons and three daughters. The said George Mynne departed this life the 20th day of May, in the year of our Lord 1581; his wife, Elizabeth taking afterward to her second husband Nicholas Butler, Esq., and she died the 14th of Aug., 1614." Through the Rich Family connection Lady Calvert was highly connected, as her grandmother (Lady Wroth, nee Rich) was aunt of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, and sister to Lady Peyton, Lady Dudley (afterwards the Baroness North), Lady Drewry and Lady D'Arcy

The Great Seal of Maryland was brought to the Colony of Maryland from England in 1634 by Governor Calvert. That seal was decorated with the Arms of Calvert and Crosland quartered according to heraldic order. The same heraldic markings were much later adopted by the State of Maryland as the flag of the state. Images of Calvert and Crossland Arms and the Flag of Maryland may be viewedhere.

• --------------------

George Calvert, the virtual founder of Maryland, was born at Kiplin, in the North Riding of Yorkshire,and grew up in an age that witnessed the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the exploits of Drake and Raleigh, and a flowering of literature, including Spenser and Shakespeare. After taking the degree of B.A. at Trinity College, Oxford, he gained the notice of Sir Robert Cecil, minister to King James I, and entered his employ as secretary.

By his industry and judgment Calvert won the confidence of the King, was knighted in 1617, was chosen one of James's two secretaries of state. Meanwhile he served several terms in Parliament. His knowledge and integrity brought him the respect of all about the court. For these qualities as well as for his able and faithful services, King James and, later, Charles I rewarded him with substantial grants. James gave him an annual pension of £1000 and extensive lands in Country Longford, Ireland. In 1625, however, Calvert's career reached a turning point when he had announced that he had become a member of the Roman Catholic Church, an event that in England of the seventeenth century was likely to put an end to political preferment. In February, Calvert resigned his office, whereupon James created him Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage.

Calvert's zeal for American colonization was foreshadowed early in his career when he became a member of both the Virginia and the New England companies. In 1621 he purchased lands in Newfoundland, where he soon planted a settlement, later erected by royal patent into the province of Avalon. He twice visited the colony, but in 1629 the severe climate drove him to ask for lands farther south. After a journey to Virginia he returned to England and petitioned Charles I for a grant adjacent to that colony. With the sanction of the King, Calvert drew up a charter conveying to himself broad holdings on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay, as far as the fortieth degree of latitude. Before the instrument passed the seals Calvert died, but it was a document which, when approved on June 20, 1632, became the means of translating into reality the first Lord Baltimore's dream of American colonization. In the charter the name of Maryland ("Terra Mariae") appeared for the first time.

• ________________
• Baltimore, Baron (I, 1625 - dormant 1771)
  • ' George [Calvert], 1st Baron Baltimore, PC
• 'son and heir of Leonard Calvert by his wife Alice Crossland, dau. of John Crossland, of Crossland, co. York
• 'bapt. c. 1578
• 'mar. (1) 22 Nov 1604 Anne Mynne (bapt. 20 Nov 1579; d. 8 Aug 1622; bur. at Hertingfordbury, co. Hertford), dau. of George Mynne, of Hertingfordbury, co. Hertford, by his wife Elizabeth Wroth, 1st dau. of Sir Thomas Wrothe, of Enfield, co. Middlesex, by his wife Hon Mary Rich, 3rd dau. of Richard [Rich], 1st Baron Rich
• 'children by first wife
  • 1. Hon Cecil Calvert, later 2nd Baron Baltimore
  • 2. Hon Leonard Calvert, first Governor of Maryland 1633-37 (bapt. 21 Nov 1610; d. 9 Jun 1647 St Mary's Parish, Charles Co, Maryland), mar. c. 1641 (sic?) Ann Brent, dau. of Richard Brent, of Larke Stoke and Admington, co. Gloucester, by his wife Elizabeth Reed, and had issue: .... etc.
  • 3. Hon George Calvert (b. 1613; d. at sea 1634)
  • 4. Hon Francis Calvert
  • 5. Hon Henry Calvert (b. c. 1617)
  • 6. Hon John Calvert (b. 1618)
  • 1. Hon Mary Calvert (b. 1607), mar. Sir William Peaseley
  • 2. Hon Dorothy Calvert (b. 1608), mar. Richard Talbot
  • 3. Hon Elizabeth Calvert (b. 1609), mar. Samuel Matthews
  • 4. Hon Grace Calvert (b. c. 1614), mar. Sir Robert Talbot, of Carton, co. Kildare
  • 5. Hon Helen Calvert (b. 1615; d. 1655)
• 'mar. (2) Joan ..... (d. bef. 1632)
• 'only child by second wife
  • 6. Hon Philip Calvert, Governor of Maryland 1660-61 (b. 1627/8; d. c 1682 Maryland), mar. (1) Ann Wolseley, and (2) Jane Sewell, dau. of Dr Henry Sewell by his wife Jane Lowe, later mar. to Charles [Calvert], 3rd Baron Baltimore
• died 15 Apr 1632 (bur. at St Dunstan's-in-the-West Church, London)
• created 16 Feb 1624/5 Baron Baltimore, of Baltimore in the County of Longford
• 'suc. by son
• 'note matriculated at Oxford as a Gentleman Commoner 1594; BA 1597; Under Secretary of State; Clerk of the Privy Council 1605; Member of Parliament for Bossiney 1609-11, for Yorkshire 1620-22 and for the University of Oxford 1624-25; on a diplomatic mission to the King of France 1611 and to the Elector Palatine 1615; knighted 1617; Secretary of State 1618/9-25; Privy Councillor 1618/9; a Lord of the Treasury 1620; a life pension of £1,000 and a grant of the Province of Avalon in Newfoundland; resigned his preferments on becoming a Roman Catholic 1624/5; obtained from King Charles I a grant of the Province of Maryland (which passed the Great Seal a few weeks after his death in 1632) - the grant was to him and his heirs for ever to hold in common socage as of the Manor of Windsor, paying yearly upon Easter Tuesday at Windsor Castle, as an acknowledgement to the Crown, two Indian arrows and the fifth part of any gold or silver ore mined in the province
  • Cecil [Calvert], 2nd Baron Baltimore
• bapt. 2 Mar 1605/6
• mar. after 20 Mar 1627/8 Hon Anne Arundell (b. c. 1615; d. 23 Jul 1649; bur. at Tisbury, co. Wiltshire), 3rd dau. of Thomas [Arundell], 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour, by his second wife Anne Philipson, 3rd dau. of Miles Philipson, of Crook, co. Westmorland
• children .... etc.
• From: http://www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk/online/
• _________________

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http://members.tripod.com/j_croadtalk/hamricksofcalifornia1850/id33...

By the time that King James I died and his son Charles I ruled England, George had distinguished himself as a statesman and loyal subject. He served several terms as a Minister of Parliament. King James I, and later his son King Charles I, gave George lands in Ireland and grants of money. Yet George had a problem: he had become a member of the Roman Catholic Church. Catholics were not permitted to work in high offices for the King of England or to work as Ministers of Parliament.

In 1625, George announced to James I that he had become a Catholic, and so had to resign his job. But King James I liked George so much that he decided to give him another title. Sir George Calvert then became the First Baron of Baltimore, a town on the southern coast of Ireland. Now that George had both money and lands, he could support himself and his family. He was excited about exploration of the New World. He wanted to help create English colonies in America, so he invested money in both the New England and Virginia companies. He bought land on the coast of Newfoundland (now a part of eastern Canada) in 1620. George sent Captain Edward Wynne to Newfoundland to lead a group of settlers and to serve as their Governor. George soon received permission from King James I to establish a larger colony called the Province of Avalon in Newfoundland. George himself voyaged to Avalon and lived there for two years, summer of 1627 to the winter of 1628/29. But Newfoundland’s climate was cold. The English settlers had a difficult time surviving there.

George then asked the King for a grant of land further south near the Chesapeake Bay. He drew a map for King Charles I, showing a territory that he wanted just north of the colony of Virginia. He hoped that this territory would have warmer weather and so be more suitable for an English colony. George died in 1632, before Charles I had time to approve the charter for George’s colony, named Maryland (“Terra Mariae”). George’s eldest son, Cecil, the Second Lord Baltimore helped to bring his father’s dream colony to life. Another son, Leonard, became Maryland’s First Governor.

http://mdroots.thinkport.org/library/georgecalvert.asp

• Reference: FamilySearch Genealogy - SmartCopy: Mar 3 2019, 0:35:05 UTC

Immigrated 1606 Private sec to Sir Robert Cecil

29 SEP 1617 Knighted by King James I

Knighted 29 September 1617

2300 acres in Langfrod, Ireland-Manor of Baltimore

1624 Convert to Catholic

1625 Retired from public life

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore

baptism Great Morrshams, Parish of Skelton, Yorkshire, England

1st Lord Baltimore

Baron

Children Calvert had a total of thirteen children: Cecil, who succeeded his father as the 2nd Baron Baltimore, Leonard, Anne, Mary, Dorothy, Elizabeth, Grace, Francis, George, Helen, Henry, John, and Philip

Lord Baltimore

Education 1593-94 Matriculated at Trinity College at Oxford University and received a Bachelor's Degree in 1597

Education 1598-1601 Studied municipal law at Lincoln's Inn in London, England

GEDCOM Note

1st Lord Baltmore

GEDCOM Note