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CHAPTER I.

SETTLEMENT AND EARLY HISTORY.

Any history of Maryland may well begin with the names of George and Cecilius Calvert, two names in which the State may take much pride. To the former of these, the father, is due the idea of founding the colony;

George and Cecilius Calvert, Founders of the State.

and to the latter, the son, is due the successful carrying out of that idea.

George Calvert was born in England in the year 1582. After being educated at Oxford and traveling on the Continent he returned to England, where he married Anne Mynne. He was a great favorite of King James I.`under whom he held many offices and by whom he was knighted in 1617. Two years later he was appointed Secretary of State. In the year 1624 he resigned this office at the same time that he publicly professed the Roman Catholic religion. Whether he was first converted to that faith at the time or had before held it in secret is not certainly known; but at any rate his religion did not lose him the King's favor, for in the following year he was made Baron Baltimore of the Irish peerage, and received large estates. He took his

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GEORGE CALVERT.

title from the name of his manor of Baltimore, in County Longford, in the central part of Ireland.

Settlement of Avalon.

Lord Baltimore was greatly interested in the colonization of America, and in the year 1623 received from King James the grant of a part of southeastern Newfoundland. He sent some colonists there at once, but did not go himself until five years later, when he sailed with his wife and children, except the eldest, to the new settlement called Avalon. Soon after his arrival he was attacked by three French cruisers which he succeeded in driving off, but a worse enemy awaited him. The climate was so severe, the winters so long and cold, that half the settlers were sick and a number of them died. At length Lord Baltimore wrote to the new King of England, Charles I., that he was going to sail, with all his people except a few fishermen, farther south, and asked the King to give him a part of the lands belonging to the crown, in Virginia. In October, 1629, he arrived at Jamestown.

Now, as we have said, Lord Baltimore was a Catholic, and the people of Virginia in those days did not like the Catholics, or as they were then called the Papists. Accordingly they forced Lord Baltimore to sail back to England. There, after much trouble, he received from King Charles a new charter, almost exactly like his first one, giving him the province of Maryland, which was named after the Queen, Henrietta Maria. Before the charter was sealed, however, Lord Baltimore died, worn out by the hardships he had suffered in Newfoundland.

Death of the first
Lord Baltimore,
April 15, 1632.

Every loyal boy and girl of Maryland should remember the name of George Calvert, not only because he

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