[44:1] See the interesting demonstration of this point in articles by E. D. Neill in "Hours at Home," vol. vi., pp. 22, 201.
Mr. Neill's various publications on the colonial history of Virginia and Maryland are of the highest value and authority. They include: "The English Colonization of America During the Seventeenth Century"; "History of the Virginia Company"; "Virginia Vetusta"; "Virginia Carolorum"; "Terra Mariæ; or, Threads of Maryland Colonial History"; "The Founders of Maryland"; "Life of Patrick Copland."
[45:1] It was customary for the Company, when a candidate was proposed for a chaplaincy in the colony, to select a text for him and appoint a Sunday and a church for a "trial sermon" from which they might judge of his qualifications.
[50:1] The project of Eleuthera is entitled to honorable mention in the history of religious liberty.
[51:1] For fuller details concerning the Puritan character of the Virginia Company and of the early ministers of Virginia, see the articles of E. D. Neill, above referred to, in "Hours at Home," vol. vi.
THE NEIGHBOR COLONIES TO VIRGINIA--MARYLAND AND THE CAROLINAS.
The chronological order would require us at this point to turn to the Dutch settlements on the Hudson River; but the close relations of Virginia with its neighbor colonies of Maryland and the Carolinas are a reason for taking up the brief history of these settlements in advance of their turn.
The occupation of Maryland dates from the year 1634. The period of bold and half-desperate adventure in making plantations along the coast was past. To men of sanguine temper and sufficient fortune and influence at court, it was now a matter of very promising and not too risky speculation. To George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, one of the most interesting characters at the court of James I., the business had peculiar fascination. He was in both the New England Company and the Virginia Company, and after the charter of the latter was revoked he was one of the Provisional Council for the government of Virginia. Nothing daunted by the ill luck of these companies, he tried colonizing on his account in 1620, in what was represented to him as the genial soil and climate of Newfoundland. Sending good money after bad, he was glad to get out of this venture at the end of nine years with a loss of thirty thousand pounds. In 1629 he sent home his children, and with a lady and servants and forty of his surviving colonists sailed for Jamestown, where his reception at the hands of the council and of his old Oxford fellow-student, Governor Pott, was not cordial. He could hardly have expected that it would be. He was a recent convert to the Roman Catholic Church, with a convert's zeal for proselyting, and he was of the court party. Thus he was in antagonism to the Puritan colony both in politics and in religion. A formidable disturbing element he and his company would have been in the already unquiet community. The authorities of the colony were equal to the emergency. In answer to his lordship's announcement of his purpose "to plant and dwell," they gave him welcome to do so on the same terms with themselves, and proceeded to tender him the oath of supremacy, the taking of which was flatly against his Roman principles. Baltimore suggested a mitigated form of the oath, which he was willing to take; but the authorities "could not imagine that so much latitude was left for them to decline from the prescribed form"; and his lordship sailed back to England, leaving in Virginia, in token of his intention to return, his servants and "his lady," who, by the way, was not the lawful wife of this conscientious and religious gentleman.