Draft posted: 2019-02-09
On the ground from the beginning
Colonial Maryland, like its Chesapeake neighbor Virginia, was marked by slavery, but also by its distinction as a Catholic haven in British North America. George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, had been raised a Catholic, but he converted to the Church of England to pursue a life of service to King James. But, Calvert's conversion was half-hearted and he eventually reverted to Catholicism, and in the 1620s, he took up his long-held dream of helping to colonize North America with his fellow-Catholics in mind. He began by investing in an emerging Catholic colony in Newfoundland, but finding it inhospitable he set his sights on the Chesapeake. After visiting Virginia in 1629, Calvert pressed on to secure the necessary permissions from the Crown and the Privy Council to draw up a charter for Maryland. In 1631 the Privy Council embarked on the work of drawing up a charter that would grant Calvert absolute rule over the land between the Delaware Bay and the Potomac River. While charter was in preparation George Calvert died (1632), but his twenty-six year-old son, Cecil, took up his work. The younger Lord Baltimore was assisted in by Andrew White, SJ, who had been an advisor to George Calvert in planning and publicizing the venture since 1628.1
Andrew White's relationship with the Calverts assured that the English Jesuits would play a major role in the establishment of Catholic life in Maryland. In 1633, White set sail from England as one of the province's original Adventurers, leading British who were responsible for guiding expeditions of people with fewer means to populate the colony. White undertook his voyage on the Ark and Dove, bringing 26 men with him to support his mission to Christianize the territory. White's group was joined by other wealthy Adventurers and their accompanying Settlers, who were most often Protestant indentured servants. In March 1634, the vessels landed on an island in the lower Potomac, and from that spot, the Maryland Catholic community and the Society of Jesus grew up together in Lord Baltimore's North American colony.2
White's role in publicizing and recruiting colonists for the voyage ensured that he and the English Jesuits shared the interests of the wealthy Adventures who were responsible for creating the colonial community from the beginning. Despite their missionary aims for their interaction with the local native communities, the Jesuits found themselves aligned with the Catholic planter class who settled the area, rather than the burgeoning population of Protestant indentured servants who came to do the work of building the colony.
Thus, in the late 1630s, just as every other wealthy Adventurer did, the Jesuits undertook the process of claiming their land from Lord Baltimore. This early crew, Andrew White, John Altham (aka Gravenor), Thomas Copley, and Ferdinand Pulton, filed their claims as individuals rather than as an order because English, and hence Maryland, did not recognize the right of a religious order of corporate body to own property. Given that Lord Baltimore resisted the Jesuits' efforts to hold their land in common, eventually, they transferred the land rights to a layperson, Cuthbert Fenwick, to hold in trust for the order. In doing so they set into motion the process that resulted in the establishment of the first two Jesuit plantations in Southern Maryland: St. Inigoe's Manor and St. Thomas's Manor.3
