Far up the
Chesapeake, a hundred miles or so from Point Comfort, he found an island
that he liked, and named it Kent Island. Here for his men he built cabins
with gardens around them, a mill and a church. He was far from the river
James and the mass of his fellows, but he esteemed himself to be in
Virginia and upon his own land. What came of Claiborne's enterprise the
sequel has to show.
CHAPTER IX. MARYLAND
There now enters upon the scene in Virginia a man of middle age, not
without experience in planting colonies, by name George Calvert, first Lord
Baltimore. Of Flemish ancestry, born in Yorkshire, scholar at Oxford,
traveler, clerk of the Privy Council, a Secretary of State under James,
member of the House of Commons, member of the Virginia Company, he knew
many of the ramifications of life. A man of worth and weight, he was placed
by temperament and education upon the side of the court party and the Crown
in the growing contest over rights. About the year 1625, under what
influence is not known, he had openly professed the Roman Catholic
faith -- and that took courage in the seventeenth century, in England!
Some years before, Calvert had obtained from the Crown a grant of a part of
Newfoundland, had named it Avalon, and had built great hopes upon its
settlement. But the northern winter had worked against him. He knew, for he
had resided there himself with his family in that harsh clime. "From the
middle of October to the middle of May there is a sad fare of winter on all
this land.
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