Loe raamatut: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 33, July, 1860», lehekülg 5

CHAPTER IV.
DRYASDUST

I have now to change my scene, and to pursue in another quarter more important investigations. I break off with some regret from my visit to St. Mary's, because it had many attractions of its own, which would form a pleasant theme for description. Some of the results of that visit I embodied, several years ago, in a fiction which I fear the world will hardly credit me in saying has as much history in it as invention.¹ But my journey had no further connection with the particular subject before us, after the discovery of the tomb. I therefore take my leave, at this juncture, of good Father Carberry and St. Inigoes, and also of my companion in this adventure,– pausing but a moment to say, that the Superior of St. Inigoes has, some time since, gone to his account, and that I am not willing to part with him in my narrative without a grateful recognition of the esteem I have for his memory, in which I share with all who were acquainted with him,–an esteem won by the simple, unostentatious merit of his character, his liberal religious sentiment, and his frank and cordial hospitality, which had the best flavor of the good old housekeeping of St. Mary's,–a commendation which every one conversant with that section of Maryland will understand to imply what the Irish schoolmaster, in one of Carleton's tales, calls "the hoighth of good living."

After my return from this excursion, I resolved to make a search amongst the records at Annapolis, to ascertain whether any memorials existed which might furnish further information in regard to the events to which I had now got a clue. And here comes in a morsel of official history which will excuse a short digression.

The Legislature had, about this time, directed the Executive to cause a search through the government buildings, with a view to the discovery of old state papers and manuscripts, which, having been consigned, time out of mind, to neglect and oblivion, were known only as heaps of promiscuous lumber, strewed over the floors of damp cellars and unfrequented garrets. The careless and unappreciative spirit of the proper guardians of our archives in past years had suffered many precious folios and separate papers to be disposed of as mere rubbish; and the not less culpable and incurious indolence of their successors, in our own times, had treated them with equal indifference. The attention of the Legislature was awakened to the importance of this investigation by Mr. David Ridgely, the State Librarian, and he was appointed by the Executive to undertake the labor. Never did beagle pursue the chase with more steady foot than did this eager and laudable champion of the ancient fame of the State his chosen duty. He rummaged old cuddies, closets, vaults, and cocklofts, and pried into every recess of the Chancery, the Land Office, the Committee-Rooms, and the Council- Chamber, searching up-stairs and down-stairs, wherever a truant paper was supposed to lurk. Groping with lantern in hand and body bent, he made his way through narrow passages, startling the rats from their fastnesses, where they had been intrenched for half a century, and breaking down the thick drapery–the Gobelin tapestry I might call it–woven by successive families of spiders from the days of the last Lord Proprietary. The very dust which was kicked up in Annapolis, as the old newspapers tell us, at the passage of the Stamp Act, was once more set in motion by the foot of this resolute and unwearied invader, and everywhere something was found to reward the toil of the search. But the most valuable discoveries were made in the old Treasury,–made, alas! too late for the full fruition of the Librarian's labor. The Treasury, one of the most venerable structures in the State, is that lowly and quaint little edifice of brick which the visitor never fails to notice within the inclosure of the State- House grounds. It was originally designed for the accommodation of the Governor and his Council, and for the sessions of the Upper House of the Provincial Legislature; the Burgesses, at that time, holding their meetings in the old State House, which occupied the site of the present more imposing and capacious building: this latter having been erected about the year 1772.

In some dark recess of the Treasury Office Mr. Ridgely struck upon a mine of wealth, in a mouldy wooden box, which was found to contain many missing Journals of the Provincial Council, some of which bore date as far back as 1666. It was a sad disappointment to him, when his eye was greeted with the sight of these folios, to see them crumble, like the famed Dead-Sea Apples, into powder, upon every attempt, to handle them. The form of the books was preserved and the character of the writing distinctly legible, but, from the effect of moisture, the paper had lost its cohesion, and fell to pieces at every effort to turn a leaf. I was myself a witness to this tantalizing deception, and, with the Librarian, read enough to show the date and character of the perishing record.

Through this accident, the Council Journals of a most interesting period, embracing several years between 1666 and 1692, were irretrievably lost. Others sustained less damage, and were partially preserved. Some few survived in good condition.

Our Maryland historians have had frequent occasion to complain of the deficiency of material for the illustration of several epochs in the Provincial existence, owing to the loss of official records. No research has supplied the means of describing the public events of these intervals, beyond some few inferences, which are only sufficient to show that these silent periods were marked by incidents of important interest. The most striking of these privations occurs towards the end of the seventeenth century,–precisely that period to which the crumbling folios had reference.

This loss of the records has been ascribed to their frequent removals during periods of trouble, and to the havoc made in the rage of parties. The Province, like the great world from which it was so far remote, was distracted with what are sometimes called religious quarrels, but what I prefer to describe as exceedingly irreligious quarrels, carried on by men professing to be Christians, and generated in the heat of disputes concerning the word of the great Teacher of "peace on earth." Out of these grew any quantity of rebellion and war, tinctured with their usual flavor of persecution. For at this era the wars of Christendom were chiefly waged in support of dogmas and creeds, and took a savage hue from the fury of religious bigotry. The wars of Europe since that period have arisen upon commercial and political questions, and religion has been freed from the dishonor of promoting these bloody strifes so incompatible with its high office. In these quarrels of the fathers of Maryland, the archives of government were seized more than once, and, perhaps, destroyed. On one occasion they were burnt. And so, amongst all these disorders, it has fallen out that the full development of the State history has been rendered impossible.

Mr. Ridgely's foray, however, into this domain of dust and darkness has happily rescued much useful matter to aid the future chronicler in supplying the deficiency of past attempts to trace the path of our modest annals through these silent intervals. Incidentally the Librarian's work has assisted my story; for, although the recovered folios did not touch the exact year of my search, the pursuit of them led me to what I may claim as a discovery of my own. I found what I could not say was wholly lost, but what, until Mr. Ridgely's exploration drew attention to the records, might have been said to have shrunk from all notice of the present generation, and to be fast falling a prey to the tooth of time and the visit of the worm. A few years more of neglect and the ill usage of careless custodians, and it would have passed to that depository of things lost upon the earth, which fable has placed in the moon. It was my good fortune, in this upturning of relics of the past, to lay my hand upon a sadly tattered and decayed MS. volume,–unbound, without beginning and without end, coated with the dust which had been gathering upon it ever since Chalmers and Bozman had done their work of deciphering its quaint old text. It lay in the state of rubbish, in an old case, where many documents of the same kind had been consigned to the same oblivion, and with it had been sleeping for as many years, perhaps, as the Beauty in the fairy tale,–happily destined, at last, to be awakened, as she was, by one who by his perseverance had won a title to herself.

This manuscript was now, in this day of revival, brought out from its hiding- place, and, upon inspection, proved to be a Journal of the Council for some few years including the very date of the death of the Collector on the Patuxent.

The record was complete, neatly written in the peculiar manuscript character of that age, so difficult for a modern reader to decipher. Its queer old- fashioned spelling suggested the idea that our ancestors considered both consonants and vowels too weak to stand alone, and that therefore they doubled them as often as they could; and there was such an actual identification of its antiquity in its exterior aspect as well as in its forms of speech, that, when I have sat poring over it alone at midnight in my study, as I have often done, I have turned my eye over my shoulder, expecting to see the apparition of Master John Llewellin–who subscribes his name with a very energetic nourish as Clerk of the Council–standing behind me in grave-colored doublet and trunk-hose, with a starched ruff, a wide-awake hat drawn over his brow, and a short black feather falling amongst the locks of his dark hair towards his back.

This Journal lets in a blaze of light upon the old tradition of Talbot's Cave. The narrative of what it discloses it is now my purpose to make as brief as is compatible with common justice to my subject.

CHAPTER V.
A FRAGMENT OF HISTORY

Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, the son of Cecilius, was, according to the testimony of all our annalists, a worthy gentleman and an upright ruler. He was governor of Maryland, by the appointment of his father, from 1662 to 1675, and after that became the Lord Proprietary by inheritance, and administered the public affairs in person. His prudence and judgment won him the esteem of the best portion of his people, and the Province prospered in his hands.

All our histories tell of the troubles that beset the closing years of his residence in Maryland. They arose partly out of his religion, and in part out of the jealousy of the crown concerning the privileges of his charter.

He was a Roman Catholic; but, like his father, liberal and tolerant in opinion, and free from sectarian bias in the administration of his government. Apart from the influence of his father's example, the training of his education, his real attachment to the interests of the Province, and his own natural inclination,–all of which pointed out to him the duty as well as the advantage of affording the utmost security to the freedom of religious opinion,–the conditions under which he held his proprietary rights rendered a departure from this policy the most improbable accusation that could be made against him. The public mind of England at that period was fevered to a state of madness by the domestic quarrel that raged within the kingdom against the Catholics. The people were distracted with constant alarms of Popish plots for the overthrow of the government. The King, a heartless profligate, absorbed in frivolous pleasures, scarcely entertained any grave question of state affairs that had not some connection with his hatreds and his fears of Catholics and Dissenters. Then, also, the Province itself was composed, in far the greater part, of a Protestant population,–computed by some contemporary writers at the proportion of thirty to one,–a population who were guarantied freedom of conscience by the Charter, and who possessed all necessary power both legal and physical to enforce it.

Under such circumstances as these, how is it possible to impute designs against the old established toleration, which had marked the history of Maryland from its first settlement to that day, to so prudent and careful a ruler as Charles Calvert, without imputing to him, at the same time, a folly so absurd as to belie every opinion that has ever been uttered to his advantage?

Yet, notwithstanding these improbabilities, the accusation was made and affected to be believed by the King and his Council; the result of which was that a royal order was sent to the Proprietary, commanding him to dismiss every Catholic from employment in the Province, and to supply their places by the appointment of Protestants.

The most plausible theory upon which I can account for this harsh proceeding is suggested by the fact that parties in the Province took the same complexion with those in the mother country and ran parallel with them,–that the same excitements which agitated the minds of the people in England were industriously fomented here, where no similar reason for them existed, as the volunteer work of demagogues who saw in them the means of promoting their own interest,–that, in fact, this opposition to the Proprietary grew out of a failing in our ancestors which has not yet been cured in their descendants, a weakness in favor of the loaves and fishes. The party in the majority carried the elections, and felt, of course, as all parties do who perform such an exploit, that they had made a very gigantic sacrifice for the good of the country and deserved to be remunerated for such an act of heroism, and thereupon set up and asserted that venerable doctrine which has been erroneously and somewhat vaingloriously claimed as the conception of a modern statesman, namely,–"that to the victors belong the spoils." I rejoice in the discovery that a dogma so profound and so convenient has the sanction of antiquity to commend it to the platform of the patriots of our own time.

I must in a few words notice another charge against Lord Baltimore, which was even more serious than the first, and to which the cupidity of the King lent a willing ear. Parliament had passed an act for levying certain duties on the trade of the Southern Colonies, which were very oppressive to the commerce of Maryland. These duties were gathered by Collectors specially appointed for the occasion, who held their commissions from the Crown, and who were stationed at the several ports of entry of the Province. The frequent evasion of these duties gave rise to much ill-will between the Collectors and the people. Lord Baltimore was charged with having connived at these evasions, and with obstructing the collection of the royal revenue. His chief accusers were the Collectors, who, being Crown officers, seemed naturally to array themselves against him. Although there was really no foundation for this complaint, yet the King, who never threw away a chance to replenish his purse, compelled the Proprietary to pay by way of retribution a large sum into the Exchequer.

I have no need to dwell upon this subject, and have referred to it only because it explains the relation between Lord Baltimore and Christopher Rousby, and has therefore some connection with my story. Rousby was an enemy to the Proprietary; and from a letter preserved by Chalmers it appears there was no love lost between them. Lord Baltimore writes to the Earl of Anglesey, the President of the King's Council, in 1681,–"I have already written twice to your Lordship about Christopher Rousby, who I desired might be removed from his place of Collector of his Majesty's Customs,–he having been a great knave, and a disturber of the trade and peace of the Province"; which letter, it seems, had no effect,–as Christopher Rousby was continued in his post. He was doubtless emboldened by the failure of this remonstrance against him to exhibit his ill- will towards the Proprietary in more open and more vexatious modes of annoyance.

All these embarrassments threw a heavy shadow over the latter years of Lord Baltimore's life, and now drove him to the necessity of making a visit to England for the purpose of personal explanation and defence before the King. He accordingly took his departure in the month of June, 1684, intending to return in a few months; but a tide of misfortune that now set in upon him prevented that wish, and he never saw Maryland again.

In about half a year after Calvert's arrival in England, King Charles the Second was gathered to his fathers, and his brother, the Duke of York, a worse man, a greater hypocrite, and a more crafty despot, reigned in his stead.

James the Second was a Roman Catholic, and Calvert, on that score alone, might have expected some sympathy and favor: he might, at least, have expected justice. But James was heartless and selfish. The Proprietary found nothing but cold neglect, and a contemptible jealousy of the prerogatives and power conferred by his charter. James himself claimed to be a proprietary on this continent by virtue of extensive royal grants, and was directly interested with William Penn in defeating the claims of the Baltimore family to the country upon the Delaware; he was, therefore, in fact, the secret and prepossessed enemy of Calvert. Instead of protection from the Crown, Calvert found proceedings instituted in the King's Bench to annul his charter, which, but for the abrupt termination of this short, disgraceful reign in abdication and flight, would have been consummated under James's own direction. The Revolution of 1688 brought up other influences more hostile still to the Proprietary; and the Province, which was always sedulous to follow the fashions of London, was not behindhand on this occasion, but made, also, its revolution, in imitation of the great one. The end of all was the utter subversion of the Charter, and a new government of Maryland under a royal commission. How this was accomplished our historians are not able to tell. From 1688 to 1692 is one of our dark intervals of which I have spoken. It begins with a domestic revolution and ends with the appointment of a Royal Governor, and that is pretty nearly all we know about it. After this, there was no Proprietary dominion in Maryland, until it was restored upon the accession of George the First in 1715, when it reappears in the second Charles Calvert, a minor, the grandson of the late Proprietary. This gentleman was the son of Benedict Leonard Calvert, and was educated in the Protestant faith, which his father had adopted as more consonant with the prosperity of the family and the hopes of the Province.

Before Lord Baltimore took his departure, he made all necessary arrangements for the administration of the government during his absence. The chief authority he invested in his son Benedict Leonard, to whom I referred just now,–at that time a youth of twelve or fourteen years of age. My old record contains the commission issued on this occasion, which is of the most stately and royal breadth of phrase, and occupies paper enough to make a deed for the route of the Pacific Railroad. In this document "our dearly beloved son Benedict Leonard Calvert" is ordained and appointed to be "Lieutenant General, Chief Captain, Chief Governor and Commander, Chief Admiral both by sea and land, of our Province of Maryland, and of all our Islands, Territories, and Dominions whatsoever, and of all and singular our Castles, Forts, Fortresses, Fortifications, Munitions, Ships, and Navies in our said Province, Islands, Territories, and Dominions aforesaid."

I hope to be excused for the particularity of my quotation of this young gentleman's titles, which I have given at full length only by way of demonstration of the magnificence of our old Palatine Province of Maryland, and to excite in the present generation a becoming pride at having fallen heirs to such a principality; albeit Benedict Leonard's more recent successors to these princely prerogatives may have reason to complain of that relentless spirit of democracy which has shorn them of so many worshipful honors. But we republicans are philosophical, and can make sacrifices with a good grace.

As it was quite impossible for this young Lieutenant General to go alone under such a staggering weight of dignities, the same commission puts him in leading-strings by the appointment of nine Deputy or Lieutenant Governors who are charged with the execution of all his duties. The first-named of these deputies is "our dearly beloved Cousin," Colonel George Talbot, who is associated with "our well-beloved Counsellor," Thomas Tailler, Colonel Vincent Low, Colonel Henry Darnall, Colonel William Digges, Colonel William Stevens, Colonel William Burgess, Major Nicholas Sewall, and John Darnall, Esquire. These same gentlemen, with Edward Pye and Thomas Truman, are also commissioned to be of the Privy Council, "for and in relation to all matters of State."

These appointments being made and other matters disposed of, Charles Calvert took leave of his beautiful and favorite Maryland, never to see this fair land again.