{"id":6676,"date":"2023-10-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2023\/10\/31\/the-neglected-tale-of-americas-first-religious-freedom-law\/"},"modified":"2023-10-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T00:00:00","slug":"the-neglected-tale-of-americas-first-religious-freedom-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2023\/10\/31\/the-neglected-tale-of-americas-first-religious-freedom-law\/","title":{"rendered":"The Neglected Tale of America\u2019s First Religious Freedom Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tracing the origins and legacy of the Maryland Act of Toleration of 1649<\/strong><\/p>\n

(This painting by Emmanuel Leutze entitled \u201cThe Founding of Maryland\u201d (1634) depicts the Piscatawy Indians meeting with the colonists in St. Mary\u2019s City. The figure on the left is believed to be Jesuit missionary Andrew White. In front of him, the chief of the Yaocomico clasps hands with the colonists\u2019 leader, Leonard Calvert.)<\/p>\n

In 1634, what became the colony of Maryland was founded when English settlers bought land from the Yaocomico people and established St. Mary\u2019s City. The Maryland Act of Toleration of 1649 was the first religious freedom legislation passed on the American continent. Yet the Maryland story of religious toleration\u2014probably because it was a story of the settlement of Catholics in America\u2014has largely been left out, or minimized, in the popular American understanding of how religious freedom developed. This article briefly reviews how this landmark Act of Toleration came about, and some of its legacy.<\/p>\n

Origins<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Maryland colony had its origins in the desire of a Catholic English nobleman, George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, and of his son and heir, Cecil Calvert, to found and govern a colony in the New World. The Calverts were unquestionably motivated partly by the desire \u201cto gain wealth, enhance their status, and enlarge [their] king\u2019s dominions\u201d; but it was also the case \u201cthat the Calverts acted to secure their religious freedom and the right of their coreligionists to worship without fear of the penal laws\u201d that made the public practice of Catholicism illegal in early modern England.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

George Calvert had been raised a Roman Catholic, but for most of his life he conformed to the Church of England, the state church.2<\/sup> This allowed him to rise to high rank in the service of King James I, including serving as the secretary of state. During George\u2019s time in office he founded a colony in Newfoundland named Avalon.3<\/sup> In 1625, however, George \u201cresigned his offices . . . over issues of foreign policy,\u201d as England veered toward war with Catholic Spain, \u201cbut James I rewarded his years of service\u201d by elevating him to the nobility as Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage.4<\/sup> The same year, 1625, George renewed \u201chis allegiance to the Catholic faith.\u201d5<\/sup><\/p>\n

However, \u201cthe now Catholic first Lord Baltimore [continued to] pursue his colonial interests.\u201d6<\/sup> Baltimore journeyed to Newfoundland in 1627, staying briefly, but returning \u201cthere in 1628, evidently prepared to settle permanently.\u201d In 1628, however, with England at war with France, the Avalon settlements were raided by French ships. In addition, \u201cBaltimore was plagued also by the opposition of some of the colonists to his policy of religious toleration. They resented the presence of the Roman Catholic priests whom he had brought out from England.\u201d7<\/sup> A Puritan preacher, Erasmus Stourton, reported to England his outrage that \u201cthe two priests in the colony . . . say Mass every Sunday \u2018and doe use all other the ceremonies of the church of Rome.\u2019\u2005\u201d8<\/sup><\/p>\n

In August 1629 Lord Baltimore wrote to Charles I, petitioning the king \u201cfor a grant of land in Virginia. . . . Without waiting for a reply to this appeal,\u201d he left for Jamestown.9<\/sup> Once there, however, he discovered a confessional impediment to settling. Although \u201cthe 1609 [Virginia] charter did not exclude people \u2018suspected to affect the superstitions of the Churche of Rome,\u2019 it required those who wanted to reside in Virginia to take the oath of supremacy.\u201d And the 1612 charter required the local \u201cauthorities to tender the oaths of supremacy and allegiance to anyone venturing\u201d to the colony.10<\/sup> In other words, to settle in Virginia required one to conform to the Church of England. When Baltimore arrived, the local authorities tendered the two oaths to him, but he absolutely refused to take them. The members of the governor\u2019s council demanded that he \u201cprovide himself for the next ship . . .  home.\u201d11<\/sup> George duly went back to England, where he sought a royal grant of territory to the north of the Virginia colony, around the great bay of the Chesapeake.<\/p>\n

Charles I initially demurred. But Baltimore continued to press the king, with whom he was on very good terms, not only for a grant of land, but one with a charter that \u201cwould define his powers as the territory\u2019s proprietor, or owner,\u201d in contrast to the Jamestown colony, which had been settled by the Virginia Company. Such a proprietorship would allow him to make his own policy, including in religion. But George, 1st Lord Baltimore, died in April 1632, when on the verge of finally gaining his long-sought charter.12<\/sup> It was issued later that year, however, granting to George\u2019s son, Cecil, who had succeeded him as 2nd Lord Baltimore, and his heirs, powers over the new colony \u201cequal to the king\u2019s own power in England.\u201d13<\/sup> The date of Cecil\u2019s conversion to the Church of Rome is not known, but after 1625 or 1626 \u201che lived openly as a Catholic\u201d (and he took the name Cecilius on his confirmation).14<\/sup><\/p>\n

Settlement<\/strong><\/p>\n

In March 1634, two ships, the Ark<\/i> and the Dove<\/i>, commanded by the new Lord Baltimore\u2019s younger brother Leonard, \u201clanded at St. Clement\u2019s Island in the Potomac River.\u201d The original colonists, while probably mostly Protestant, also included some Catholics.15<\/sup> On March 25, 1634, a Jesuit priest, Andrew White, who had accompanied the expedition, \u201coffered a Mass of thanksgiving, a day still celebrated annually as Maryland Day.\u201d16<\/sup> Today it is easy to lose sight of just how extraordinary this was. Back in England, from the reign of Elizabeth I on into the reign of Charles II, a period of more than 100 years, Jesuit priests, operating as \u201cmissionaries\u201d to provide spiritual care to Roman Catholics, if discovered, would typically be executed by hanging, drawing, and quartering\u2014effectively being publicly tortured to death in a truly horrific manner. Yet here were Jesuit priests presiding over the founding of a new colony.<\/p>\n

Leonard Calvert and his men left St. Clement\u2019s Island, seeking \u201ca place to settle. They struck a bargain with the nearby Yaocomaco, a peaceful farming and hunting group, for their village land. . . . Three days later, the remaining colonists arrived at the site, which they named St. Mary\u2019s City.\u201d It was the seat of government for the new colony, dubbed Maryland, from its foundation in 1634 up to 1695. This new settlement, while named in theory for Charles I\u2019s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, could also be understood as being named after the virgin Mary. Within a few years of the founding, the settlers \u201cadded about ten houses, a storehouse, a mill [and] a Catholic chapel.\u201d17<\/sup> Almost from the start, then, this capital of the new colony included a place of public Catholic worship, in defiance of the laws governing religion back in England.<\/p>\n

Two Confessions<\/strong><\/p>\n

A recent historian has rhetorically asked whether Father White\u2019s celebration of a Catholic Mass was \u201can act of celebration or act of defiance, or both?\u201d18<\/sup> We may never know the answer, but what seems clear is that the Calvert family never intended \u201cto establish Maryland as a Roman Catholic colony.\u201d19<\/sup> Even apart from the fact that Cecilius Calvert \u201cknew that a colony that depended solely on the immigration of Catholics would not sustain itself,\u201d20<\/sup> politically a Catholic colony would have been impossible in the religiopolitical circumstances of early \u200bseventeenth-century England. But the Calverts unquestionably did want to create a colony in which Catholic and Protestant coexistence was possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaltimore\u2019s Maryland was unique. . . . In the three colonies founded before Maryland, the civil government actively promoted religious activities; this was especially true in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, where religion had been the principal reason for the colonies\u2019 founding.\u201d In contrast, under the 2nd Lord Baltimore\u2019s proprietorship, \u201cMaryland assiduously avoided any taint of a religious test for voting [in local elections] or holding [local] office,\u201d in contrast to England (or the other three colonies), where only Protestants could do either.21<\/sup> The exception was that Jesuits could not vote or hold office. Baltimore did not oversee the establishment of local churches and require inhabitants to support them through taxation, as was done in Virginia: \u201cHis government founded no churches.\u201d Yet he allowed the Jesuits to conduct \u201cworship services for the Catholics.\u201d22<\/sup><\/p>\n

A History of Division<\/strong><\/p>\n

This evenhanded policy was not without controversy. In the 1640s, civil war broke out in England and the British Isles, the fruit of both political and religious divisions. The English Parliament fought King Charles I, defeated him, and in 1649 executed him. But divisions went beyond the rivalry of king and Parliament. \u201cAnglicans, Catholics, Puritans, Presbyterians, and other Protestants had many deep-seated disagreements,\u201d and \u201cfighting among different groups in England inevitably spilled over into Maryland. With a Catholic proprietor and governing elite, and a mostly Protestant population, Maryland could not avoid being drawn into the fight.\u201d23<\/sup><\/p>\n

In these turbulent times \u201cthe Calverts\u2019 Catholicism . . . was used on more than one occasion during battles for political control in Maryland. In 1645 and again in 1654, [Lord] Baltimore temporarily lost control of his colony to enemies who used his Catholicism as leverage against him.\u201d24<\/sup><\/p>\n

The Act of Toleration<\/strong><\/p>\n

In response to these turbulent times, Lord Baltimore set out a vision for a different kind of future, writing in 1649: \u201cBy Concord and Union a small Collony may growe into a great and renouned Nation, whereas by Experience it is found, that by discord and Dissention Great and glorious kingdomes and Common Wealthes decline and come to nothing.\u201d In 1651 he wrote that \u201ca Government divided in it self must needs bring Confusion and Consequently much misery upon the people under it.\u201d25<\/sup> He doubtless was commenting partly on the political division that afflicted the British Isles in the era, but he was also surely addressing the problem of religious division and the need to find confessional \u201cConcord.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baltimore\u2019s vision did not remain theoretical. In 1649, at his urging, the colonial assembly in St. Mary\u2019s City passed \u201cAn Act Concerning Religion.\u201d While the act \u201ccodified into law the [preexisting] informal policy,\u201d it should not be discounted on these grounds, for the act was a significant departure from the persecutory mindset that had previously prevailed in Europe and its colonies.26<\/sup> It was \u201cthe first such legislation in the English-speaking world.\u201d27<\/sup> The act provided that no person \u201cprofessing to believe in Jesus Christ shall henceforth bee any waies troubled, molested, or discountenanced for or in any respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof.\u201d28<\/sup> While this act extended toleration only to Trinitarians (since Socinians, or anti-Trinitarians, were held not<\/i> \u201cto believe in Jesus Christ\u201d), the act established a notable\u2014and noble\u2014precedent. It is the source for the language of \u201cfree exercise\u201d of religion found in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.<\/p>\n

Legacy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Forty years after the Act of Toleration, \u201cBaltimore\u2019s government was overthrown permanently when a group of Protestant rebels seized control of the colony in the name of William and Mary,\u201d who, in the \u201cGlorious Revolution,\u201d had ejected James II, England\u2019s last Roman Catholic king. But in 1689 in Maryland there were \u201cProtestants [who] supported the Calverts,\u201d and part of the opposition to Baltimore was based on his proprietorial rule, not his confessional policy, so that, as one historian writes, \u201cto see the battles as simple oppositions between Catholics and Protestants risks oversimplifying a complex issue.\u201d29<\/sup><\/p>\n

Two hundred years after the foundation of Maryland, in a United States in which Protestantism predominated, the Catholicism of the Calverts and of many of Maryland\u2019s early settlers was an embarrassment. However, the state\u2019s assembly \u201cbelieved that [the] policy of religious toleration should be understood as foreshadowing the right of religious freedom found in the U.S. Constitution.\u201d Thus, the state legislators, in establishing a college at St. Mary\u2019s City (St. Mary\u2019s Female Seminary, today\u2019s St. Mary\u2019s College of Maryland), set it up as nondenominational, \u201cand the Seminary\u2019s Board of Trustees was subsequently adamant that no \u2018controversial questions of churches shall be permitted . . . on the consecrated spot where free toleration on the subject of religion was first promulgated.\u2019\u2006\u201d30<\/sup> But in fact, in its early years, \u201creligious disputes shut down the seminary for three years and threatened its permanent closure.\u201d A Catholic society argued \u201cthat the Maryland founding and origin of religious liberty were a Catholic legacy,\u201d but influential Protestants countered \u201cthat religious liberty in Maryland reflected economic pragmatism on Cecil Calvert\u2019s part.\u201d For many years the \u201cdominant interpretation\u201d historiographically came to be that \u201cthe Lords Baltimore [were] colonial entrepreneurs who acted solely or primarily for economic gain.\u201d31<\/sup><\/p>\n

Today the work of recent historians makes it plain that \u201cfamilies like the Calverts, who willingly risked practicing their faith openly while pursuing public goals, helped to keep the Catholic religion alive in England and in America.\u201d Rather than seeing them \u201cas running from something negative (government persecution),\u201d they were \u201cmoving toward something positive.\u201d32<\/sup> The Catholic contribution to the first act of religious toleration in the English language is no longer underplayed or denied.<\/p>\n

1 John D. Krugler, English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century<\/i> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), pp. 6, 7.<\/p>\n

2 Ibid., p. 4.<\/p>\n

3 Allan M. Fraser, \u201cCalvert, George, 1st Baron Baltimore,\u201d Dictionary of Canadian Biography<\/i>, vol. 1 (1000\u20131700): http:\/\/www.biographi.ca\/en\/bio\/calvert_george_1E.html.<\/p>\n

4 Suzanne Ellery Chapelle and Jean B. Russo, Maryland: A History<\/i>, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), p. 4.<\/p>\n

5 Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, <\/i>p. 4.<\/p>\n

6 Ibid., p. 5.<\/p>\n

7 Fraser, \u201cCalvert, George, 1st Baron Baltimore.\u201d<\/p>\n

8 Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, p. 97.<\/p>\n

9 Fraser, \u201cCalvert, George, 1st Baron Baltimore.\u201d<\/p>\n

10 Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, p. 105.<\/p>\n

11 Ibid.<\/p>\n

12 Chapelle and Russo, Maryland: A History<\/i>, pp. 4, 7; Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, pp. 117, 118.<\/p>\n

13 Chapelle and Russo, Maryland: A History<\/i>, p. 5.<\/p>\n

14 Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, p. 131.<\/p>\n

15 Chapelle and Russo, Maryland: A History<\/i>, p. 11; Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, pp. 135, 136.<\/p>\n

16 Chapelle and Russo, Maryland: A History<\/i>, p. 11; Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, p. 157.<\/p>\n

17 Chapelle and Russo, Maryland: A History<\/i>, p. 11.<\/p>\n

18 Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, p. 157.<\/p>\n

19 Chapelle and Russo, Maryland: A History<\/i>, p. 5.<\/p>\n

20 Julia A. King, Archaeology, Narrative, and the Politics of the Past: The View from Southern Maryland<\/i> (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012), p. 55.<\/p>\n

21 Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, pp. 157, 158; cf. Chapelle and Russo, Maryland: A History<\/i>, p. 7.<\/p>\n

22 Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, p. 158.<\/p>\n

23 Chapelle and Russo, Maryland: A History<\/i>, p. 15.<\/p>\n

24 King, Archaeology, Narrative, and the Politics of the Past<\/i>, p. 56.<\/p>\n

25 Both are quoted in Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, p. 133.<\/p>\n

26 King, Archaeology, Narrative, and the Politics of the Past<\/i>, p. 56.<\/p>\n

27 Chapelle and Russo, p. 16.<\/p>\n

28 Quoted in King, p. 56.<\/p>\n

29 King, Archaeology, Narrative, and the Politics of the Past<\/i>, p. 56.<\/p>\n

30 Ibid., p. 68.<\/p>\n

31 Ibid., p. 88; Krugler, English and Catholic<\/i>, p. 3.<\/p>\n

32 Krugler, p. 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tracing the origins and legacy of the Maryland Act of Toleration of 1649 (This painting by Emmanuel Leutze entitled \u201cThe Founding of Maryland\u201d (1634) depicts the Piscatawy Indians meeting with the colonists in St. Mary\u2019s City. The figure on the left is believed to be Jesuit missionary Andrew White. In front of him, the chief<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[356],"tags":[188],"class_list":["post-6676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-november-december-2023","tag-november-december-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}