y, 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.

CHAPTER 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Virginia Company, and after the charter of the latter was revoked he was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 emerge