ncy. In answer to his lordship's
announcement of his purpose "to plant and dwell," they gave him welcome
to do so on the same terms with themselves, and proceeded to tender him
the oath of supremacy, the taking of which was flatly against his Roman
principles. Baltimore suggested a mitigated form of the oath, which he
was willing to take; but the authorities "could not imagine that so much
latitude was left for them to decline from the prescribed form"; and his
lordship sailed back to England, leaving in Virginia, in token of his
intention to return, his servants and "his lady," who, by the way, was
not the lawful wife of this conscientious and religious gentleman.

Returned to London, he at once set in motion the powerful influences at
his command to secure a charter for a tract of land south of the James
River, and when this was defeated by the energetic opposition of the
friends of Virginia, he succeeded in securing a grant of land north and
east of the Potomac, with a charter bestowing on him and his heirs "the
most ample rights and privileges ever conferred by a sovereign of
England."[55:1] The protest of Virginia that it was an invasion of the
former grant to that colony was unavailing. The free-handed generosity
with which the Stuarts were in the habit of giving away what did not
belong to them rarely allowed itself to be embarrassed by the fear of
giving the same thing twice over to different parties.

The first Lord Baltimore died three months before the charter of
Maryland received the great seal, but his son Cecilius took up the
business with energy and great liberality of investment. The cost of
fitting out the first emigration was estimated at not less than forty
thousand pounds. The company consisted of "three hundred laboring men,
well provided in all things," headed by Leonard and George Calvert,
brothers of the lord proprietor, "with very near twenty other gentlemen
of very good fashion." Two earnest Jesuit priests were quietly added to
the expedition as it passed the Isle of Wight, but in general it was a
Protestant emigration under Catholic patronage. It was stipulated in the
charter that all liege subjects of the English king might freely
transport themselves and their families to Maryland. To discriminate
against any religious body in England would have been for the proprietor
to limit his hope of rapid colonization and revenue and to embroil
himself with political enemies at home. His own and his f