ather's
intimate acquaintance with failure in the planting of Virginia and of
Newfoundland had taught him what not to do in such enterprises. If the
proprietor meant to succeed (and he _did_ mean to) he was shut up
without alternative to the policy of impartial non-interference with
religious differences among his colonists, and the promotion of mutual
forbearance among sects. Lord Baltimore may not have been a profound
political philosopher nor a prophet of the coming era of religious
liberty, but he was an adroit courtier, like his father before him, and
he was a man of practical good sense engaged in an enormous land
speculation in which his whole fortune was embarked, and he was not in
the least disposed to allow his religious predilections to interfere
with business. Nothing would have brought speedier ruin to his
enterprise than to have it suspected, as his enemies were always ready
to allege, that it was governed in the interest of the Roman Catholic
Church. Such a suspicion he took the most effective means of averting.
He kept his promises to his colonists in this matter in good faith, and
had his reward in the notable prosperity of his colony.[57:1]

The two priests of the first Maryland company began their work with
characteristic earnestness and diligence. Finding no immediate access to
the Indians, they gave the more constant attention to their own
countrymen, both Catholic and Protestant, and were soon able to give
thanks that by God's blessing on their labors almost all the Protestants
of that year's arrival had been converted, besides many others. In 1640
the first-fruits of their mission work among the savages were gathered
in; the chief of an Indian village on the Potomac nearly opposite Mount
Vernon, and his wife and child, were baptized with solemn pomp, in
which the governor and secretary of the colony took part.

The first start of the Maryland colony was of a sort to give promise of
feuds and border strifes with the neighbor colony of Virginia, and the
promise was abundantly fulfilled. The conflict over boundary questions
came to bloody collisions by land and sea. It is needless to say that
religious differences were at once drawn into the dispute. The vigorous
proselytism of the Jesuit fathers, the only Christian ministers in the
colony, under the patronage of the lord proprietor was of course
reported to London by the Virginians; and in December, 1641, the House
of Commons, then on the brink of