ed of to his Ldps use." There is, however, one
fact which must not be lost sight of in regard to Leonard Calvert's
commission to Hill. If it was executed by a member of the council, and
therefore was a forgery, for in the records Calvert's name is signed
to it, and the place of the seal is noted, it is not at all likely
that it would have been allowed by Calvert on his return, and by his
immediate successors, to be preserved and copied into the records. If
all other proof failed this last would establish the validity of
Hill's commission.

But Calvert, who, throughout his whole career as governor of Maryland,
showed unchanging devotion to his brother's interests, gathered in
Virginia a body of soldiers and returned at the end of 1646 to St.
Mary's, where he easily repossessed himself of that part of the
country, though Kent Island remained still in possession of
Claiborne's forces. Thus was ended what has been called Ingle's
rebellion, in which the loss of the lord proprietor's personal estate
"was in truth so small as that it was not Considerable when it was
come in Ballance with the Safety of the Province which as the then
present Condition of things stood, hung upon so ticklish a pin as that
unless such a disposition had been made thereof an absolute ruin and
subversion of the whole Province would inevitably have followed."[62]
Another proof of Hill's regular appointment is that Calvert on the
29th of December, soon after his return, re-assembled the Assembly,
which Hill had summoned and adjourned, and proceeded with it to enact
laws.[63] Although a later Assembly in 1648 protested against the laws
passed by this Assembly, the proprietor recognized them as valid, and
wrote in 1649 that it had been "lawfully continued" by his brother
"ffor although the first Sumons were issued by one who was not our
Lawfull Lieutenant there, yet being afterwards approved of by one that
was, it is all one, as to the proceedings afterward as if at first
they had issued from a lawfull Governor."[64] The writer is no lawyer,
but it seems, that, if the Assembly of Hill was "lawfully continued"
and "approved" by Calvert, the recognition by Baltimore must have been
legally retroactive, and, therefore, that the laws passed before
Calvert's return must have been legally valid, saving of course the
proprietor's dissent. Leonard Calvert having spent some months in
settling the affairs of the province died, June 9th, 1647, and Greene
ruled in hi