George Calvert

Politician

• Born: 1579 or 1580
• Birthplace: Kipling, Yorkshire, England
• Died: April 15, 1632
• Place of death: London, England

English statesman

Calvert served King James I as secretary of state and as a privy councillor until 1625, when he converted to Catholicism. James created him Lord Baltimore, and he spent the remaining years of his life gaining approval for a charter for the Maryland colony, a refuge for English Catholics.

Area of achievement Government and politics

Early Life

George Calvert was born in 1579 or 1580 to Leonard and Grace Crossland Calvert in Kipling, Yorkshire. The Calvert family first appears in the records of Yorkshire in the mid-fourteenth century. In 1594, this successful merchant family had adequate resources to send George to Trinity College, Oxford University, where he graduated in 1597; he later received an honorary M.A. in 1605.

Calvert was married twice. His first marriage was to Anne Mynne (November 22, 1604); she was born on November 20, 1579, in Hertfordshire, England. Anne Mynne was the daughter of George Mynne and Elizabeth Wroth Mynne. The Wroth family had been prominent in English political life since the second half of the fourteenth century: Wroths had served as lord mayor of London and as political advisers to Henry VIII and Edward VI. Anne and George Calvert had eleven children together, several of whom became influential in the political and economic histories of England and Maryland.

Anne died on August 12, 1622. Shortly thereafter, Calvert married a second time to a person known only as Joan—no additional information has been found about the woman who would become the first Lady Baltimore. Calvert had one additional son with his second wife in 1626. Calvert traveled throughout Western and northern Europe in his years after Oxford; his intelligence and ambition attracted the attention of the future first earl of Salisbury, Robert Cecil; with Salisbury’s influence and protection, Calvert would ascend quickly in the Jacobean government.

Life’s Work

With family support and connections, Calvert gained access to Parliament in 1603 as a member for Bosmay, Cornwall (later in his political career, Calvert would represent Yorkshire and Oxfordshire). He came to Parliament the year of Elizabeth I’s death and of the accession of a new dynasty and king—the Stuart, James I. The transition of monarchs and dynasties also coincided with the beginning of a new age that reflected the developing polarization of English society. On one hand, those who identified with the monarchy tended to be Anglicans, clandestine Catholics, the traditional landed aristocracy, and others whose interests or beliefs supported a strong monarchical power. On the other hand were those who supported a strong Parliament that would share power with the monarch, a new merchant class that wanted access to power for itself, and Puritans and other Calvinists. The beginning of the seventeenth century was also a period of exploration and colonization for England. The failure of Sir Walter Ralegh’s Roanoke colony was followed by the difficult but ultimately successful colony at Jamestown in Virginia.

Calvert was industrious, ambitious, and loyal to James I and his ministers. He served as clerk of the Privy Council (1613) and as clerk of the Crown and assizes in County Clare, Ireland (1615-1617). He was knighted by James I as a reward for his work (1617); served as treasurer, appointed by James I as principal secretary of state (1619); and served as a member of the Virginia Company. As secretary of state (1619-1625), Calvert reached the zenith of his political power; during most difficult years in foreign and domestic politics, Calvert served as James I’s primary adviser and minister. While the political environment did not improve—indeed, the fundamental differences between king and the Parliamentarians only deepened—James rewarded Calvert for his loyalty and service by granting him a manor house and 2,300 acres (931 hectares) in County Longford, Ireland, on February 18, 1621.

Throughout his life, Calvert had indicated repeatedly his interest in colonization. In 1609, he joined the Virginia Company, and in 1622, James granted his secretary of state the Avalon Peninsula, in Newfoundland. Calvert spent considerable resources attempting to develop Avalon; after visiting Avalon in 1627, he returned in 1628 and spent the winter of 1628-1629 along with about one hundred others. Calvert was devastated by the long Newfoundland winter and the deaths of ten colonists; he determined that the location did not warrant any further investment.

During the early 1620’s, Calvert was moving to the right in his religious thinking and beliefs; his move toward Catholicism paralleled and opposed the growth of Puritanism. In 1625, Calvert announced his conversion to Catholicism and offered his resignation; at first, the dying James I refused to accept it, but Calvert withdrew from active involvement in the life of the government. James, in response, augmented his gift of Irish land to his trusted adviser: Calvert formally entered the Irish peerage on February 12, 1625, when James created him Baron Baltimore of Baltimore, County Longford, Ireland.

After the failure of his efforts to develop a colony in Avalon, Calvert traveled to Virginia, where he hoped that he could identify a suitable location for a new settlement. By this time, he intended to establish a sanctuary for English Catholics, who were encountering increased persecution from the Puritans. The English governor of Virginia, John Harvey, welcomed Calvert but declared that Virginia was not a locale that Calvert could pursue: As a royal colony, Virginia required all colonists to take an oath recognizing the monarch as head of the Church in England.

During this same trip, however, Calvert became familiar with the Chesapeake Bay and the land north of the Potomac River to Delaware Bay. It was that area that he requested of King Charles I in a charter for a new colony. Calvert worked on the charter and modeled it on a medieval palatinate. All powers were retained by the colony’s founders, but, while the colony was intended to be a place where Catholics could worship in peace, there was no mention of a preferred denomination of Christianity in the charter. As a result, the declarations relating to Christianity in the colony effectively created safeguards guaranteeing religious freedom for all Christians. After a lengthy process, the formal charter for the Maryland Colony, named after Charles I’s Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria, was granted on June 20, 1632, two months after Calvert’s death on April 15. Calvert had died in London at the age of around fifty-three. The Charter was therefore granted to Calvert’s son, Cecilius, who became the sole owner of the Maryland Colony. Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore (1605-1675), is considered the founder of Maryland, even though he never visited it.

Significance

The significance of the life and work of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, rests both on his years of service to King James I and on his later conversion to Catholicism and founding of the Maryland Colony as a haven for English Catholics. Baltimore effectively defended the policies and practices of James I’s government and served his king in several positions, including principal secretary of state, but he could not reverse the historical trends that threatened the Stuart monarchy.

Becoming a Catholic, Baltimore reflected the sentiments of a growing number of English aristocrats and, while he never visited Maryland nor lived long enough to receive the royal charter granting the Calverts a proprietary right to establish a colony north of the Potomac, he set in motion the process of establishing the Maryland Colony, intended for Catholic émigrés but also open to all Christians. Calvert’s vision of religious toleration was progressive and at odds with the thought of most during the early seventeenth century.

Bibliography

Andrews, Charles M. Our Earliest Colonial Settlements: Their Diversities of Origin and Later Characteristics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966. Includes an excellent chapter on “Maryland: A Feudal Seignory in the New World,” in which the role of Lord Baltimore in the founding of the colony is amply introduced.

Foster, James W. George Calvert: The Early Years. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1983. An excellent study of Calvert’s life that addresses his childhood, his education at Oxford, and the early years of his career.

Krugler, John D. English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. A scholarly examination of George Calvert and his seventeenth century descendants; this is a critical and important study that should be of interest to the general reader, as well as students of history.

Lough, Loree, and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Lord Baltimore: English Politician and Colonist. New York: Chelsea House, 2000. A very good introduction to Calvert; raises a series of questions that may be of interest to students who are studying colonial American history. The best introduction for younger readers.

Nicklin, J. B. C. “The Calvert Family.” Maryland Historical Magazine 16 (1921): 50-59. A reliable account of the life of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore.

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