Bancroft's History of the United States, Part II [pp. 252-277]

1883.] BANcROFT'S HISTORY OF TIlE UivITED STATES. 2S3
brother Leonard in Maryland, and to struggle for the maintenance of the charter and colony against the opposition of his
e~~emies and the enemies of his religion.
In the present article we propose to show that another
motive of both of these noblemen was to provide an asylum in
the New World for their fellow.Cat}iolics from the persecution
they were then enduring in England; that C~cilius Calvert
having succeeded in obtaining a charter which fully enabled him
to accomplish this greatAnd noble purpose, its terms had from
the begini~ing, and with this purpose, been so enlarged and
elaborated as to enable him to extend the same protection of
civil rights and liberty of conscience to al1 the opprssed of his
countrymen and to all from whatever country they might come
and of whatever sect or creed; that the colony of Maryland was
founded upon this principle, which was carried into practice
and became the common law of the province from the foundation of the new commonwealth.
That the Catholics of England suffered a most relentless and
bloody persecution under the penal statutes enacted in the
time of Elizabeth is too well known. Under James I. and
Charles I. the penalties of recusancy were continued, and, the
same laws being still in force, the persecution was still raging.
Lord Baltimore, having joined the persecuted Catholics, endured,
as we have shown in our last article, sufferings and persecutions, in common with his co-religionists, from which the personal
friendship of those sovereigns could not save him. Charges
were preferred against him before the English authorities on
account of his carrying Catholic priests to his Newfoundland
colony of Avalon and having the holy sacrifice of the Mass
celebrated there. These circumstances showed an intention on
his part of making that colony a refuge for his persecuted fellowCatholics, where they might practise their religion. He was
prevented from leaving England for Avalon on another occasion
by a writ of nc czcat issued by the very king, his friend, doubtlessly on the instigation of his enemies. On another occasion he
was ordered by the king to return to England from Virginia,
and was thus separated from his family, whom he was by this
hurried order of return compelled to leave among his enemies
in Virginia. In Virginia he was repelled from that then inhospitable shore, and the device of tendering to him the oath of
spiritual supremacy, which they knew he could not conscientiously take and would not take, was resorted to designedly in
order to exclude him from that country and to afford his