Reviewed by Owen Stanwood | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 63.1

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Reviewed by Owen Stanwood | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 63.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Owen Stanwood, Catholic University of America

English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century. By John D. Krugler. Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 336 pages. $46.00 (cloth).
In the seventeenth century, English Catholics faced a terrible dilemma. Even practicing their religion in public made them appear to most of their neighbors as faithless subjects under the control of the pope. Nonetheless, as John D. Krugler indicates in his illuminating study of the first Lords Baltimore, some individual Catholics were able to "beat the system and flourish" (4). For three generations of the Calvert family, the problem of loyalty inspired a "new and radically different model for church-state relations" (x) that manifested itself in their colony of Maryland. Though this experiment in religious toleration ultimately failed, Krugler focuses on the Calverts' positive achievements, noting that they kept good order in their diverse and contentious colony for several decades, pointing the way toward modern ideas of separation later enshrined in the American Revolution.	1
Krugler's analysis begins with Sir George Calvert, the scion of a Yorkshire Catholic family whose early conversion to Anglicanism allowed him to rise through the ranks of James I's court and become one of the king's secretaries of state. His reputation plummeted during the controversy over the Spanish match in the 1620s, when the king's attempt to marry his son to the Spanish Infanta provoked massive popular disapproval. With his political advancement out of the question, Calvert converted back to his childhood faith and became active in colonial affairs. Charles I granted him an Irish title, making him Lord Baltimore, and a charter to colonize Newfoundland. Calvert invested in overseas plantations primarily to build his estate, but he also hoped to find a place within the English polity where Catholics could escape the penal laws that restricted public worship and officeholding in England. Calvert believed that by maintaining a secular government that steered clear of religious preferences he could ensure the king's subjects' political allegiance and build more profitable colonies. In other words, he was driven simultaneously by conscience and self-interest.	2
The first Lord Baltimore never realized most of his plans in America. The Newfoundland plantation made little money, and Calvert himself fled after enduring one northern winter. In the meantime he pressed the king for a new charter to settle on the Chesapeake Bay north of Virginia. Despite opposition from powerful interests who feared granting land to a Catholic, Calvert won his patent in 1632; his death the same year left the task of building Maryland to his son, Cecil Calvert. The most engaging chapters of the book recount how Cecil transformed his father's vision into an extraordinary colonial experiment on the Chesapeake Bay.	3
Krugler paints the second Lord Baltimore as perhaps the most successful absentee proprietor in colonial history. Colonization was a dangerous undertaking in the best of circumstances, and the proprietor's Catholicism made him an easy target for enemies in London and America. Baltimore's political acumen helped him preserve his charter, even as he endured almost constant political infighting and two successful rebellions against proprietary authority in Maryland, all amid a political crisis in England that culminated in civil war. After Protestant rebels overthrew his government in 1644, Baltimore relinquished power to Protestants, silencing rumors that only Catholics could advance in Maryland. At the same time, he found an unlikely sympathizer in Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, who, despite being on the opposite end of the religious spectrum, shared Calvert's desire for limited liberty of conscience. This commitment appeared most clearly in the 1649 act concerning religion, which guaranteed freedom of private worship to any Trinitarian Christian.	. . .

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