Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH COLONIAL LITERATURE
3. What hypocrisies, if any, does Williams perceive among the Puritans in
America? Why?
4. How does Williams’s view of the Puritans’ purpose and place in America
dier from Bradford’s or Winthrop’s? Why?
5. What views does Williams express that foreshadow America’s post-
Revolutionary separation of church and state?
2.6 CECIL CALVERT, LORD BALTIMORE
(1605–1675)
From his father George Calvert, Cecil Calvert inherited the title of Lord
Baltimore and the charter from King Charles I to establish a colony at the Province
of Maryland, comprising ten to twelve million acres of land in what is now the state
of Maryland. Calvert governed the colony from England, sending his Instructions to
the Colonists by Lord Baltimore to his brother Leonard, who served as the colony’s
rst governor. Calvert’s instructions served as the foundation for Maryland’s laws.
Throughout his proprietorship, Cecil Calvert fostered religious tolerance in the
colony of Maryland. After Leonard’s death, Calvert commissioned a Protestant,
William Stone, to serve as governor. He gave Stone a new law to be voted on by
the Maryland Assembly, a law that came to be known as the Act of Toleration. This
new law allowed colonists freedom of worship in any Christian faith, provided they
maintained loyalty to Cecil Calvert and Maryland’s government.
2.6.1 From A Relation of the Lord Baltemore’s Plantation
in Maryland
Chapter I
His most Excellent Majestie having by his Letters Patent, under the Great Seale
of England, granted a certaine Countrey in America (now called Maryland, in
honour of our gratious Queene) unto the Lord Baltemore, with divers Priviledges,
and encouragements to all those that should adventure with his Lordship in the
Planting of that Countrey: the benet and honour of such an action was readily
apprehended by divers Gentlemen, of good birth and qualitie, who thereupon
resolved to adventure their Persons, and a good part of their fortunes with his
Lordship, in the pursuite of so noble and (in all likelihood) so advantagious an
enterprize. His Lordship was at rst resolved to goe in person; but the more important
reasons perswading his stay at home, hee appointed his brother, Mr. Leonard
Caluert to goe Governour in his stead, with whom he joyned in Commission, Mr.
Jerome Hawley, and Mr. Thomas Cornwallis (two worthy and able Gentlemen.)
These with the other Gentlemen adventurers, and their servants to the number
of neere 200. people, imbarked theselves for the voyage, in the good ship called
the Arke, of 300. tunne & upward, which was attended by his Lordships Pinnace,
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