Baltimore, George Calvert, 1st Lord

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Baltimore, George Calvert, 1st Lord (c.1580–1632). Royal servant, MP, and secretary of state from 1619 to 1625, Calvert relinquished office when he openly declared his conversion to catholicism. He shared with his catholic father-in-law, Lord Arundell of Wardour, a wish for an American lordship, beginning a settlement at Ferryland, in his short-lived Province of Avalon, in Newfoundland. Calvert, who visited the Chesapeake, obtained from Charles I in 1632 proprietary rights to land carved out of Virginia north of the Potomac. The Maryland (named after Charles I's catholic wife) charter gave the Baltimore family palatinate powers of government and has been characterized as representing Charles's ‘idealized picture of a restored monarchical authority in England’. Calvert died in 1632; his sons, Cecilius, the second baron, and Leonard, the first governor, introduced religious toleration in order to encourage Roman catholic settlement but protestants later became numerous and dominant.

Richard C. Simmons

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Cecilius Calvert 2d Baron Baltimore

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