George Calvert 1st Baron Baltimore

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore c.1580-1632, colonizer. In 1606 he became private secretary to Sir Robert Cecil, then a secretary of state. His advance was rapid. In 1609 he became a member of Parliament, in 1613 clerk of the privy council, and in 1619 secretary of state and a member of the privy council. He defended the measures of James I in the House until his resignation in 1625, when he declared himself a Roman Catholic. The king then created him Baron Baltimore. Calvert had been a member of the Virginia Company and a member of the council of the New England Company, but, wishing to found his own colony, he was granted in 1623 the peninsula of Avalon in Newfoundland. He spent much money on a colony that was established there, but it did not prosper, and in 1629 Baltimore petitioned for a grant farther south where the weather was less severe. In 1632 the king granted him the territory N of the Potomac River that became the province of Maryland. Baltimore prepared the charter of his proposed colony but died before it could be accepted. The grant passed to his son, Cecilius Calvert.

Bibliography: See C. C. Hall, The Lords Baltimore and the Maryland Palatinate (1902).

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. After visiting the Chesapeake, he obtained from Charles I in 1632 proprietary rights to landcarved out of Virginia. The Maryland (named after Charles I's catholic wife) charter gave the Baltimore family palatinate powers of government.