Jesse Wharton | |
---|---|
7th Proprietary Governor of Maryland | |
In office June 16, 1676 –July 27, 1676 | |
Preceded by | Charles Calvert |
Succeeded by | Thomas Notley |
Jesse Wharton (died 1676) was the 7th Proprietary Governor of Maryland during a brief period in 1676. He was appointed by the royally chartered proprietor of Maryland,Charles Calvert,3rd Baron Baltimore. Following his death,Wharton was briefly succeeded by Cecil Calvert,infant son of Charles Calvert,before the next Governor,Thomas Notley,was appointed.
Wharton emigrated to Maryland from the English colony in Barbados in 1670. He quickly became a successful planter and politician in the colony,holding several political offices and amassing 11 slaves and more than 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) before his death only six years after his arrival. [1] Once in the colony,Wharton married Elizabeth Sewall,the daughter of a politically prominent local settler named Henry Sewall. [2] Wharton became a member of the Governor's Council in 1672 and became the Deputy Governor in 1676,with de facto gubernatorial authority,for a brief period before his death. [3] At the time,the nominal Governor of the colony was Cecil Calvert,the infant son of the colony's proprietor. In reality,the Governor's Council led by Wharton ruled the colony,and he is listed by the Maryland State Archives as having been a colonial governor. [4] Wharton's appointment passed over four more senior members of the council,including Philip Calvert. [5]
The appointment came at a dangerous time for the colony,when threats from both within and outside its settlers loomed. Settlers on the western shore feared an attack from hostile Native Americans,and earlier that year the colony had armed some friendly tribes in preparation for just such an eventuality. Next door in Virginia,Bacon's Rebellion threatened the colonial order itself. These twin crises reached a peak in July,when the rebellion in Virginia succeeded in toppling its colonial government and settlers on the western shore were warned to arm themselves against an imminent native attack. [5] In the midst of this crisis,and only a little more than a month after assuming office,Wharton died. He had only governed the colony from Charles Calvert's departure on June 16,1676,until he named Thomas Notley as his successor just prior to his death in July of the same year. [6] Upon his death,he left behind one son,Henry Wharton,and his wife,Elizabeth. She later remarried a man named William Digges. [3]
Cecil Calvert,2nd Baron Baltimore was an English politician,peer and lawyer who was the first proprietor of Maryland. Born in Kent in 1605,he inherited the proprietorship after the death of his father,George Calvert,1st Baron Baltimore,for whom it had been intended. Calvert proceed to establish and manage the Province of Maryland as a proprietary colony for English Catholics from his English country house of Kiplin Hall in North Yorkshire.
Baron Baltimore,of Baltimore,County Longford,was a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1625 and ended in 1771,upon the death of its sixth-generation male heir,aged 40. Holders of the title were usually known as Lord Baltimore for short.
The Southern Colonies within British America consisted of the Province of Maryland,the Colony of Virginia,the Province of Carolina,and the Province of Georgia. In 1763,the newly created colonies of East Florida and West Florida would be added to the Southern Colonies by Great Britain until the Spanish Empire took back Florida. These colonies were the historical core of what would become the Southern United States,or "Dixie". They were located south of the Middle Colonies,albeit Virginia and Maryland were also considered as the Chesapeake Colonies.
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776,when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryland. Its first settlement and capital was St. Mary's City,in the southern end of St. Mary's County,which is a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay and is also bordered by four tidal rivers.
George Calvert,1st Baron Baltimore was an English peer and politician. He achieved domestic political success as a member of parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I. He lost much of his political power after his support for a failed marriage alliance between Prince Charles and the Spanish House of Habsburg royal family. Rather than continue in politics,he resigned all of his political offices in 1625 except for his position on the Privy Council and declared his Catholicism publicly. He was created Baron Baltimore in the Peerage of Ireland upon his resignation. Baltimore Manor was located in County Longford,Ireland.
Charles Calvert,3rd Baron Baltimore,inherited the colony of Maryland in 1675 upon the death of his father,Cecil Calvert,2nd Baron Baltimore,(1605–1675). He had been his father's Deputy Governor since 1661 when he arrived in the colony at the age of 24. However,Charles left Maryland for England in 1684 and would never return. The events following the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 would cost Calvert his title to Maryland;in 1689 the royal charter to the colony was withdrawn,leading to direct rule by the British Crown. Calvert's political problems were largely caused by his Roman Catholic faith which was at odds with the established Church of England.
Benedict Leonard Calvert,4th Baron Baltimore was an English peer and politician. He was the second son of Charles Calvert,3rd Baron Baltimore (1637–1715) by Jane Lowe,and became his father's heir upon the death of his elder brother Cecil in 1681. The 3rd Lord Baltimore was a devout Roman Catholic,and had lost his title to the Province of Maryland shortly after the events of the Glorious Revolution in 1688,when the Protestant monarchs William III and Mary II acceded to the British throne. Benedict Calvert made strenuous attempts to have his family's title to Maryland restored by renouncing Roman Catholicism and joining the Church of England.
Charles Calvert,5th Baron Baltimore,was a British nobleman and Proprietary Governor of the Province of Maryland. He inherited the title to Maryland aged just fifteen,on the death of his father and grandfather,when the colony was restored by the British monarchy to the Calvert family's control,following its seizure in 1688. In 1721 Charles came of age and assumed personal control of Maryland,travelling there briefly in 1732. For most of his life,he remained in England,where he pursued an active career in politics,rising to become Lord of the Admiralty from 1742 to 1744. He died in 1751 in England,aged 52.
The Hon. Leonard Calvert was the first proprietary governor of the Province of Maryland. He was the second son of The 1st Baron Baltimore (1579–1632),the first proprietor of Maryland. His elder brother Cecil (1605–1675),who inherited the colony and the title upon the death of their father George,April 15,1632,appointed Leonard as governor of the Colony in his absence.
Margaret Brent,was an English immigrant to the Colony of Maryland,settled in its new capitol,St. Mary's City,Maryland. She was the first woman in the English North American colonies to appear before a court of the common law. She was a significant founding settler in the early histories of the colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Leonard Calvert,Governor of the Maryland Colony,appointed her as the executrix of his estate in 1647,at a time of political turmoil and risk to the future of the settlement. She helped ensure soldiers were paid and given food to keep their loyalty to the colony,thereby very likely having saved the colony from violent mutiny,although her actions were taken negatively by the absentee colonial proprietor in England,Cecil Calvert,the second Lord Baltimore,and so ultimately she paid a great price for her efforts and was forced to leave the colony.
Colonel Thomas Brooke Jr. of Brookefield was President of the Council in Maryland and acting 13th Proprietary Governor of the Province of Maryland. He was the son of Major Thomas Brooke Sr. and Esquire (1632–1676) and his second wife Eleanor Hatton (1642–1725) who later remarried Col. Henry Darnall (1645-1711).
Thomas Greene of Bobbing,Kent,2nd Proprietary Governor of Maryland was an early settler of the Maryland colony and second Provincial Governor of the colony from 1647 to 1648.
Thomas Notley was the 8th Proprietary Governor of Maryland from 1676 through 1679. Having first moved to Barbados he immigrated to America in 1662. He was the speaker of the legislature in 1666. He and fellow Barbadian immigrant Jesse Wharton passed slave codes similar to those in Barbados that punished those who helped in the escape of a slave or who stole and kept another planter’s slave for themselves.
William Joseph was the 11th Proprietary Governor of Maryland from 1688 to 1689. He was appointed by the colony's proprietor Charles Calvert,3rd Baron Baltimore. Joseph attempted to maintain control of the colony in the proprietor's name,but religious turmoil related to the Glorious Revolution in England led to Joseph's being removed from office by Protestant colonists and the Calvert family losing control of the colony.
The Battle of the Severn was a skirmish fought on March 25,1655,on the Severn River at Horn Point,across Spa Creek from Annapolis,Maryland,in what at that time was referred to as the Puritan settlement of "Providence",and what is now the neighborhood of Eastport. It was an extension of the conflicts that formed the English Civil War,pitting the forces of Puritan settlers against forces aligned with Lord Baltimore,then Lord Proprietor of the colony of Maryland. It has been suggested by Radmila May that this was the "last battle of the English Civil War."
Charles Carroll (1661–1720),sometimes called Charles Carroll the Settler to differentiate him from his son and grandson,was a wealthy lawyer and planter in colonial Maryland. Carroll,a Catholic,is best known because his efforts to hold office in the Protestant-dominated colony resulted in the disfranchisement of the colony's Catholics.
Captain Charles Calvert was the 14th Proprietary Governor of Maryland in 1720,at a time when the Calvert family had recently regained control of their proprietary colony. He was appointed governor by his cousin Charles Calvert,5th Baron Baltimore,who in 1721 came into his inheritance. Calvert worked to reassert the Proprietary interest against the privileges of the colonists as set out in the Maryland Charter,and to ease tensions between the Lords Baltimore and their subjects. Religious tension,which had been a source of great division in the colony,was much reduced under his governorship. Captain Calvert was replaced as governor in 1727 by his cousin Benedict Leonard Calvert,though he continued to occupy other colonial offices. He suffered from early senility and died in 1734.
Colonel William Digges was a prominent planter,soldier and politician in the Colony of Virginia and Province of Maryland. The eldest son of Edward Digges (1620-1674/5),who sat on the Virginia Governor's Council for two decades but died shortly before Bacon's Rebellion,Digges fled to Maryland where he married Lord Calvert's stepdaughter and served on the Maryland Proprietary Council until losing his office in 1689 during the Protestant Revolution,when a Puritan revolt upset the Calvert Proprietorship. His eldest son Edward sold his primary Virginia plantation to his uncle Dudley Digges. It is now within Naval Station Yorktown. His former Maryland estate,Warburton Manor,is now within Fort Washington Park. Two additional related men with the same name served in the Virginia General Assembly,both descended from this man's uncle and his grandson Cole Digges (burgess):William Digges (burgess) and his nephew and son-in-law William Digges Jr. both represented now-defunct Warwick County,Virginia.
The Protestant Revolution,also known Coode's Rebellion after one of its leaders,John Coode,took place in the summer of 1689 in the English Province of Maryland when Puritans,by then a substantial majority in the colony,revolted against the proprietary government led by the Catholic Charles Calvert,3rd Baron Baltimore.