Colonial period
This list includes appointed governors, including those briefly appointed by the Cromwellian government, but excludes those who claimed themselves as governors of the colony without a formal appointment from London.
Maryland began as a proprietary colony of the Catholic Calvert family, the Lords Baltimore under a royal charter, and its first eight governors were appointed by them. When the Catholic King of England, James II, was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution, the Calverts lost their charter and Maryland became a royal colony. It was governed briefly by local Protestants before the arrival of the first of 12 governors appointed directly by the English crown. The royal charter was restored to the Calverts in 1715 and governors were again appointed by the Calverts through the American Revolution. [1]
This list includes appointed governors, including those briefly appointed by the Cromwellian government, but excludes those who claimed themselves as governors of the colony without a formal appointment from London.
The Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, the first law in North America requiring religious tolerance for Christians. It was passed on April 21, 1649, by the assembly of the Maryland colony, in St. Mary's City in St. Mary's County, Maryland. It created one of the pioneer statutes passed by the legislative body of an organized colonial government to guarantee any degree of religious liberty. Specifically, the bill, now usually referred to as the Toleration Act, granted freedom of conscience to all Christians. Historians argue that it helped inspire later legal protections for freedom of religion in the United States. The Calvert family, who founded Maryland partly as a refuge for English Catholics, sought enactment of the law to protect Catholic settlers and those of other religions that did not conform to the dominant Anglicanism of Britain and her colonies.
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 proceeded 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.
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 called the Chesapeake Colonies.
The Southern Colonies were overwhelmingly rural, with large agricultural operations, which made use of slavery and indentured servitude extensive. During a series of civil unrest, Bacon's Rebellion shaped the way that servitude and slavery worked in the South. After a series of attacks on the Susquehannock, attacks that were ensued after the group of natives burnt one of Bacon's farms, Bacon's arrest, along with other arrest warrants, were issued by Governor Berkely, for attacking the natives without his permission. Bacon avoided detainment, though, and then burnt Jamestown, in opposition of the governor previously denying him land in fear of native attacks, however Bacon hadn't believe his policies were entirely conventional, saying that they didn't ensure protection to the English settlers, as well as the exclusion of Bacon from Berkeley's social clubs and friend groups. The rebellion dissolved sometime in 1676, following Charles II's initial sending of troops to restore order in the colony. This rebellion influenced the view of the Africans, helping create a completely African servitude and workforce in the Chesapeake Colonies, alleviating primarily White servitude, a working-class that could be repugnant at times through disobedience and mischief. This also helped racial superiority in White regions, helping the poor White and wealthy White people, respectively, feel almost equal. It diminished alliances between White and Black people, happened in Bacon's Rebellion.
The colonies developed prosperous economies based on the cultivation of cash crops, such as tobacco, indigo, and rice. An effect of the cultivation of these crops was the presence of slavery in significantly higher proportions than in other parts of British America.
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America from 1634 until 1776, when it made common cause with the group of Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and, finally in 1781—as the 13th signatory to the Articles of Confederation—it ratified its perpetual union with that group as the state of Maryland. The province's first settlement and capital was St. Mary's City, located at the southern end of St. Mary's County, a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay that is 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.
William Claiborne also, spelled Cleyburne was an English pioneer, surveyor, and an early settler in the colonies/provinces of Virginia and Maryland and around the Chesapeake Bay. Claiborne became a wealthy merchant and planter, as well as a major political figure in the mid-Atlantic colonies. He featured in disputes between the colonists of Virginia and the later settling of Maryland, partly because of his earlier trading post on Kent Island in the mid-way of the Chesapeake Bay, which provoked the first naval military battles in North American waters. Claiborne repeatedly attempted and failed to regain Kent Island from the Maryland Calverts, sometimes by force of arms, after its inclusion in the lands that were granted by a 1632 Royal Charter to the Calvert family. Kent Island had become Maryland territory after the surrounding lands were granted to Sir George Calvert, first Baron and Lord Baltimore (1579–1632) by the reigning King of England, Charles I.
Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore was an English peer and colonial administrator. He inherited the province of Maryland in 1675 upon the death of his father, Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. 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.
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.
John Coode is best known for leading a rebellion that overthrew Maryland's colonial government in 1689. He participated in four separate uprisings and briefly served as Maryland's governor (1689–1691) as the 1st Leader of the Protestant Associators.
Jesse Wharton 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.
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.
Sir Lionel Copley was the 1st Royal Governor of Maryland from 1692 through his death in 1693. He was the first official royal governor appointed by the British crown after the colony was removed from the proprietary control of the Calvert family during the Glorious Revolution. Copley engaged in a series of political struggles with the colonial assembly and the colonial secretary, Thomas Lawrence, in the year between his arrival and his death the next year.
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, sometimes called Charles Carroll the Settler to differentiate him from his son and grandson, was an Irish-born planter and lawyer who spent most of his life in the English Province of Maryland. Carroll, a Catholic, is best known for his efforts to hold office in the Protestant-dominated colony which eventually resulted in the disfranchisement of Maryland's Catholics. The second son of Irish Catholic parents, Carroll was educated in France as a lawyer before returning to England, where he pursued the first steps in a legal career. Before that career developed, he secured a position as Attorney General of the young colony of Maryland. Its founder George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore and his descendants intended it as a refuge for persecuted Catholics.
Then Province of Maryland had been a British / English colony since 1632, when Sir George Calvert, first Baron of Baltimore and Lord Baltimore (1579-1632), received a charter and grant from King Charles I of England and first created a haven for English Roman Catholics in the New World, with his son, Cecilius Calvert (1605-1675), the second Lord Baltimore equipping and sending over the first colonists to the Chesapeake Bay region in March 1634. The first signs of rebellion against the mother country occurred in 1765, when the tax collector Zachariah Hood was injured while landing at the second provincial capital of Annapolis docks, arguably the first violent resistance to British taxation in the colonies. After a decade of bitter argument and internal discord, Maryland declared itself a sovereign state in 1776. The province was one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America to declare independence from Great Britain and joined the others in signing a collective Declaration of Independence that summer in the Second Continental Congress in nearby Philadelphia. Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton signed on Maryland's behalf.
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.
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.
