bitter and relentless enemy of the Lord Proprietary,--and
there may have met Kenelm Chiseldine, John Coode, Colonel Jowles, and
others noted for their hatred of the Calvert family, and in such company
as this indulged himself in deriding Lord Baltimore and his government,
During his stay in the port, his men came on shore, and, imitating their
captain's unamiable temper, roamed in squads about the town and its
neighborhood, conducting themselves in a noisy, hectoring manner towards
the inhabitants, disturbing the repose of the quiet burghers, and
shocking their ears with ribald abuse of the authorities. These
roystering sailors--I mention it as a point of historical interest--had
even the audacity to break into Alderman Garret Van Swearingen's garden,
and to pluck up and carry away his cabbages and other vegetables,
and--according to the testimony of Mr. Cordea, whose indignation was the
more intense from his veneration for the Alderman, and from the fact
that he made his Worship's shoes--they would have killed one of his
Worship's sheep, if his (Cordea's) man had not prevented them; and
after this, as if on purpose more keenly to lacerate his feelings, they
brought these cabbages to Cordea's house, and there boiled them before
his eyes,--he being sick and not able to drive them away.
After a few days spent in this manner, the swaggering captain--whose
name, it was soon bruited about, was Thomas Allen, of his Majesty's
Navy--went on board of his ketch,--or brig, as we should call it,--the
Quaker, weighed anchor, and set sail towards the Potomac, and thence
stood down the Bay upon the coast of Virginia. Every now and then, after
his departure, there came reports to the Council of insults offered by
Captain Allen to the skippers of sundry Bay craft and other peaceful
traders on the Chesapeake; these insults consisting generally in
wantonly compelling them to heave to and submit to his search, in
vexatiously detaining them, overhauling their papers, and offending
them with coarse vituperation of themselves, as well as of the Lord
Proprietary and his Council.
About a month later the Quaker was observed to enter the Patuxent River,
and cast anchor just inside of the entrance, near the Calvert County
shore, and opposite Christopher Rousby's house at Drum Point. This
was--says my chronicle--on Thursday, the 30th of October, in this year
1684. As yet Captain Allen had not condescended to make any report of
his arrival in th
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