and, finally,
created him Lord Baron of Baltimore, in Ireland.[6]

Whilst Sir George was in office, his attention, it seems, had been early
directed towards America; and in 1620, he is still mentioned in a list
of the members of the Virginia Company. Soon after, he became concerned
in the plantation of Newfoundland, and finally, obtained a patent for
it, to him and his heirs, as Absolute Lord and Proprietary, with all the
royalties of a Count Palatine. We must regret that the original, or a
copy of this grant for the province of Avalon, in Newfoundland, has not
been recently seen, or, if discovered, transmitted to this country.

Here, Sir George built a house; spent L25,000 in improvements; removed
his family to grace the new Principality; manned ships, at his own
charge, to relieve and guard the British fisheries from the attacks of
the French; but, at length, after a residence of some years, and an
ungrateful return from the soil and climate, he abandoned his luckless
enterprise.

Yet, it was soil and climate alone that disheartened the Northern
adventurer:--he had not turned his back on America. In 1629 he repaired
to Virginia, in which he had been so long concerned, and was most
ungraciously greeted by the Protestant royalists, with an offer of the
Test-Oaths of Allegiance and supremacy. Sir George, very properly
refused the challenge, and departed with his followers from the
inhospitable James River, where the bigotry of prelacy denied him a
foothold within the fair region he had partly owned.

But, before he returned to England, he remembered that Virginia was now
a Royal Province and no longer the property of corporate
speculation;--he recollected that there were large portions of it still
unoccupied by white men, and that there were bays and rivers, pouring,
sea-like, to the ocean, of which grand reports had come to him when he
was one of the committee of the Council for the affairs of the
Plantations. Accordingly, when he left the James River, he steered his
keel around the protecting peninsula of Old Point Comfort, and ascending
the majestic Chesapeake, entered its tributary streams, and laid, in
imagination, at least, the foundations of Maryland.

His examination of the region being ended, Calvert went home to England,
and in 1632, obtained the grant of Maryland from Charles I, the son of
his royal patron and friend. The charter, which is said to have been the
composition of Sir George, did not, however,