is Protestant recollections taught him the vexations of
Catholic trials, while his Catholic observation informed him sharply of
Protestant persecution. Sectarianism was already rampant across the
Atlantic.[11] The two British lodgments, in Virginia and New England,
were obstinately sectarian. Virginia was Episcopalian; New England was
Puritan;--should Maryland be founded as an exclusively Protestant
province, or an exclusively Catholic settlement? It is evident that
either would be impossible:--the latter, because it would have been both
impolitic and probably illegal; and the former because it would have
been a ridiculous anomaly to force a converted Catholic, to govern a
colony wherein his own creed was not tolerated by a fundamental and
unalterable law. It is impossible to conceive that the faith of Calvert
and the legal religion of Charles, did not enter into their
deliberations, when they discussed the Charter; and, doubtless, both
subject and sovereign justly decided to make "THE LAND OF MARY," which
the Protestant Charles baptised in honor of his Catholic Queen, a free
soil for Christianity. It was Calvert's duly and interest to make
Charles tolerant of Catholic Christianity; nor could he deny to others
the immunity he demanded for himself and his religious brethren. The
language of the charter, therefore, seems explicit and incapable of any
other meaning. There were multitudes of Catholics in England, who would
be glad to take refuge in a region where they were to be free from
disabilities, and could assert their manhood. The king, moreover,
secured for his Catholic subjects a quiet, but chartered banishment,
which still preserved their allegiance. At the court there was much
leaning towards the church of Rome. It was rather fashionable to believe
one way, and conform another. The Queen was zealous in her ancestral
faith; and her influence over the king, colored more than one of his
acts. Had Calvert gone to the market place, and openly proclaimed, that
a Protestant king, by a just charter of neutrality, had established an
American sanctuary for Catholics, and invited them thither under the
banner of the cross, one of his chief objects, must have been at once
defeated; for intolerance would have rallied its parties against the
project, and the dream of benevolence would have been destroyed for
ever. If by the term, "God's Holy Rights and the true Christian
religion," the charter meant, _the church of England_, the