Maryl^d, as he in his discretion shall
make choice of & think fit to be our Lieutenant Governor, &c." Such is
the command as recorded in the Council Proceedings of Maryland. But
Baltimore, in 1648, in a commission to the Governor and council in
Maryland, wrote that Leonard Calvert had no right to appoint any
person in his stead "unless such persons were of our privy council
there,"[59] although he recognized the validity of Leonard's death-bed
appointment by witnesses of Governor Greene. He, to be sure, was a
member of the council, but this fact was not mentioned in the preamble
of the commission, in which the words, with some slight changes in
tense and mood, are almost identical with those in the preamble of the
commission of July 30th, 1646, from Calvert to Hill, which,
notwithstanding doubts to the contrary, must have been genuine. For
Lord Baltimore, in the commission of 1648 seems to have acknowledged
that his brother had granted the commission to Hill,[60] who, in a
letter to Calvert, said that he had promised him one-half the customs
and rents, the remuneration stipulated in his commission. Hill, not
knowing that Calvert was dead, wrote him a letter, dated June 18th,
1647, urging the payment of his dues, and the next day Greene, the new
Governor, replied that he did not understand the matter, but that if
Hill would send an attorney "full satisfaction should be given him."
When Hill wrote next he waived the authority of Calvert, and based his
claim upon the right of the council to elect him, and in this way
placed himself upon an illegal footing, which circumstance was taken
advantage of for a time by the Maryland authorities. But finally at a
court held June 10th, 1648,[61] one year after Calvert's death, a
claim from Hill was presented "for Arrears of what consideration was
Covenanted unto him by Leonard Calvert, Esq., for his Service in the
office of Governor of this Province, being the half of his Ldps rents
for the year 1646 & the half of the Customes for the Same yeare." It
was ordered by the court, "that ye half of that yeares Customes as far
as it hath not already been received by Capt. Hill shall be paid unto
him by the Ld Prop^rs Attorny out of the first profitts which shall be
receivable to his Ldp * * * his Ldps Receiver shall accompt & pay unto
Cap^t Edward Hill or his assignes the one halfe of his Ldps rents due
at Christmas next in Lieu of the S^d rents of the yeare 1646 which
were otherwise dispos