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George Crossland Calvert (1578 - 1632)

First Lord Baltimore

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b. 1578 at Kipling, Yorkshire, England

m. 22 Nov 1604 Anne Mynne (1578 - 1622) at St. Peter's Cornhill, London, England

d. 15 Apr 1632 at Dunstan's in the West, London, England aged 54

Parents:

Leonard Calvert (1550 - 1611)

Grace Alicia Crossland (1552 - )

Children (1):

Cecilius Calvert (1605 - 1675)

Events in George Crossland Calvert (1578 - 1632)'s life
Date	Age	Event	Place	Src
1578		George Crossland Calvert was born	Kipling, Yorkshire, England
22 Nov 1604	26	Married Anne Mynne (aged 26)	St. Peter's Cornhill, London, England
08 Aug 1605	27	Birth of son Cecilius Calvert	London, England
aft 1611	33	Death of father Leonard Calvert (aged 61)	England
22 Aug 1622	44	Death of wife Anne Mynne (aged 43)	London, England
15 Apr 1632	54	George Crossland Calvert died	Dunstan's in the West, London, England

Personal Notes:

Converted to Roman Catholic. Tory MP House of Commons from North Yorkshire. Secretary of State in England m. 2 Dame Joane Baltimore. Lady Baltimore died c 1630 with some of her children in a shipwreck off the English coast on her way to join George in Maryland. 1595. George Calvert entered Trinity College, Oxford as a commoner. 1597. Took his degree of B.A. 1604. Married "Thursday, Nov. 22, Mr. George Calvert of St. Martins in the Fields, Gent., and Mrs. Anne Mynne of Bexley, Hertfordshire, at St. Peter's, Cornhill, London." (Parish Rec.) 1605. Received his first Master's Degree at Oxford. Became M.P. for Bosnay, Cornwall, and Private Secretary for Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, and appointed by King James I Clerk of the Crown and of Assize in County Clare, Ireland, an office said to resemble that of Attorney General. 1609. Member of Second Virginia Company, and one of the Provisional Council for that Colony. 1613. Clerk of Privy Council. 1617. Sept. 29, Knighted by King James I. 1618. Secretary of State. Received life pension of 1,000(pounds) per year. Obtained a grant of the Province of Avalon in New Foundland. 1619. Made Principal Secretary of State 1621. August 8, his wife, Anne Mynne Calvert died. 1621. Feb. 18. The king granted him a manor of 2300 acres in county Longford, Ireland. "These lands were held under the condition that all settlers upon them should take the oath of supremacy and 'be comfortable in point of religion'; and when Calvert, four years later made profession of the Roman Catholic faith, he surrendered his patent and received it back wit the religious clause omitted. These Longford estates were then erected into the manor of Baltimore, from which he took his baronial title." (William Hand Browne's "George and Cecilius Calvert," p.11) 1622. Was one of eighteen Commissioners of the New England Company. 1623. March, a re-grant of the southeastern peninsula of New Foundland which was erected into the Province of Avalon by Royal Charter, in which Lord Baltimore was given a palatinate or quasi-royal authority over the province, which was held in capite, by knight's service, with the condition of giving the king or his successors a white horse whenever he or they should visit those parts. 1623. Became a Roman Catholic and offered to resign as Secretary of State. He was retained as Member of the Privy Council. 1624. Member of the Council for winding up the affairs of the Virginia Company. Also M.P. for Oxfordshire. 1625. Resigned as Principal Secretary of State, Feb 9. Feb. 16, created Irish Peer with the title of Baron Baltimore, of Baltimore. (Note. No county is named in the enrolment of the Baltimore Patent. There was not and is not any place of that name in county Longford, which is the county usually assigned to this creation, but the chartered town of Baltimore, county Cork, the only place of that name in Ireland was then one of considerable size.) (The Genealogical Peerage of the United Kingdom, Vol. 1,p.226.) 1627. Second wife called "Dame Joane Baltimore" by her husband in a deed. Lord Baltimore visited Avalon this year, where he had spent some 25,000(Pounds) in improvements. In a letter at this time he writes: "...am... bound for a long journey to a place which I have had a long desire to visit, and have now the opportunity and leave to do it. It is Newfoundland, I mean, which, it imports me, more that curiosity only, to see, for I must either go and settle it in better order, or give it over and lose all the charge I have been at hitherto for other men to build their fortunes upon. And I had rather be esteemed a fool by some for the hazard of one month's journey, than to prove myself one certainly for six years past if the business be now lost for the want of a little pains and care." "So in June of this year of 1627 he visited Avalon in person, arriving at the end of July. Though he came at the most favourable season, and remained for but a month or two, so that he could scarcely have had time to visit the interior of the island, we cannot but think that when he compared the reality with Whitbourne's glowing descriptions and his own fancy pictures built upon them, his disappointment must have been sharp." (Wm.Hand Browne) All behind his little plantation lay a region of wild savagery, or bleak and hopeless desolation, and in front was the wild, stormy and inhospitable sea. The brief northern summer bid from him the worst enemy of all, the long pitiless northern winter. Departing after a short visit, he spent the winter in England preparing for his return, which he made in the following summer, bringing with him Lady Joane Baltimore, all his family except his eldest son, Cecilius, and about forty colonists, so that the whole colony was raised to about one hundred souls. Unexpected troubles beset him. He wrote to Lord Buckingham "I came to build, and sett, and sowe, but am falne to fighting with Frenchmen, who have heere disquieted me and many other of his Majesties subjects fighting in this land." He continues: "One De la Rade of Dieppe, with three ships and four hundred men, many of them gentlemen here have told us, came first into a harbour of mine called Capebroile, not above a league from the place where I am planted, and there surprising divers of the fishermen in thier shallops at the harbour's mouth, within a short time after possessed themselves of two English ships within the ahrbour, with all their fishes and provisions, and had done the liek to the rest in that place had I not sent them assistance with two ships of mine, one of them 360 tons and twenty-four pieces of ordnance, and another, a bark of sixty tons with three or four small guns in her, and about a hundred men aboard us in all," etc. By the ship that carried this letter, young Leonard Calvert and Peaseley returned to England, where Leonard petitioned the king that his father might have a share in certain prizes taken from the French by the ships Benediction and Victory. 1628. The dangers and discomforts of life at Avalon seem to have been too much for Lady Baltimore, and in 1628 she sailed for Virginia and remained for some time at Jamestown, as is known from a letter of Baltimore's in which he asks letters from Privy Council to the Governor of Virginia instructing him to facilitate Lady Baltimore's return to England. 1629. Lord Baltimore arrived in Jamestown October 1629. He was received coldly by the Virginians. He was tendered the oath of Allegiance which he could not take on account of his religious faith, though he offered to take a modified form of it. To this the Virginians would not agree, and he departed for England where he sought King Charles I, who had succeeded his father, James I, in 1625, for a new grant of land. King Charles continued his father's friendship for Lord Baltimore and granted him the territory which later became Maryland. 1629. There is but one account of the death of Lady Baltimore by shipwreck. It is found in a fragment of unknown origin among the papers in Sir Hans Sloane's Collection in the British Museum in London, and is numbered 3662, pp. 24-6, and dated 1670. The following excerpt is dated 1629 in the margin, and since the next marginal date is 1631, it is inferred that the events recorded took place in the years 1629 and 1630. Lord Baltimore went "to Virginia in the year 1629, where he found a much better climate (than New Foundland), and leaving his lady and some of his children by her there, comes himself to England to secure a Patent of some part of that Continent, and some while after sends for his Lady, who together with her children that were left whit her, were unfortunately cast away in their return; in which ship his lordship lost a great deal of plate and other goods of a great value." (Lady Baltimore sailed on the St. Claude which was wrecked off the English coast before October, 1630.) 1632. Apr. 15, Lord Baltimore was buried in the Chancel of St. Dunstan's before the Charter to Maryland had passed the Great Seal, so the charter was issued in the name of his son and heir, Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore, under the Great Seal dated 20th June, 1632, just a few weeks after his father's death.

Created on 11 Dec 2019