OXONIANS DRAW U.S. BORDER | Oct. 18 – Mason-Dixon Line Set

Oct. 18, 2017 – This day 250 years ago, in 1767, the interstate border was settled that a century later became the key boundary of the American Civil War – the Mason-Dixon line.

The line was named after two British surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.

They were hired by two prominent families on either side of the border, both were originally headed by Oxford alumni: 

• Catholic Leonard Calvert, founder of slave-colony Maryland. Leonard's brother Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore, handled the British end of the formation of the colony. Leonard  and Cecil, as well as their father George–the first Lord Baltimore–were all alumni of Trinity College, Oxford. 
• Quaker William Penn, founder of free-colony Pennsylvania. William Penn was an alumnus of Christ Church, Oxford.

The Calvert and Penn families, to settle a dispute over the border between them, hired English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.

The essential element of their survey, which had been interrupted by skirmishes with Indians, was completed on this day.

It established the boundary not only between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland but for territories in the west that after the Revolution became the state of West Virginia and those in the east that became Delaware. The line was marked using stones, with Pennsylvania’s coat of arms on one side and Maryland’s on the other.

Why did this become the dividing line in the War Between the States? Because it was the North-South dividing line, between the slave states in the south and the free states in the north.

It is no puzzle why the South favored slavery–the earliest immigrants to the southern colonies like Virginia were loyalists to the British Crown and the Church of England and they were given generous grants of land that required huge numbers of workers. The cash crops such as tobacco and cotton that became the mainstay of the southern farms required workers to do strenuous repetitive tasks, and slavery provided a solution.

It is also no puzzle why New England did not favor slavery. They did not get large grants of land from the Crown because the earliest immigrants to New England were dissenting rebels from the Church of England. Most therefore became small farmers, traders or manufacturers.

Maryland and Pennsylvania were in-between colonies and states. Unlike most other southern states (Georgia's Wilberforce was another exception), Maryland was not founded by someone with allegiance to the Church of England. Even though Pennsylvania was not founded by a dissenting Quaker, its founder Penn had enough good will from the Crown to get some land to form a proprietary colony:

• In Maryland, the Crown carved a large piece of land out of northern Virginia to give to the Catholic Calverts. The Catholicism of the day was not aggressively opposed to slavery.
• In Pennsylvania (as it was to be called), lands were granted to Quaker William Penn because he had won favor with the Crown, even though leaders of his religion included many abolitionists who fought actively against slavery. It was easier in Pennsylvania than it was in Maryland to be opposed to slavery because of coal and iron reserves provided higher-paying jobs that did not have to rely on slavery to generate a competitive product.

To settle their border dispute, the land-rich Calvert and Penn families hired Messrs. Mason and Dixon to establish the borderline. The families were responding to a 1760 demand from the British Crown that colonial settlers cease their skirmishes and adhere to a 1732 border cease-fire. 

Both families claimed the land between the 39th and 40th parallels. Mason and Dixon established the border at 39º43'. If they believed that the rights on the two sides were equally balanced, they would have settled in the middle, at 39º30'. This suggests that Pennsylvania was the victor from the survey, getting 72 percent (43/60) of the disputed land area.

During the year 1767, the colonies were engaged in a dispute with the Parliament over the Townshend Acts, which sought–through taxes on tea and other imports–to pay for the British costs of troops sent by Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder (like the Calverts, an alumnus of Trinity College, Oxford) of establishing the continuing military presence that had driven the French and the Indians allied with them from the colonies.

However, the border dispute seemingly settled in 1767 was not over. The Mason-Dixon line held as a dividing line, but after the American Revolution, the states south of the Mason-Dixon line began lobbying the new U.S. Congress for the legal rights of slaveowners. The northern states argued that ownership of human beings was not acceptable in the "New Constellation" of states.

Although the arguments were temporarily ended by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which accepted the states south of the Mason-Dixon line as slave-holding and those north of the line as free, the attempted compromise–and its successors–failed and Pennsylvania became the site of many famous Civil War battles. The Gettysburg, Pennsylvania battle in 1863 was on the Mason-Dixon Line. It was  one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War, made immortal by President Lincoln's speech at the site . The Quaker commitment to abolitionism trumped their commitment to peace.

In April 1865, the south capitulated. The ensuing 13th Amendment (1865) was immediately passed abolishing slavery and nullifying the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision (1857). The bitterly fought 14th Amendment gave citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. It was ratified 101 years after the Mason-Dixon line was established. However, civil rights did not mean voting rights. It took many more debates and political battles, some more amendments, and another 100 years, for the United States to pass laws to ensure that all adult citizens be allowed to vote...

RELIGION: Nov. 6–The 1st U.S. Catholic Bishop (Baltimore)

Bishop Carroll by Pennsylvania-born Rembrandt 
Peale, painter acclaimed for portraits of George 
Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

This day in 1789, Pope Pius VI appointed John Carroll bishop of Baltimore as the first Catholic bishop in the United States. I am writing this in the Lord Baltimore Hotel in downtown Baltimore and have reason to note the date.

There is a strong Oxford connection with the American colonies. I have been researching this connection and am visiting the Maryland Historical Society today to consult the Calvert Papers.

Maryland was a proprietary colony (one of only two of the thirteen when the United States became independent) owned by the Calvert family. The first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, created the colony and was an alumnus of Trinity College, Oxford. He had three sons:

• Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, a Trinity College, Oxford alumnus who handled the British side of the colonial property.
• Leonard Calvert, the first Governor of Maryland (1633-1643), another Trinity Oxford alumnus.
• Philip Calvert, Principal Secretary of Maryland and later Governor of Maryland (1660-1661).

The colony and then State of Maryland was created as a haven for Roman Catholics. It was carved out of Virginia to the south and Pennsylvania to the north, resulting in border disputes on both sides. The northern side of Maryland gave rise to the Mason-Dixon line. Alas, Maryland was on the wrong side of this line. Several black people from Maryland went north to become well-known opponents of slavery – such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.

Carroll was born in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, in 1735. His mother,  from a wealthy family, was educated in France. At age 13, Carroll sailed for France in order to complete his own education at St. Omer’s College in French Flanders. At age 18, he joined the Society of Jesus, and after a further 14 years of study in Liege, he received ordination as a priest at 34.

However, Pope Clement XIV’s decision in 1773 to dissolve the Jesuit order ended Carroll’s European career. Three years after Carroll’s return to Maryland, the need to make allies of French Catholics in Canada created an opportunity for him to join a Congressional delegation dispatched to negotiate with the Canadians.

Benjamin Franklin served on the same delegation, and although the mission failed, Franklin proved an excellent ally to Carroll. In 1784, Franklin recommended to the papal nuncio in Paris that Carroll assume the position of Superior of Missions in the United States of North America, which removed American Catholics from the authority of the British Catholic hierarchy.

As bishop and later in 1808 as the first U.S. archbishop, Carroll oversaw the creation of leading Catholic institutions in the new nation, including the first Catholic university (Georgetown University, 1789) and cathedral (Baltimore Basilica, 1806).

As a legacy from this era and the strong Maryland Catholic tradition, the Catholic Relief Services is located in Baltimore.

OXBRIDGE: Influences on Colonial America (Updated May 4, 2016)

New England colonies: CT, MA, NH, RI. (ME was part of MA.)
Mid-Atlantic: MD, NJ, NY, PA, DE. Southern: GA, NC, SC, VA.

My posts (see links below) on the influence of Oxford and Cambridge on the American colonies add up to a draft of a book.

A chart summarizing the Oxford influences may be found here. The following outline shows how the posts fit into an overall outline:

TOPIC: How did Oxford and Cambridge men (they were all men, then) help form the United States of America?

Chapter 1. Early Settlements ("Virginia",  "Carolina"). Sir Walter Raleigh (Oriel College, Oxford) gave the name Virginia to the entire south-eastern seaboard, after Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. Raleigh landed at Roanoake Island (now part of North Carolina) in 1584 and again in 1587, bringing more than 100 settlers, but when he returned with the supplies and new settlers, the previous ones had mysteriously disappeared. So there was no ongoing settlement that survived. Raleigh was accompanied by Thomas Harriot (St. Mary, Oxford, which was absorbed into Oriel College), an under-appreciated Oxonian astronomer, navigator, explorer and linguist who is credited with inventing the concept of refraction and with bringing the potato to England. Various sources (e.g., Wikipedia entry on Harriot) show a portrait hanging in Trinity College, Oxford and identify it as Harriot - however, about 50 years ago the College inspected the portrait carefully and decided that the dating and provenance of the portrait make it highly unlikely that the subject is in fact Harriot. The 1607 Jamestown settlement in Virginia survived more successfully, establishing as the Oxford style of settlement the entrepreneurial one. This style was the rule from Georgia up to New Jersey, and was driven by grants of land from the Crown.

Chapter 2. New England Colonies (Yellow). In the colonies of what we now call New England, the impetus to come to America arose from religious persecution in England. The religious emigres from England were bent on creating a friendly and holy new society in American and had no plans to return. The source of discontent was with the complacency of the post-Henry VIII Church of England. Many nobles and scholars saw the C of E as suffering from the same problems that Protestants complained about in the pre-Reformation (Roman) Catholic Church. The C of E was viewed as an unholy agent of the Crown. The Puritan movement originated in certain pockets of Britain, and Cambridge was once of them–especially at certain colleges, such as Emmanuel, St. Catharine's Hall, Sidney Sussex and Christ's College. During the early part of the 17th century, Cambridge produced many dissenters, from whom came the 20,000 Puritans who populated New England during the Great Migration of the 1630s seeking freedom of worship. The educational leaders from among the Pilgrims were largely Cambridge men - for example, John Winthrop (Trinity, Cambridge) in Massachusetts; Roger Williams (Pembroke, Cambridge) in Rhode Island; and John Wheelwright (Sidney Sussex, Cambridge) in New Hampshire.

• Massachusetts was colonized by the Massachusetts Bay Company in London. John Winthrop (Trinity, Cambridge) was involved in its formation and he urged that its charter be moved to the colony itself. Thus the colonizing company became a self-governing commonwealth, welcoming nonconformist religious sects. He was in 1588 in Suffolk, England. He led the Winthrop Fleet of 1630, the largest English fleet to set off for the New World. Winthrop was a Puritan, dissenting from the Anglican Church for hewing too close to Catholic liturgy. He was elected governor before departure and he was re-elected several times. As governor, he tried to moderate the colonists, emphasizing the need to care for the poor, avoid executing too many people for heresy, and not being too strict about requiring women to wear veils. He wrote the famed "City on the Hill" sermon that implied God had chosen the settlers to create a sanctified America. John Harvard (Emmanuel, Cambridge) in 1636 founded the first enduring American university, Harvard. 

• Rhode Island was led by Roger Williams (Pembroke, Cambridge) who along with Anne Hutchinson left Massachusetts when the Puritans there expelled them. Both fled to Rhode Island. Hutchinson and Williams had been preaching against against Puritan doctrines and the takeover of a government by a religious group. They fled to Rhode Island, establishing the colony as a haven for religious liberty and welcoming Jews and Quakers. Founded by the most radical dissenters from the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony, Rhode Island on May 4, 1776 became the first North American colony to renounce allegiance to George III. However, it was a center of the slave trade, because it brought molasses from the Caribbean Islands in exchange for slaves, and made it into rum which it used to buy slaves in West Africa. Rhode Island was the last of the original 13 states to ratify the American Constitution on May 29, 1790. 

• New Hampshire was colonized in part by refugees from intolerance in Massachusetts, including John Wheelwright (Sidney Sussex, Cambridge), who founded the towns of Exeter, N.H. (and then Wells, Maine) as he fled from the long arm of Puritan orthodoxy.

• Connecticut is the home of Yale University, which was formed in a similar fashion to Cambridge's origins as a home to Oxford scholars fleeing from the university's persecution of non-conformists. (Archbishop Laud was for a time Chancellor of Oxford and recruited Lawrence Washington, George Washington's grandfather, to help oust non-conformist dons.) Yale was founded by a branch of Puritans who favored the evangelical style of a reformist minister and fled from Harvard's disapproval of of his doctrine and style.

These migrations originating in religious persecution may be said to have pursued the Cambridge style of settlement, based on religious faith rather than entrepreneurial ambitions.

Chapter 3. The Mid-Atlantic Colonies (Green). Catholic George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore (Trinity, Oxford) and his two sons founded Maryland as a haven for Catholics. But most settlers were setting out for the New World in order to prosper and the  southern colonies offered opportunities to make fortunes in tobacco, cotton (especially after Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin) and other export crops. The early colonial settlers in the Mid-Atlantic colonies were given grants of land by King Charles I, especially during the period 1629-1640 when Charles dissolved Parliament and ruled without it.

• New York was settled by Dutchmen and French Huguenots before it was taken over by the British after a naval victory over Holland. It was named after James, Duke of York, brother of Charles II, who was restored to the throne as James II of England after Cromwell's government ended in 1639-40.  The New York colony, while huge, was preceded by Dutch settlers and became a moderating influence between the nonconformists of New England and the more conformist views of the colonies to the south of New York.

• Maryland was founded as a haven for Catholics, carved out of the northern reaches of territory that Virginia had some claims to. Charles I gave this land to the first Lord Baltimore (Trinity, Oxford). His sons Cecil Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore (Trinity, Oxford) and Leonard Calvert (Trinity, Oxford) managed the growth of the state. The elder son Cecil worked the British side of the Atlantic; he is the person after whom the City of Baltimore is named. He successfully staved off challenges to the actions of Charles I during the rule of Oliver Cromwell (Sidney Sussex, Cambridge) and the Roundheads. The younger son, Leonard Calvert, migrated to Maryland and became its first governor.

• Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn (Christ Church, Oxford), who converted to Quakerism and persuaded Charles II and James II to give him land from Western New Jersey and north of Maryland to create a colony where any religions could be practiced without interference. One argument he made to the two kings is that his state could be a place to send religious troublemakers in England. Part of Pennsylvania was carved out to create Delaware, because the established settlers from the outset didn't want to be part of the plan of a Quaker governor. Penn's settlement was the most concentrated migration to the colonies since the Puritan migration of a half-century before.

• New Jersey began with land taken from the southern end of the New York colony, as in 1664 James II gave the land to Lord John Berkeley and Sir John Carteret, two Stuart loyalists.

Chapter 4. The Southern Colonies (Purple).  Religious settlers in the south include James Oglethorpe (Corpus Christi, Oxford) and John and Charles Wesley (both Christ Church, Oxford) in Georgia.

• Virginia was originally the name of the entire southeast coastline, settled unsuccessfully by Sir Walter Raleigh, who landed with private funding at Roanoke Island in what is now called North Carolina. Maryland was carved out of Virginia from the north and the Carolinas from the south (Georgia was created partly as a buffer between Spanish Florida and the Carolinas). The cultivation of tobacco in Virginia meant that slavery grew in the state along with opportunity for British landowners like George Washington's ancestors.

• The Carolinas were settled in part by John Baron Carteret, the 2nd Earl Granville (Christ Church, Oxford). Carolina was named after Charles I, the only British monarch ever executed,  after Cromwell captured him during his retreat in Oxford. The area around Cape Fear was given to eight proprietors by Charles II in return for their support for his succeeding to the monarchy. Carteret inherited from his great-grandfather Sir George Carteret one-eighth of the Province of Carolina along the Virginia border. Unlike other owners, Granville refused to sell the property back to the Crown. He was the real power in the government when Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington (Trinity, Oxford) was Britain's 2nd prime minister, after Walpole.

• Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe (Christ Church, Oxford), who persuaded George II to let him found a slave-free colony to absorb all the prisoners in debtor prisons. (In fact, skilled craftsmen and merchants crowded out the prisoners and they were instead sent to Australia.)  John Wesley (Lincoln, Oxford) came to help Oglethorpe with his mission. The colony also served as a buffer zone against the Spanish in Florida, notably in the settlement of St. Augustine. Although Oglethorpe does not appear to have been a great military commander on the attack side, his troops fended off a Spanish invasion of Georgia. Never again did the Spanish attack the colonies.  The ban on slavery was, alas, removed as soon as Oglethorpe returned to England, as Georgia went into the cotton business.

Chapter 5. The British Civil War and New Migrations to the Colonies. When Oliver Cromwell (Sidney Sussex, Cambridge) organized the protestors against Charles I and beheaded him, the tables were turned on royalist Cavaliers like Rev. Lawrence Washington (BNC, Oxford) and his wife Amphilis Washington. The Puritans, who had left England because of persecution by Catholic monarchs, were now in charge. Rev. Washington lost his comfortable living in Purleigh, Essex, and his wife Amphilis persuaded their sons John and Lawrence Jr. to emigrate to Virginia. John's great-grandson George Washington became the new nation's first President.

Chapter 6. Pitt and North - Runup to the Revolution. Pitt the Elder (Trinity, Oxford) made possible the Revolution by chasing French soldiers out of North America.  Lord North (Trinity, Oxford) made the Revolution inevitable through his onerous taxes to pay for Pitt's war.

Chapter 7. Oxbridge Influences On the American Revolution and the New Nation

• Slavery in the American Colonies

• Economics - Resistance to External Taxation, Regulation [Oxford - Adam Smith]

• Religious Wars at Oxford and Cambridge [add Oliver Cromwell, Sidney Sussex]

• Universities in the Colonies [Crossover of religious wars to the colonies]

• Architecture at Oxford [Gargoyles and Grotesques, +]

• The Stars and Stripes and the flag's origins in the Washington family.

• The Political Debate among the Founding Fathers, and its British analog.

Suggestions for additions/changes are appreciated - teppermarlin@aol.com. 

OXFORD IN USA 1: Peaceful Evolution–The Calverts

Maryland came into being as a result of a grant of land to the Catholic Calvert family. The grant was originally requested by Sir George Calvert (1578-1632), the 1st Baron Baltimore, and was implemented by two of his sons. All three of these men were graduates of Trinity College, Oxford. 

The Calverts are credited with two important developments in the American colonies: (1) They founded the entire state of Maryland. (2) They pre-empted an area that was in the path of an expanding Virginia, which would not permit Catholics to settle. They thereby created a haven for Roman Catholicism in the colonies and played a huge role in ensuring religious liberty in the American colonies and then in the United States. They encouraged nonviolent growth of the colonies and thereby laid the groundwork for their independence.

The Land Grant on Chesapeake Bay

Charles I (1600-1649, reigned 1625-1649) made a major grant of land on Chesapeake Bay in 1632 to George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, who unfortunately died before the seal was affixed to the charter. So Cecil Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore, is credited with the grant and is the person the City of Baltimore is named after. President Michael Beloff of Trinity College, Oxford called on the Mayor of Baltimore a few years ago (I planted the idea when he was first elected President) and the favor was recently returned by the Mayor.

Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort of Charles I,
after whom Maryland is named.

Maryland is named after Charles I's consort, Queen Henrietta Maria. The Catholic daughter of France's King Henri IV (Henry of Navarre, Henry the Great), she became a major problem for Charles I because Parliament voted to send military support to the Protestant Huguenots in France against Henry IV's successor, the Catholic Louis XIII. 

During the waning days of the Charles I's reign, Henrietta Maria occupied Merton College, Oxford - the only Oxford college that did not support the king against Parliament - when Charles I was attempting to run the country from Oxford and Oliver Cromwell's Parliament was seeking to oust him. Charles I was beheaded in 1649. I read somewhere that Charles I was the only British monarch whose reign was terminated by execution.

Here's an excerpt from a reference selected by the State of Maryland and posted on the history page of its website:

In 1632, Charles I granted a charter to George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, yielding him feudal rights to the region between lat. 40°N and the Potomac River. Disagreement over the boundaries of the grant led to a long series of border disputes with Virginia that were not resolved until 1930. The states still dispute the use of the Potomac River. The territory was named Maryland in honor of Henrietta Maria, queen consort of Charles I. Before the great seal was affixed to the charter, George Calvert died, but his son Cecilius [Cecil] Calvert, 2d Baron Baltimore, undertook development of the colony as a haven for his persecuted fellow Catholics and also as a source of income. In 1634 the ships Ark and Dove brought settlers (both Catholic and Protestant) to the Western Shore, and a settlement called St. Mary's was set up. During the colonial period the Algonquian-speaking Native Americans withdrew from the area gradually and for the most part peacefully, sparing Maryland the conflicts other colonies experienced. [For more on the Native Americans, see my post to come on Pitt the Elder, Lord Chatham and his role in making possible the independence of the United States possible.]

The original grant is said to have included land from the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay south to the Potomac River as well as all of the eastern shore. But Virginian settlers had already crossed the bay to settle the southern tip of the eastern shore, so the King revised the grant to include the eastern shore only to a line drawn east from the Potomac River. The charter confirmed on June 20, 1632 charged Baltimore a rental of  one-fifth of all gold or silver found, plus delivery to the King every Easter of two Native American arrows.

The charter established Maryland as a feudal palatinate, giving Baltimore and his descendants rights nearly equal to those of an independent state, including rights to wage war, collect taxes, and establish a colonial nobility. The charter was heavily weighted toward the proprietor. However, supporters in England of the Virginia colony opposed the charter, as they had little interest in conceding the land to religious followers that they would not admit. A crucial feature of the success of the Calverts in holding on to their huge land grant is that they were able as a family to keep the Virginians at bay both in England and in the colonies.

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore,
true founder of Maryland

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore

George Calvert graduated with a BA at 19 from Trinity College, Oxford in 1597. He married Anne Mynne (also spelled Mayne). His first job was serving as secretary to Robert Cecil, later Earl of Salisbury, doubtless determining the name of his first son. Calvert was elected to the House of Commons  in 1609-1611. He became Sir George Calvert in 1617, then secretary of state in 1619. He was given a pension in 1620 and returned to the House of Commons the following year. The Protestant Parliament distrusted him for supporting Catholic King James I and his Spanish wife. In 1625, the year Charles I succeeded to the throne, Calvert decided to give up his office and declared himself a Roman Catholic. For his loyalty, the King made him the 1st Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage, which means he did not vote in the House of Lords. 

(The town of Baltimore that gives the name to his title is a fishing village on the southern Irish shore near Cork. I have been there several times during the course of a couple of summers in nearby Skibbereen.) 

Lord Baltimore received a grant of large estates in Ireland. On his own, he established a small settlement called Avalon in fish-wealthy Newfoundland. He visited Avalon briefly in 1627 and brought his family for a longer visit the following year. During the second visit, conflict arose over his Roman Catholicism. For that reason - and the cold climate! - Lady Baltimore left for Virginia in 1628. Baltimore petitioned Charles I for a land grant in the warmer Chesapeake Bay area. As a Catholic, he was not allowed to settle in Virginia. He returned to England to plead his case for the Maryland charter but died in 1621 while changes were being made in the charter and before it was official. 

Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore,
after whom the City of Baltimore is named.
George founded Maryland; Cecil kept it;
Leonard ran it.

Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore

Although George Calvert did almost all the work, his son Cecil Calvert gets most of the credit. He is the person usually referred to as Lord Baltimore in U.S. history books. Cecilius Calvert was born August 8, 1605, in Kent, England. At the time, his father was under pressure to conform to the Church of England, so all ten children were baptized Anglican. Calvert entered Trinity College, Oxford  in 1621. His mother died the following year. As noted above, George Calvert converted to Catholicism in 1625, and his sons followed him.  In 1633, Cecil Calvert was admitted to Gray's Inn as a barrister, a training in the law that would be of crucial importance in retaining rights to the Maryland land grant. He married Anne Arundell, daughter of the 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour, in 1627 or 1628. They had nine children, of whom  three, including Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, survived to adulthood. 

Rather than going to the Maryland colony, Baltimore stayed behind in England to deal with the political threat to the charter and sent his next younger brother Leonard in his stead. He never actually visited Maryland! - because he was busy defending the charter from advocates from the Virginia Company, who were trying to regain their charter, including all of Maryland. Their formal complaint with the Lords of Foreign Plantations in July 1633 had two arguments: (1) Maryland was not unsettled, as stated in its charter, because William Claiborne had run a trading station on Kent Island. (2) The breadth of the powers of the charter violated the liberties of existing settlers. 

Leonard Calvert, the first to run
Maryland. No title for him.

Leonard Calvert

Leonard (1606–1647), younger brother of Cecil, also attended Trinity College, Oxford. Ironically, he tends to be skipped over because he did not inherit the Barony, which passed to his nephew and because history at that point was being written in England where Cecil was defending the charter. 

However, Leonard is crucial in establishing the family's unequivocal right to be called founders of Maryland.  

Unlike Cecil, Leonard actually went to Maryland! He actually did the work of running the place! He was the first Governor of the Province of Maryland!

The Calvert family figures prominently in subsequent Maryland and Baltimore history, to this day.