Chesapeake (22 page)

But as it turned out, it was not so simple as that. He did sail directly to Luanda, and he did cram untold numbers of blacks into the fetid holds of his ship, but three days out, or perhaps four, the ship foundered and was lost, along with Hackett and all the slaves chained to the bulwarks.

The two Steeds returned to Devon, where Martha consoled them. She insisted that if God had prevented their contract with Captain Hackett, it must have been for a specific purpose, but she had barely said these words when a pinnace put into Devon Creek with startling news that would transform the history of the Steeds. The pinnace came not from Jamestown but from a point across the bay near the entrance to the Potomac River, and it carried, of all things, a Catholic priest named Father Whitson. The intelligence he brought could scarcely be comprehended.

‘This island is no longer a part of Virginia,’ he said, his own excitement and joy jumbling his words. ‘The king has ordained that a Catholic colony be established in his New World. You now belong to the Palatinate of Maryland.’

These developments were so radical that he required many minutes to unravel them. He spoke of George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, who had converted to Catholicism late in life but who had been allowed to serve King James as counselor. He had tried to establish an earlier colony in
far New England, but it had perished of cold, and now King Charles, whom many suspected of being a secret Catholic, had granted him a new domain north of Virginia to be named after Queen Mary.

Father Whitson had a score of other revelations to share, but before he could do so, Edmund Steed said, ‘Father, could we repair to our chapel to hear Mass?’

‘Chapel?’

Steed led the way to the rough building, and when Father Whitson saw it he could not speak. Kneeling before the quotation from Genesis, he said a prayer; he had been tested in the fires of Douai and Rome and had survived the mortal dangers of the surreptitious Mass in England, but this visible proof of persistent faith confounded him. When he rose he whispered, ‘Even in the wilderness.’

After he had spread a cloth upon the altar and taken the ritual implements from their canvas bag he started the ceremony, and Edmund felt his throat choke as the noble Latin words—the same as at any Mass throughout the world—were repeated once more and in such God-granted surroundings. Then came the sweet mysteries of the blood and body, and as the wafer touched his tongue Edmund knew that he had returned to the arms of his church. Father Whitson, looking into the faces of this kneeling family, felt a depth of emotion he had rarely experienced, even at those midnight Masses in the granges of rural England, but there was more.

As he was about to pack his gear Martha Keene genuflected before him and whispered, ‘Father, you must baptize our children,’ and when this was done, she said, ‘Now please marry us.’

‘Are you not wed?’ he asked, looking at the three sons.

‘No,’ she said simply, not wishing to disturb him with any report of their Indian marriage.

He asked them to kneel and opened his missal to the ceremony which binds Catholics, but when he saw the words and the three sons he realized how inadequate an ordinary ritual would be in this frontier of the human spirit. ‘Heavenly Father,’ he prayed, ‘let us join on earth what You have already joined in heaven.’ And he told them, ‘You are married.’

The next months held many perplexities for the Steeds. They had supposed, when word of a Catholic Maryland was announced, that the colonies would experience the kind of wrenching terror that had swept England whenever a change in the national religion occurred, and Edmund at least looked forward with some relish to evening scores with certain hard-headed Protestants who had caused him trouble. But the sons of Lord Baltimore, who had inherited the palatinate when their father died prematurely, were not burners or executioners. After his
initial swing through the new colony, Father Whitson returned to lay down the law. First he handed the Steeds a printed document:

‘Those are the rules,’ Father Whitson said, ‘and they are to be obeyed, or the penalties will be severe.’

‘Is the proprietor ashamed of being Catholic?’ Ralph asked.

‘He seeks a peaceable palatinate,’ the priest said. ‘And the conversion of Indians to the true faith.’

‘We have no contact with our Choptanks,’ Edmund said.

‘Have many Catholics come to the other side of the bay?’ Ralph asked.

‘Scores. And each new ship brings others.’

‘Then the judges and tax men and teachers will all be Catholic?’

‘No. We shall not make the mistakes that New England has made. Maryland will not be a theocracy.’

Ralph did not know this new word, but he judged that it boded ill for his religion. ‘What’s the advantage?’ he asked.

‘Peace,’ Father Whitson replied, and this was not an illusory goal, even though the lavish praise sometimes bestowed upon the palatinate for its tolerance was not always warranted. Maryland did honestly encourage peace with its Indians, and as a consequence suffered fewer wars than other colonies (but in a fit of desperation the government did arouse a crusade to annihilate the Nanticokes); and it surely proclaimed religious freedom in its noble Act of Religious Toleration (except that Jews and other heretics who denied the Trinity could be executed).

It took a long time for the Steeds to comprehend the philosophical structure of this new concept of colonization; they wanted a Catholic cross in the center of every settlement and a priest holding the gavel in all meetings, and it was difficult for them to believe that any system less root-and-branch than that could survive. The Catholics had won title to a new colony in America; let them enjoy it. But Father Whitson, keeping a stern eye on the Eastern Shore, decreed otherwise, and cathedrals were not built.

But on one point the Steeds and their priest agreed. Virginia was an
enemy to be held at bay, and if gunfire was needed to accomplish this, they had the guns.

The trouble started this way. The royal grant establishing Virginia was one of the most generous and preposterous in history; it gave the tiny group of men climbing ashore at Jamestown domain over all lands between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific in an expanding wedge which encompassed almost everything north of Florida on the south—including half of Texas and all of California—and everything south of a line running from New York to a point far to the north of Alaska. In rough, Virginia was awarded nine tenths of what would later become the United States, plus a goodly share of Canada, and men like Captain John Smith intended that they keep what had been granted them. Certainly they would not permit a small island on the Eastern Shore to defect to Maryland, and the idea that a renegade like Edmund Steed, a Catholic to boot, should be conspiring to take Devon Island into the palatinate was repugnant.

The leaders at Jamestown sent an armed pinnace to capture Devon; a governor was aboard to assume political control, but he never landed. Edmund Steed, his wife Martha and their three sons lined the creek as the boat tried to make its way inland and killed two sailors. The
soidisant
governor shouted that this was mutiny, whereupon young Ralph cried back, ‘It’s not. It’s rebellion.’ When one of the Steeds shot at the governor, the pinnace retreated.

War threatened, and reinforcements were dispatched from the western settlements of Maryland, but a sensible statesman in Virginia saw the folly of such action and met with good response when he proposed to the Maryland officials that the problems be adjudicated. Steed was sent for, and he crossed the bay expecting to be commended for his stubborn defense of the Palatinate, but was instead reprimanded. ‘We wanted no killing,’ Lord Baltimore’s people said. ‘We’re sending a commission to Jamestown to solve this matter.’

‘I’d be glad to go,’ Steed said contritely.

‘We certainly don’t want you … or your kind. The proprietor in London has specifically enjoined us to send no one of Catholic faith lest it prove an irritation.’

‘Damn!’ Steed exploded. ‘Is it a crime to be Catholic? Is it a crime to defend a Catholic colony?’

‘Dear friend,’ the man conducting the negotiations replied, ‘it’s never been a crime to be a Catholic …’ and he proceeded with sanctimonious jabber about the new condition of things, and Steed thought: He cannot remember when it was a crime, but we Steeds can.

Even Father Whitson rebuked him for having opened fire upon the official vessel of the Virginia colony. ‘Damn me!’ Steed exploded. ‘What would you have me do? Surrender my island to those pirates?’

‘We would have got it back through negotiations,’ the priest assured him.

‘Never! You don’t know those damned Virginians.’ And from that moment the Steeds never referred to their neighbors down the bay without the descriptive and appropriate adjective
damned.
A man from Maryland had to watch his crab pots, or the damned Virginians would steal his catch; he had to guard his fishing grounds or they would be stripped; his oysters were under constant danger of theft; and every inch of soil was greedily sought after and plotted against by the Virginians. A Catholic like Steed, who presumed to match his bright tobacco with that of the York and the Rappahannock, had better be extra attentive, or the damned Virginians would steal him blind, and maybe burn his fields, or divert his ships.

If it was healthy to have an enemy, the Steeds had one.

In 1637, when Ralph was twenty-one, Father Whitson devised a way for him to start his studies in Rome. A trading ship had put into St. Mary’s City and young Ralph was put aboard with a harsh memorandum from his father:

When Father Whitson read this admonition, he told the young scholar, ‘Utilize your time aboard ship in debate with others more learned than yourself, so that you may discover the temper of your mind.’

‘Will they throw me overboard?’

‘Would they dare?’

And so the first of the Steed boys was gone. In rapid succession the other two left, one for London to study law, one for Paris to make himself a doctor. It was significant in these early days of both Virginia and Maryland that children of the larger plantations often knew Europe better than they knew their own homelands; ships were constantly tying up at the family wharf and departing a few days later for London; obliging captains were glad to look after young scholars during the crossing and to introduce them to lawyers and doctors on the other side.
After some years abroad, the young people returned to the bays and rivers with boxes of books and memories of theaters and singing and ministerial exhortations. The three Steed boys would receive superior educations.

They were in Europe when a messenger posted across the bay in a shallop with news that changed much in Maryland: ‘From London the proprietor has sent instructions that all free landowners of the palatinate are to assemble in St. Mary’s City to approve such laws as Lord Baltimore has drafted.’ Steed pointed out that with new indentured servants arriving from London he was not in a position to leave Devon, but the messenger informed him that the invitation was not an option: ‘You will be there, Mr. Steed, on January 25 of the coming year.’

‘For how many days?’ Edmund asked with some apprehension, for without his sons at hand Martha might have difficulty running the plantation.

‘For as many days as it takes to vote your approval,’ the messenger said, and without attending to courtesies he was off to the other shore.

No member of the first four generations of Steeds in Maryland would ever travel anywhere except by boat: there were no roads. Two plantations might be a quarter of a mile apart by river but forty miles distant by land, assuming that the dense undergrowth could be penetrated. The early settlers were like fish; away from water they perished.

So Edmund Steed appointed two servants to polish up the handsome two-masted ketch he had recently purchased from a builder on the James, packed his best suit and ruff, and set out with razor and comb for the capital. It was a pleasant sail to St. Mary’s City; down the Choptank, across the bay, down past the Patuxent, around Point Lookout and up the St. Mary’s River to a well-protected anchorage where a score of wooden buildings had already appeared and where another score were building. It was going to be a beautiful little town on an equally beautiful little river, with only one drawback: it was perilously close to Virginia—just across the Potomac, to be exact—and could be assaulted at any time the Virginians chose to wipe it out. Under such circumstances it would not be the capital for long; the final center would develop far to the north, out of reach of Virginia militia.

Some distance inland from the river rose a palisaded fort, inside which stood the long rough buildings where one of the focal assemblies of colonial history would convene. Leonard Calvert, brother to the absentee proprietor—who had to remain in London fighting persistent enemies who kept trying to steal Maryland from the Catholics—was of the opinion that the great charter granted by King Charles meant what it said: ‘The Proprietor will propose such laws as he sees fit, and an Assembly of freeholders will pass on their applicability.’ Leonard, a sensible man who had often been rebuked by his lordly brother for being too lenient, proposed to lay before the citizens for their approval a draft of laws
which the Calverts thought proper for the governance of their distant property.