The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Nobly done.”

  “A charter was writ up then, the like of which for authority and amplitude had ne’er been composed by the Crown of England. It granted to my grandfather all the land from the Potomac River on the south to Latitude Forty on the north, and from the Atlantic west to the meridian of the Potomac’s first fountain. To distinguish her above all other regions in the territory, Maryland was named a Province, a county palatine, and over it we Barons Baltimore were made and decreed the true and absolute Lords and Proprietaries. We had the advowsons of churches; we had authority to enact laws and create courts-baron and courts-leet to enforce ’em; we could punish miscreants e’en to the taking of life or member; we could confer dignities and titles—”

  “Ah,” said Ebenezer.

  “—we could fit out armies, make war, levy taxes, patent land, trade abroad, establish towns and ports of entry—”

  “Mercy!”

  “In short,” Charles declared, “for the tribute of two Indian arrows per annum, Maryland was ours in free and common socage, to manage as we please; and what’s more ’twas laid down in the charter that peradventure any word, clause, or sentence in’t were disputed, it must be read so’s most to benefit us!”

  “I’faith, it dizzies me!”

  “Aye, ’twas a mighty charter. But ere it passed the Great Seal, Grandfather died, worn out at a mere fifty-two years and the charter passed Cecil, my own dear father, who thus in 1632, when he was but twenty-six, became Second Lord Baltimore and First Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maryland. Straightway he set to fitting out vessels and rounding up colonists, to what a hue and a cry from Bill Claiborne! To what a gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair amongst the members of the old Virginia Company, whose charter had long since been revoked! They would vow in Limehouse that the Ark and the Dove were fitting out to carry nuns to Spain, and swear in Kensington ’twas to ferry Spanish soldiers Father rigged ’em. So numerous and crafty were his enemies, Father must needs stay behind in London to preserve his rights and trust the voyage to my uncles Leonard and George, who set out from Gravesend for Maryland in October, 1633. But no sooner doth the Ark weigh anchor than one of Claiborne’s spies, hoping to scuttle us, runs to the Star Chamber and reports we’re not cleared through customs, and our crew hath not sworn the oath of allegiance. Secretary Coke sends couriers to Admiral Pennington, in the Straits off Sandwich, and back we’re sent to London.”

  “Connivance!”

  “After a month of haranguing, Father cleared away the charges as false and malicious, and off we went again. So’s not to give Claiborne farther ammunition, we loaded our Protestants at Gravesend, swore ’em their oath off Tilbury, and then sailed down the Channel to the Isle of Wight to load our Catholics and a brace of Jesuit priests.”

  “Very clever.” Ebenezer said, less certainly.

  “Then, by Heav’n, off we sail for Maryland at last, with instructions from Father not to hold our masses in the public view, not to dispute religion with the Protestants, not to anchor under the Virginians’ guns at Port Comfort but to lie instead over by Accomac on the Eastern Shore, and not to have aught to do with Captain Claiborne and his people for the first year.

  “With the salvages, a nation of Piscataways, we had no quarrel, for they were happy enough to enlist our defense against their enemies and Seneques and Susquehannoughs: ’twas the fiend Claiborne, who caused our trouble! This Claiborne was a factor for Cloberry and Company and Secretary of State for the Dominion by appointment of Charles I, who was easily misled. His main interest was Kent Island, halfway up the Chesapeake, where his trading-post was situated: he’d rather have surrendered an arm than Kent Island, though ’twas clearly within our grant.”

  “What did he do?” asked Ebenezer.

  “Why, says he to himself, Doth not Baltimore’s charter grant him the land hactenus inculta—‘hitherto uncultivated?’ Then he must give up Kent Island, for my traders beat him to’t! Thus he pled to the Lords Commissioners for Plantations. But mark you, this accursed hactenus inculta was meant as mere description of the land; ’tis the common language of charters, and not intended as a condition of the grant. And truth to tell, Claiborne’s traders had not tilled the Island: they bartered their ware for corn to live on as well as furs for Cloberry and Company. The Lords Commissioners disallowed his claim, but give up Kent Island he would not. The Marylanders land in March of 1634—fifty-nine years ago this month—settle at St. Mary’s, and inform Claiborne that Kent Island is theirs; he will neither swear allegiance to the Proprietary nor take title to Kent from him, but asks the Virginia Council what to do. You may depend on’t he doth not tell ’em of the Lords Commissioners’ ruling, and news travels slow from the Privy Council to America; and so they tell him to hold fast, and that he doth, inflaming all whose ears he can catch against my father.

  “Uncle Leonard, in St. Mary’s, lets Claiborne’s year of grace expire and then commands him to acknowledge Father’s rights or suffer imprisonment and confiscation of the Island. King Charles orders Governor Harvey of Virginia to protect us from the Indians and allow free trade ’twixt the colonies, and at the same time, being misled by Claiborne’s agents to believe Kent Island outside our patent, he orders Father not to molest Claiborne! Now Harvey was a right enough Christian man, willing to live and let live; therefore, our Claiborne had long led a faction aimed at unseating the poor man and driving him from the colony. Thus when Harvey in obeying the King’s order declares his readiness to trade with Maryland, the Virginians rise up in a rage against him and declare they’d sooner knock their cattle on the head than sell ’em to us.

  “Then ’twas open warfare. Uncle Leonard seizes one of Claiborne’s pinnaces in the Patuxent River and arrests her master Thomas Smith for trading with a license from Father. Claiborne arms a shallop and commissions her captain to attack any Maryland vessel he meets. Uncle Leonard sends out two pinnaces to engage him, and after a fight in the Pocomoke River, the shallop surrenders. Two weeks later another Claiborne vessel under command of the same Tom Smith fights it out in Pocomoke Harbor. Poor Governor Harvey by this time is under such fire from his Council that he flies to England for safety.

  “Meanwhile Uncle Leonard cuts off the Kent Islanders completely, and the land being altogether inculta, they commence to starve. Father points this out to Cloberry and Company, and so persuades them that they pretend no farther title to Kent but send a new attorney to Maryland, with authority to supersede Claiborne. The devil finally yields, asking only that the new man, George Evelyn, not deliver Kent Island to the Marylanders; but Evelyn refuses to promise, and so Claiborne withdraws to London, where he is sued by Cloberry and charged with mutiny by Governor Harvey. Furthermore, Evelyn proceeds to attach all of Claiborne’s property in Virginia in the name of Cloberry and Company.”

  “ ’Twas what he deserved,” Ebenezer said.

  “He saw we’d got the better of him for the nonce, and so he tried a new tack; he buys him Palmer’s Island from his cronies the Susquehannoughs, this being in the head of the Chesapeake where their river joins it, and sets him up a new trading-post there, pretending he’s outside our patent. Then he petitions Charles to forbid Father from molesting him and further asks—with a plain face, mind!—for a grant to all the land for twelve leagues either side the Susquehannough River, extending southward down the Bay to the ocean and northward to the Grand Lake of Canada!”

  “You don’t tell me!” cried Ebenezer in alarm, though he hadn’t the faintest picture of geography referred to.

  “Aye,” nodded Charles. “The man was mad! ’Twould have given him a strip of New England twenty-four leagues in breadth and near three hundred in length, plus the entire Chesapeake and three fourths of Maryland! ’Twas his hope to fool the King once more as he’d done in the past, but the Lords Commissioners threw out his petition. Evelyn then acknowledged Father’s title to Kent, and Uncle Leonard named him Commander of the Island. He attempted to persuade the Islanders to apply to Father fo
r title to their land and might have won them over, were’t not that the rascally Tom Smith is established there, along with Claiborne’s brother-in-law. There was naught for’t then but to reduce ’em for good and all. Uncle Leonard himself led two expeditions against the islands, reduced them, jailed Claiborne’s kin, and confiscated all his property in the Province.”

  “I trust that chastened the knave!”

  “For a time,” Charles replied. “He got him an island in the Bahamas in 1638, and we saw none of him for four or five years. As for his kin, we had ’em jailed, but since the Assembly had never yet convened, we had no jury to indict ’em and no court to try ’em in!”

  “How did you manage it?” asked Ebenezer. “Pray don’t tell me you turned them free!”

  “Why, we convened the Assembly as a grand inquest to bring the indictment, then magicked ’em into a court to try the case and find the prisoners guilty. Uncle Leonard then sentences the prisoners to hang, the court becomes an Assembly again and passes his sentence as a bill (since we’d had no law to try the case under), and Uncle Leonard commutes the sentence to insure that no injustice hath been done.”

  “ ’Twas a brilliant maneuver!” Ebenezer declared.

  “ ’Twas the commencement of our woes,” said Charles. “No sooner was the Assembly convened than they demanded the right to enact laws, albeit the charter plainly reserved that right for the Proprietary, requiring only the assent of the freemen. Father resisted for a time but had shortly to concede, at least for the nonce, in order to avoid a mutiny. From that day forward the Assembly was at odds with us, and played us false, and lost no chance to diminish our power and aggrandize their own.”

  He sighed.

  “And as if this weren’t sufficient harassment, ’twas about this time we learned that the Jesuit missionaries, who had been converting Piscataways by the score, had all the while been taking in return large tracts of land in the name of the Church; and one fine day they declare to us their intent to hold this enormous territory independent of the Proprietary! They knew Father was Catholic and so announced that canon law held full sway in the province, and that by the Papal Bull In Coena Domini they and their fraudulent landholdings were exempt from the common law!”

  “Ah God!” said Ebenezer.

  “What they were ignorant of,” Charles continued, “was that Grandfather, ere he turned Catholic, had seen his fill of Jesuitry in Ireland, when James sent him to investigate the discontent there. To nip’t in the bud ere the Jesuits snatch the whole Province on the one hand, or the Protestants use the incident as excuse for an anti-Papist insurrection on the other, Father applied to Rome to recall the Jesuits and send him secular priests instead; and after some years of dispute the Propaganda ordered it done.

  “Next came Indian trouble. The Susquehannoughs to the north and the Nanticokes on the Eastern Shore had always raided the other tribes now and again, being hunters and not farmers. But after 1640 they took to attacking plantations here and there in the Province, and there was talk of their stirring up our friends the Piscataways to join ’em in a wholesale massacre. Some said ’twas the French behind it all; some alleged ’twas the work of the Jesuits; but I believe ’twas the scheming hand of Bill Claiborne at work.”

  “Claiborne!” said Ebenezer. “How is that? Did I not mishear you, Claiborne was hid in the Bahamas!”

  “So he was. But in 1643, what with the Jesuit trouble, and the Indian trouble, and some dissension in the colony over the civil war ’twixt Charles and the Parliament, Uncle Leonard returned to London to discuss the affairs of the Province with Father, and no sooner did he sail than Claiborne commenced slipping up the Bay in secret, trying to stir up sedition amongst the Kent Islanders. ’Twas about this time one Richard Ingle—a sea-captain, atheist, and traitor—puts into St. Mary’s with a merchantman called the Reformation, drinks himself drunk, and declares to all and sundry that the King is no king, and that he’d take off the head of any royalist who durst gainsay him!”

  “Treason!” Ebenezer exclaimed.

  “So said our man Giles Brent, who was Governor against Uncle Leonard’s return; he jailed Ingle and confiscated his ship. But as quick as we clap the blackguard in irons he’s set loose by order of our own Councilman, Captain Cornwaleys, restored to his ship, and let go free as a fish.”

  “I am astonished.”

  “Now, this Cornwaleys was a soldier and had lately led expeditions to make peace with the Nanticokes and drive back the Susquehannoughs. When we impeached him for freeing Ingle, ’twas said in his defense he’d exacted promise from the scoundrel to supply us a barrel of powder and four hundredweight of shot for the defense of the Province—and sure enough the rascal returns soon after, cursing and assaulting all he meets, and pledges the ammunition as bail against a future trial. But ere we see a ball of’t, off he sails again, flaunting clearance and port-dues, and takes his friend Cornwaleys as passenger.

  “ ’Twas soon clear that Ingle and Claiborne, our two worst enemies, had leagued together to do us in, using the English Civil War as alibi. Claiborne landed at Kent Island, displayed a false parchment, and swore ’twas his commission from the King to command the Island. At the same time, the roundhead Ingle storms St. Mary’s with an armed ship and his own false parchment; he reduces the city, drives Uncle Leonard to flee to Virginia, and so with Claiborne’s aid claims the whole of Maryland, which for the space of two years suffers total anarchy. He pillages here, plunders there, seizes property, steals the very locks and hinges of every housedoor, and snatches e’en the Great Seal of Maryland itself, it being forty poundsworth of good silver. He does not stick e’en at the house and goods of his savior Cornwaleys but plunders ’em with the rest, and then has Cornwaleys jailed in London as his debtor and traitor to boot! As a final cut he swears to the House of Lords he did it all for conscience’s sake, forasmuch as Cornwaleys and the rest of his victims were Papists and malignants!”

  “I cannot comprehend it,” Ebenezer confessed.

  “In 1646 Uncle Leonard mustered a force with the help of Governor Berkeley and recaptured St. Mary’s and soon all of Maryland—Kent Island being the last to submit. The Province was ours again, though Uncle Leonard’s pains were ill rewarded, for he died a year after.”

  “Hi!” cried Ebenezer. “What a struggle! I hope with all my heart you were plagued no more by the likes of Claiborne but enjoyed your Province in peace and harmony!”

  “ ’Twas our due, by Heav’n. But not three years passed ere the pot of faction and sedition boiled again.”

  “I groan to hear it.”

  “ ’Twas mainly Claiborne, this time in league with Oliver Cromwell and the Protestants, though he’d lately been a swaggering royalist. Some years before, when the Anglicans ran the Puritans out of Virginia, Uncle Leonard had given ’em leave to make a town called Providence on the Severn River, inasmuch as none suffered in Maryland by reason of his faith. But these Protestants despised us Romanists, and would swear no allegiance to Father. When Charles I was beheaded and Charles II driven to exile, Father made no protest but acknowledged Parliament’s authority; he e’en saw to’t that the Catholic Thomas Greene, Governor after Uncle Leonard died, was replaced by a Protestant and friend of Parliament, William Stone, so’s to give the malcontents in Providence no occasion to rebel. His thanks for this wisdom was to have Charles II exiled on the Isle of Jersey, declare him a Roundhead and grant the Maryland government to Sir William Davenant, the poet.”

  “Davenant!” exclaimed Ebenezer. “Ah, now, ’tis a right noble vision, the poet-king! Yet do I blush for my craft, that the fellow took a prize so unfairly giv’n.”

  “He got not far with’t, for no sooner did he sail for Maryland than a Parliament cruiser waylaid him in the Channel off Lands End, and that scotched him. Now Virginia, don’t you know, was royalist to the end, and when she proclaimed Charles II directly his father was axed, Parliament made ready a fleet to reduce her to submission. Just then, in 1650, our Governor Stone
hied him to Virginia on business and deputized his predecessor Thomas Greene to govern till his return. ’Twas a fool’s decision, inasmuch as this Greene still smarted at having been replaced. Directly he’s deputized he declares with Virginia for Charles II, and for all Governor Stone hastens back and turns the fellow out, the damage is done! The dastard Dick Ingle was still a free man in London, and directly word reached him he flew to the committee in charge of reducing Virginia and caused ’em to add Maryland to the commission. But Father caught wind of’t, and ere the fleet sailed he petitioned that Greene’s proclamation had been made without his authority or knowledge, and caused the name of Maryland to be stricken from the commission. Thinking that guaranty enough, he retired: straightway sly Bill Claiborne appears and, trusting as always that the committee knew naught of American geography, sees to’t the commission is rewrit to include all the plantations within the Bay of Chesapeake—which is to say, all of Maryland! What’s more, he gets himself appointed as an alternate commissioner of Parliament to sail with the fleet. There were three commissioners—all reasonable gentlemen, if misled—and two alternates: Claiborne and another scoundrel, Richard Bennett, that had taken refuge in our Providence town what time Virginia turned out her Puritans.”

  “Marry!” cried Ebenezer. “I ne’er have heard of such perfidy!”