BALTIMORE, GEORGE CALVERT. — English statesman and first lord of his title, b. at Kipling in Yorkshire about 1580, d. 15 Apr. 1632 at London. He entered Parliament in 1609; he was private secretary to Lord Cecil; upon the latter’s death in 1613, he entered the Privy Council and was later sent to Ireland to induce that people to accept conformity with the Anglican Church, arousing great discontent, so that it became necessary to establish commissions to examine such complaints. He became a great favorite of James I, received the Order of the Garter, and in 1619 was appointed first Secretary of State. B. favored a policy of rapprochement with Spain, but encountered opposition from the majority in Parliament. In 1621 the Crown granted him 2,300 acres in Ireland on the condition that the colonists be conformists in matters of religion; but B., having become a Catholic in 1624, ceded his original castle so that this clause might be annulled. He also resigned his secretaryship, but the king wished him to remain in the Privy Council and granted him a peerage for Ireland as Baron Baltimore. Upon James’s death, Charles I dispensed him from the oath of religious supremacy so that he might remain in the Council, but B. refused.
In 1620 B. had acquired a possession in America which he called Avalon, which in 1623 was erected into a province with almost regal authority. In 1627 he went there to study its conditions and to establish a colony where all might enjoy freedom in serving God; he in fact brought his wife, colonists, and three priests. A Protestant minister accused him in London of having celebrated Mass in the province and of having favored Catholics, but he was not heeded. In 1629 B. received from King Charles a great grant to the north and southeast of the Potomac and intended to establish there a regime of broad religious tolerance; but since he died before he could give it complete organization, it was his son Cecilius, the second Lord B., “absolute lord of Maryland and Avalon,” who truly founded the colony of Maryland.