BALTIMORE, GEORGE CALVERT. – English statesman and first lord of his title, born at Kipling in Yorkshire around 1580, died on 15 April 1632 in London. He entered Parliament in 1609; he was private secretary to lord Cecil; when the latter died in 1613, he entered the Privy Council and was then sent to Ireland to induce its people to accept conformity with the Anglican Church, thereby arousing great discontent, which made it necessary to establish commissions of inquiry into 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 the majority of Parliament opposed II. In 1621 the king rewarded him with a grant of 2,300 acres in Ireland on condition that the colonists be conformists in religion; but B., having become a Catholic in 1624, surrendered his original castle so that this clause might be annulled. He also resigned the secretaryship, but the king wished him to remain on the Privy Council and granted him a peerage of Ireland as Baron Baltimore. After James’s death, Charles I dispensed him from the religious oath of supremacy so that he might remain on the Council, but B. refused.
In 1620 B. had acquired a possession in America, which he called Avalon and which in 1623 was erected into a province with almost royal authority. In 1627 he went there to study its conditions and establish a colony where all might enjoy freedom in serving God; he brought with him his wife, colonists, and three priests. A Protestant minister accused him in London of having Mass celebrated in the province and of favoring Catholics, but he was not heeded. In 1629 B. received from King Charles a large grant north and southeast of the Potomac and intended to establish there a regime of broad religious toleration; but since he died before giving it a complete organization, it was his son Cecilius, the second Lord B., “absolute lord of Maryland and Avalon,” who truly founded the colony of Maryland.