Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 by Various

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Finding that he was native to the estate, and had lived here all his
life, we interrogated him with some confidence in his ability to
contribute something useful to the issue of our pursuit. Amongst all
the Solomons of this world, there is not one so consciously impressed
with the unquestionable verity of his wisdom and the intensity of his
knowledge as one of these veterans of an old family-estate upon which
he has spent his life. He is always an aristocrat of the most
uncompromising stamp, and has a contemptuous disdain and intolerance
for every form of democracy. Poor white people have not the slightest
chance of his good opinion. The pedigree and history of his master's
family possess an epic dignity in his imagination; and the liberty he
takes with facts concerning them amounts to a grand poetical
hyperbole. He represents their wealth in past times to have amounted
to something of a fabulous superfluity, and their magnificence so
unbounded, that he stares at you in describing it, as if its excess
astonished himself.

When we now questioned our venerable conductor, to learn what he
could tell us of the old Proprietary Mansion, he said, in his way, he
"membered it, as if it was built only yesterday: he was fotch up so
near it, that he could see it now as if it was standing before him:
if _he_ couldn't pint out where it stood, it was time for him to give
up: it was a mighty grand brick house,"--laying an emphasis on
_brick_, as a special point in his notion of its grandeur; and then
he added, with all the gravity of which his very solemn visage was a
copious index, that "Old Master Baltimore, who built it, was a real
fine gentleman. He knowed him so well! He never gave anything but
gold to the servants for tending on him. Bless you! he wouldn't even
think of silver! Many a time has he given me a guinea for waiting on
him."

This account of Old Master Baltimore, and his magnificent contempt of
silver, and the intimacy of our patriarch with him, rather startled
us, and I began to fear that the story of the house might turn out to
be as big a lie as the acquaintance with the Lord Proprietary,--for
Master Baltimore had then been dead just one hundred and twenty-one
years. But we went on with him, and were pleasantly disappointed when
he brought us upon a hill that sloped down to the Mattapony, and
there traced out for us, by the depression of the earth, the visible
lines of an old foundation of a large building, the former existence
of which was further demonstrated by some scattered remains of the
old imported brick of the edifice which were imbedded in the soil.

This spot had a fine outlook upon the Bay, and every advantage of
locality to recommend its choice for a domestic establishment. We
could find nothing to indicate the old fort except the commanding
character of the hill with reference to the river, which might
warrant a conjecture as to its position. I believe that the house was
included within the ramparts of the fortification, as I perceive in
some of the old records that the fortification itself was called the
Mattapony House, which was once beleaguered and taken by Captain John
Coode and Colonel Jowles.

After we had examined all that was to be seen here, our next point of
interest was a graveyard, which, we had been informed by some of the
household at Mrs. Carroll's, had been preserved upon the estate from
a very early period. Our old gossip professed to know all about this,
from its very first establishment. It was in another direction from
the mansion-house, about a mile distant, on the margin of an inlet
from the Bay, called Harper's Creek; and thither we accordingly went.
Before we reached the spot, the old negro stopped at a cabin that lay
in our route and provided himself with a hoe, which, borne upon his
shoulder, gave a somewhat mysterious significance to the office he
had assumed. He did not explain the purpose of this equipment to us,
and we forbore to question him. After descending to the level of the
tide and passing through some thickets of wild shrubbery, we arrived
upon a grassy plain immediately upon the border of the creek; and
there, in a quiet, sequestered nook of rural landscape, the smooth
and sluggish little inlet begirt with waterlilies and reflecting wood
and sky and the green hill-side upon its surface, was the chosen
resting-place of the departed generations of the family. A few simple
tombstones--some of them darkened by the touch of Time--lay clustered
within an old inclosure. The brief memorials engraved upon them told
us how inveterately Death had pursued his ancient vocation and
gathered in his relentless tribute from young and old in times past
as he does to-day.

Here was a theme for a sermon from the patriarch, who now leaned upon
his hoe and shook his head with a slow ruminative motion, as if he
hoped by this action to disengage from it some profound moral
reflections, and then began to enumerate how many of these good
people he had helped to bury; but before he had well begun this
discourse we had turned away and were about leaving the place, when
he recalled us by saying, "I have got one tombstone yet to show you,
as soon as I can clear it off with the hoe: it belongs to old Master
Rousby, who was stobbed aboard ship, and is, besides that, the
grandest tombstone here."

Here was another of those flashes of light by which my story seemed
to be preordained to a prosperous end. We eagerly encouraged the old
man to this task, and he went to work in removing the green sod from
a large slab which had been entirely hidden under the soil, and in a
brief space revealed to us a tombstone fully six feet long, upon
which we were able to read, in plainly chiselled letters, an
inscription surmounted by a carved heraldic shield with its proper
quarterings and devices.

Our group at this moment would have made a fine artistic study. There
was this quiet landscape around us garnished with the beauty of May;
there were the rustic tombs,--the old negro, with a countenance
surcharged with the expression of solemn satisfaction at his
employment, bending his aged figure over the broad, carved stone, and
scraping from it the grass which had not been disturbed perhaps for a
quarter of a century; and there was our own party looking on with
eager interest, as the inscription every moment became more legible.
That interest may be imagined, on reading the inscription, which,
when brought to the full light of day, revealed these words:--

"Here lyeth the body of Xph'r Rousbie Esquire, who was taken out of
this world by a violent death received on board his Majesty's ship
The Quaker Ketch, Capt. Tho's. Allen Commander, the last day of
October 1684. And also of Mr. John Rousbie, his brother, who departed
this naturall life on board the Ship Baltimore, being arrived in
Patuxen the first day of February 1685."

This was a picturesque incident in its scenic character, but a still
more engaging one as an occurrence in the path of discovery. Here was
most unexpectedly brought to view a new link in the chain of our
story. It was a pleasant surprise to have such a fact as this
breaking upon us from an ambuscade, to help out a half-formed
narrative which I had feared was hopeless of completion. The
inscription is a necessary supplement to the marginal notes. As an
insulated monument, it is meagre in its detail, and stands in need of
explanation. It does not describe Christopher Rousby as the Collector
of the Customs; it does not affirm that he was murdered; it makes no
allusion to Talbot: but it gives the name of the ship and its
commander, along with the date of the death. "The Landholder's
Assistant" supplies all the facts that are wanting in this brief
statement. These two memorials help each other and enlarge the common
current of testimony, like two confluent streams coming from opposite
sources. From the two together we learn, that Colonel Talbot, the
Surveyor-General in 1684, killed Mr. Christopher Rousby on board of a
ship of war; and we are apprised that Rousby was a gentleman of rank
and authority in the Province, holding an important commission from
the King. The place at which the tomb is found shows also that he was
the owner of a considerable landed estate and a near neighbor of the
Lord Proprietary.

The story, however, requires much more circumstance to give it the
interest which we hope yet to find in it.

CHAPTER IV.

DRYASDUST.

I have now to change my scene, and to pursue in another quarter more
important investigations. I break off with some regret from my visit
to St. Mary's, because it had many attractions of its own, which
would form a pleasant theme for description. Some of the results of
that visit I embodied, several years ago, in a fiction which I fear
the world will hardly credit me in saying has as much history in it
as invention. [Footnote: _Rob of the Bowl._] But my journey had no
further connection with the particular subject before us, after the
discovery of the tomb. I therefore take my leave, at this juncture,
of good Father Carberry and St. Inigoes, and also of my companion in
this adventure,--pausing but a moment to say, that the Superior of
St. Inigoes has, some time since, gone to his account, and that I am
not willing to part with him in my narrative without a grateful
recognition of the esteem I have for his memory, in which I share
with all who were acquainted with him,--an esteem won by the simple,
unostentatious merit of his character, his liberal religious
sentiment, and his frank and cordial hospitality, which had the best
flavor of the good old housekeeping of St. Mary's,--a commendation
which every one conversant with that section of Maryland will
understand to imply what the Irish schoolmaster, in one of Carleton's
tales, calls "the hoighth of good living."

After my return from this excursion, I resolved to make a search
amongst the records at Annapolis, to ascertain whether any memorials
existed which might furnish further information in regard to the
events to which I had now got a clue. And here comes in a morsel of
official history which will excuse a short digression.

The Legislature had, about this time, directed the Executive to cause
a search through the government buildings, with a view to the
discovery of old state papers and manuscripts, which, having been
consigned, time out of mind, to neglect and oblivion, were known only
as heaps of promiscuous lumber, strewed over the floors of damp
cellars and unfrequented garrets. The careless and unappreciative
spirit of the proper guardians of our archives in past years had
suffered many precious folios and separate papers to be disposed of
as mere rubbish; and the not less culpable and incurious indolence of
their successors, in our own times, had treated them with equal
indifference. The attention of the Legislature was awakened to the
importance of this investigation by Mr. David Ridgely, the State
Librarian, and he was appointed by the Executive to undertake the
labor. Never did beagle pursue the chase with more steady foot than
did this eager and laudable champion of the ancient fame of the State
his chosen duty. He rummaged old cuddies, closets, vaults, and
cocklofts, and pried into every recess of the Chancery, the Land
Office, the Committee-Rooms, and the Council-Chamber, searching
up-stairs and down-stairs, wherever a truant paper was supposed to lurk.
Groping with lantern in hand and body bent, he made his way through
narrow passages, startling the rats from their fastnesses, where they
had been intrenched for half a century, and breaking down the thick
drapery--the Gobelin tapestry I might call it--woven by successive
families of spiders from the days of the last Lord Proprietary. The
very dust which was kicked up in Annapolis, as the old newspapers
tell us, at the passage of the Stamp Act, was once more set in motion
by the foot of this resolute and unwearied invader, and everywhere
something was found to reward the toil of the search. But the most
valuable discoveries were made in the old Treasury,--made, alas! too
late for the full fruition of the Librarian's labor. The Treasury,
one of the most venerable structures in the State, is that lowly and
quaint little edifice of brick which the visitor never fails to
notice within the inclosure of the State-House grounds. It was
originally designed for the accommodation of the Governor and his
Council, and for the sessions of the Upper House of the Provincial
Legislature; the Burgesses, at that time, holding their meetings in
the old State House, which occupied the site of the present more
imposing and capacious building: this latter having been erected
about the year 1772.

In some dark recess of the Treasury Office Mr. Ridgely struck upon a
mine of wealth, in a mouldy wooden box, which was found to contain
many missing Journals of the Provincial Council, some of which bore
date as far back as 1666. It was a sad disappointment to him, when
his eye was greeted with the sight of these folios, to see them
crumble, like the famed Dead-Sea Apples, into powder, upon every
attempt, to handle them. The form of the books was preserved and the
character of the writing distinctly legible, but, from the effect of
moisture, the paper had lost its cohesion, and fell to pieces at
every effort to turn a leaf. I was myself a witness to this
tantalizing deception, and, with the Librarian, read enough to show
the date and character of the perishing record.

Through this accident, the Council Journals of a most interesting
period, embracing several years between 1666 and 1692, were
irretrievably lost. Others sustained less damage, and were partially
preserved. Some few survived in good condition.

Our Maryland historians have had frequent occasion to complain of the
deficiency of material for the illustration of several epochs in the
Provincial existence, owing to the loss of official records. No
research has supplied the means of describing the public events of
these intervals, beyond some few inferences, which are only
sufficient to show that these silent periods were marked by incidents
of important interest. The most striking of these privations occurs
towards the end of the seventeenth century,--precisely that period to
which the crumbling folios had reference.

This loss of the records has been ascribed to their frequent removals
during periods of trouble, and to the havoc made in the rage of
parties. The Province, like the great world from which it was so far
remote, was distracted with what are sometimes called religious
quarrels, but what I prefer to describe as exceedingly irreligious
quarrels, carried on by men professing to be Christians, and
generated in the heat of disputes concerning the word of the great
Teacher of "peace on earth." Out of these grew any quantity of
rebellion and war, tinctured with their usual flavor of persecution.
For at this era the wars of Christendom were chiefly waged in support
of dogmas and creeds, and took a savage hue from the fury of
religious bigotry. The wars of Europe since that period have arisen
upon commercial and political questions, and religion has been freed
from the dishonor of promoting these bloody strifes so incompatible
with its high office. In these quarrels of the fathers of Maryland,
the archives of government were seized more than once, and, perhaps,
destroyed. On one occasion they were burnt. And so, amongst all these
disorders, it has fallen out that the full development of the State
history has been rendered impossible.

Mr. Ridgely's foray, however, into this domain of dust and darkness
has happily rescued much useful matter to aid the future chronicler
in supplying the deficiency of past attempts to trace the path of our
modest annals through these silent intervals. Incidentally the
Librarian's work has assisted my story; for, although the recovered
folios did not touch the exact year of my search, the pursuit of them
led me to what I may claim as a discovery of my own. I found what I
could not say was wholly lost, but what, until Mr. Ridgely's
exploration drew attention to the records, might have been said to
have shrunk from all notice of the present generation, and to be fast
falling a prey to the tooth of time and the visit of the worm. A few
years more of neglect and the ill usage of careless custodians, and
it would have passed to that depository of things lost upon the
earth, which fable has placed in the moon. It was my good fortune, in
this upturning of relics of the past, to lay my hand upon a sadly
tattered and decayed MS. volume,--unbound, without beginning and
without end, coated with the dust which had been gathering upon it
ever since Chalmers and Bozman had done their work of deciphering its
quaint old text. It lay in the state of rubbish, in an old case,
where many documents of the same kind had been consigned to the same
oblivion, and with it had been sleeping for as many years, perhaps,
as the Beauty in the fairy tale,--happily destined, at last, to be
awakened, as she was, by one who by his perseverance had won a title
to herself.

This manuscript was now, in this day of revival, brought out from its
hiding-place, and, upon inspection, proved to be a Journal of the
Council for some few years including the very date of the death of
the Collector on the Patuxent.

The record was complete, neatly written in the peculiar manuscript
character of that age, so difficult for a modern reader to decipher.
Its queer old-fashioned spelling suggested the idea that our
ancestors considered both consonants and vowels too weak to stand
alone, and that therefore they doubled them as often as they could;
and there was such an actual identification of its antiquity in its
exterior aspect as well as in its forms of speech, that, when I have
sat poring over it alone at midnight in my study, as I have often
done, I have turned my eye over my shoulder, expecting to see the
apparition of Master John Llewellin--who subscribes his name with a
very energetic nourish as Clerk of the Council--standing behind me in
grave-colored doublet and trunk-hose, with a starched ruff, a
wide-awake hat drawn over his brow, and a short black feather falling
amongst the locks of his dark hair towards his back.

This Journal lets in a blaze of light upon the old tradition of
Talbot's Cave. The narrative of what it discloses it is now my
purpose to make as brief as is compatible with common justice to my
subject.

CHAPTER V.

A FRAGMENT OF HISTORY.

Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, the son of Cecilius, was, according
to the testimony of all our annalists, a worthy gentleman and an
upright ruler. He was governor of Maryland, by the appointment of his
father, from 1662 to 1675, and after that became the Lord Proprietary
by inheritance, and administered the public affairs in person. His
prudence and judgment won him the esteem of the best portion of his
people, and the Province prospered in his hands.

All our histories tell of the troubles that beset the closing years
of his residence in Maryland. They arose partly out of his religion,
and in part out of the jealousy of the crown concerning the
privileges of his charter.

He was a Roman Catholic; but, like his father, liberal and tolerant
in opinion, and free from sectarian bias in the administration of his
government. Apart from the influence of his father's example, the
training of his education, his real attachment to the interests of
the Province, and his own natural inclination,--all of which pointed
out to him the duty as well as the advantage of affording the utmost
security to the freedom of religious opinion,--the conditions under
which he held his proprietary rights rendered a departure from this
policy the most improbable accusation that could be made against him.
The public mind of England at that period was fevered to a state of
madness by the domestic quarrel that raged within the kingdom against
the Catholics. The people were distracted with constant alarms of
Popish plots for the overthrow of the government. The King, a
heartless profligate, absorbed in frivolous pleasures, scarcely
entertained any grave question of state affairs that had not some
connection with his hatreds and his fears of Catholics and
Dissenters. Then, also, the Province itself was composed, in far the
greater part, of a Protestant population,--computed by some
contemporary writers at the proportion of thirty to one,--a
population who were guarantied freedom of conscience by the Charter,
and who possessed all necessary power both legal and physical to
enforce it.

Under such circumstances as these, how is it possible to impute
designs against the old established toleration, which had marked the
history of Maryland from its first settlement to that day, to so
prudent and careful a ruler as Charles Calvert, without imputing to
him, at the same time, a folly so absurd as to belie every opinion
that has ever been uttered to his advantage?

Yet, notwithstanding these improbabilities, the accusation was made
and affected to be believed by the King and his Council; the result
of which was that a royal order was sent to the Proprietary,
commanding him to dismiss every Catholic from employment in the
Province, and to supply their places by the appointment of
Protestants.

The most plausible theory upon which I can account for this harsh
proceeding is suggested by the fact that parties in the Province took
the same complexion with those in the mother country and ran parallel
with them,--that the same excitements which agitated the minds of the
people in England were industriously fomented here, where no similar
reason for them existed, as the volunteer work of demagogues who saw
in them the means of promoting their own interest,--that, in fact,
this opposition to the Proprietary grew out of a failing in our
ancestors which has not yet been cured in their descendants, a
weakness in favor of the loaves and fishes. The party in the majority
carried the elections, and felt, of course, as all parties do who
perform such an exploit, that they had made a very gigantic sacrifice
for the good of the country and deserved to be remunerated for such
an act of heroism, and thereupon set up and asserted that venerable
doctrine which has been erroneously and somewhat vaingloriously
claimed as the conception of a modern statesman, namely,--"that to
the victors belong the spoils." I rejoice in the discovery that a
dogma so profound and so convenient has the sanction of antiquity to
commend it to the platform of the patriots of our own time.

I must in a few words notice another charge against Lord Baltimore,
which was even more serious than the first, and to which the cupidity
of the King lent a willing ear. Parliament had passed an act for
levying certain duties on the trade of the Southern Colonies, which
were very oppressive to the commerce of Maryland. These duties were
gathered by Collectors specially appointed for the occasion, who held
their commissions from the Crown, and who were stationed at the
several ports of entry of the Province. The frequent evasion of these
duties gave rise to much ill-will between the Collectors and the
people. Lord Baltimore was charged with having connived at these
evasions, and with obstructing the collection of the royal revenue.
His chief accusers were the Collectors, who, being Crown officers,
seemed naturally to array themselves against him. Although there was
really no foundation for this complaint, yet the King, who never
threw away a chance to replenish his purse, compelled the Proprietary
to pay by way of retribution a large sum into the Exchequer.

I have no need to dwell upon this subject, and have referred to it
only because it explains the relation between Lord Baltimore and
Christopher Rousby, and has therefore some connection with my story.
Rousby was an enemy to the Proprietary; and from a letter preserved
by Chalmers it appears there was no love lost between them. Lord
Baltimore writes to the Earl of Anglesey, the President of the King's
Council, in 1681,--"I have already written twice to your Lordship
about Christopher Rousby, who I desired might be removed from his
place of Collector of his Majesty's Customs,--he having been a great
knave, and a disturber of the trade and peace of the Province"; which
letter, it seems, had no effect,--as Christopher Rousby was continued
in his post. He was doubtless emboldened by the failure of this
remonstrance against him to exhibit his ill-will towards the
Proprietary in more open and more vexatious modes of annoyance.

All these embarrassments threw a heavy shadow over the latter years
of Lord Baltimore's life, and now drove him to the necessity of
making a visit to England for the purpose of personal explanation and
defence before the King. He accordingly took his departure in the
month of June, 1684, intending to return in a few months; but a tide
of misfortune that now set in upon him prevented that wish, and he
never saw Maryland again.

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