George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore
was born at Kipling, Yorkshire, United Kingdom about 1580. Little is known of the ancestry of the Yorkshire branch of the Calverts. At George Calvert's knighting, it was claimed that his family originally came from Flanders (a Dutch-speaking area today across the English Channel in modern Belgium).
He was educated at Trinity College, Oxford.
Calvert served in the House of Commons from 1609 to 1611. He was knighted in 1617, became a secretary of state in 1619, and was given a pension in 1620. Serving in the House of Commons from 1621, he had the tasks of communicating King James I’s policy and of obtaining royal supplies. He was distrusted by the Parliament and was in favour of the unpopular alliance with Spain and the king’s Spanish marriage. On Feb. 12, 1625, after he had declared himself a Roman Catholic, Calvert gave up his office, was created Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage, and received a grant of large estates in Ireland.
In 1621 Baltimore had sent Captain Edward Wynne to Newfoundland to establish a small settlement named Ferryland; two years later he procured a charter for the colony under the name Avalon. In order to assure the prosperity of his holdings in the New World, Baltimore visited Avalon briefly in 1627 and returned with most of his family the following year. In the course of this extended visit, conflict arose over his Roman Catholic practices, the saying of masses, and the presence of priests who had accompanied him to Avalon. In addition, the climate proved too severe, taking its toll in death and illness among the settlers, and Lady Baltimore left the colony for Virginia in 1628. Baltimore thereupon petitioned King Charles I for a land grant in the more temperate Chesapeake Bay area and, without waiting for a reply, sailed for Jamestown to join his wife. He was, however, forbidden to settle in Virginia because of his religion. He therefore returned to England to plead his case for the Maryland charter but died before a new cession could be secured. (The cession was secured by his son. )
In 1625 he resigned his offices and declared himself a Roman Catholic.
Baltimore's two colonies in the New World continued under the proprietorship of his family. Avalon, which remained a prime spot for the salting and export of fish, was expropriated by Sir David Kirke, with a new royal charter which Cecil Calvert vigorously challenged, and it was finally absorbed into Newfoundland in 1754. Although Baltimore's failed Avalon venture marked the end of an early era of attempts at proprietary colonisation, it laid the foundation upon which permanent settlements developed in that region of Newfoundland.
Maryland became a prime tobacco exporting colony in the mid-Atlantic and, for a time, a refuge for Catholic settlers, as George Calvert had hoped. Under the rule of the Lords Baltimore, thousands of British Catholics emigrated to Maryland, establishing some of the oldest Catholic communities in what later became the United States. Catholic rule in Maryland was eventually nullified by the re-assertion of royal control over the colony.
One hundred forty years after its first settlement, Maryland joined twelve other British colonies along the Atlantic coast in declaring their independence from British rule and the right to freedom of religion for all citizens in the new United States.
He achieved domestic political success as a member of parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I.
He was a member of Parliament for Bossiney, member of Parliament for Yorkshire, Member of Parliament for Oxford University.
Calvert's father, (an earlier) Leonard, was a country gentleman who had achieved some prominence as a tenant of Lord Wharton, and was wealthy enough.
His second son Leonard Calvert (1606–1647) was the first colonial governor of the Province of Maryland.
