Charles, Lord Baltimore, died in 1715, and his son and heir, Benedict Leonard Calvert, had become a Protestant, so that the government was restored to him, as there was no longer any pretext remaining that it was unsafe to permit the proprietary to administer it. He did not long enjoy the restored palatinate, but sur vived his father for only two months, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Charles, fifth Lord Baltimore and fourth lord proprietary, who was still a minor. He was a skilful yachtsman, a dissolute, unlovely man, a friend and admirer of Frederick, the Prince of Wales, after whom he named his only son. This son was the last and the worst of the Lords Baltimore, and was proprietary from 1751 to 1771. Charles, Lord Baltimore, was the last one bearing that title to visit the province, where he spent the years 1732-33. While the province was under royal rule, the proprietary had an agent in Maryland to attend to his private affairs, and to watch that the government did not encroach upon his lands and revenues. He sent over from Eu rope, to fill that post, Charles Carroll, an Irish Roman Catholic, and the founder of an import ant family. At the time of the proprietary's restoration, the governor of Maryland was Capt. John Hart, a hot-blooded, capable Prot estant-Irishman, a man of infirm health, who was continued in office by the guardian of the proprietary. Theoretically, the second Charles, Lord Baltimore, had the same position as his grandfather; but, practically, the 25 years of royal rule had made a vast difference. The people seemed to have cared but little for the change, and the proprietary was regarded as an absentee landlord, making little use of his power except as a means of appointing relatives and friends to office. In 1715 a comprehensive code was prepared by a committee of the as sembly whose chairman was Andrew Hamilton. Shortly afterward he removed to Philadelphia where he was the first American lawyer to gain a continental reputation. From Philadelphia he was called to New York to defend John Peter Zenger in a famous libel case, having known Zenger long before, when both were neighbors in Chestertown in Kent County.
The Protestants soon found that there were no grounds for apprehension lest the Calvert family should lean too much toward the adhe rents of their ancestors' religion. The Roman Catholics were soon rudely disillusioned of their hope that they might regain, at least, a part of their old influence and position. They were even disfranchised, as a result of a violent con tention between Carroll, on the one side, and Hart and the assembly on the other. Some little suspicion of Jacobitism made the Roman Catholics still more unpopular, and repressive laws against them continued in force through out the whole of the provincial period.
Charles Calvert, a relative of the proprie tary, was governor from 1720 to 1727. During this time the general assembly passed in 1723 a law for the establishment of a free school in each county, and a notable controversy arose between the proprietary and the legislature as to whether the English statutes extended to Maryland. This controversy lasted for several years, before the victory of the provincials whose bold resolutions were long remembered: "that this Province hath always hitherto had the Common Law, and such general statutes of England, as are not restrained by words of local limitation, and such acts of the Assembly as were made in the Province, to suit its partic ular constitution, as the rule and the standard of its government and judicature' Those who maintained the contrary, "intend to infringe our English liberties, and to frustrate the in tent of the Crown' in the original grant of this province.
Benedict Leonard Calvert, younger brother of Lord Baltimore, came out to Maryland as governor in 1727, and died of consumption on his way home, in 1731. The promise of his
high-minded, scholarly, lovable nature had not time for fulfilment. He had studied at Ox ford, had made the "Grand Tour' on the con tinent of Europe and was a friend of Hearne, the antiquary. While he was governor, Wil liam Parks began at Annapolis the first news paper in the province, though there had been a printing press there as early as 1690. Ebene zer Cook, who called himself 'Laureate of Maryland,' in his vigorous Hudibrastic satire, "The Sot Weed Factor," gave a lively picture of social life in Maryland and R. Lewis, mas ter in King William's school, wrote poetry and edited a Latin poem, printed in Annapolis. During Calvert's administration occurred two important events which changed Maryland from a rural plantation province to a commer cial and agricultural border state. In 1729 Baltimore town was laid out, at the head of navigation on the Patapsco, and grew to a great city, being near to the fertile western country. About this time, along the valleys of the Blue Ridge, from Pennsylvania down toward Georgia, came the sturdy, God-fearing, hardworking German-speaking immigrants from the Rhineland, who came to Philadelphia, and so had their ties with the Pennsylvanians, rather than with the Virginians. This opening of the back country started that struggle be tween Philadelphia and Baltimore to obtain trade, which led Braddock, influenced by the colonists in Maryland and Virginia, to make his way westward through Maryland; but Forbes, influenced by the Pennsylvanians, to make his road toward Fort Du Quesne, through their colony. The Germans in Maryland were not slaveholders, and devoted their attention to the growth of cereals rather than tobacco. They also began manufactures on a small scale, and thus diversified the industry of the pala tinate. Charles, Lord Baltimore, came to Maryland in 1732, in an attempt to settle the boundary dispute with Penn's sons and heirs. He yielded to them all that they demanded, for some inexplicable reason, and presented them several million acres of land to which they had no right. Pennsylvanians had settled Phila delphia south of the 40th parallel, but they had no settlements west of the Susquehanna River. Beyond it Marylanders were already building their cabins near the north boundary of the province, and, under Capt. Thomas Cresap, they even fought for their rights. Baltimore agreed, nevertheless, to accept a line run due west on a parallel 15 miles south of Philadel phia, so far as the provinces had a common boundary. When he realized what he had done, he refused to run this boundary and ap plied to the English courts. The case dragged on until 1760, when the line of 1732 was finally accepted, and was surveyed between 1762 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two excellent English surveyors. During the long governorships of William Bladen and Samuel Ogle, the province grew in population and wealth. Worcester County, on the Atlan tic seaboard, was organized in 1742, and Fred erick County, in the extreme west, in 1748. The Annapolis Gazette, established in 1752, published graceful and correct poems written by colonial gentlemen. The English magazines printed the results of the scientific observa tions in southern Maryland of Dr. Richard Brooke, physician and politician. In 1753, Horatio Sharpe came out as governor, and con tinued in that office until relieved in 1768 by the last proprietary governor, Sir Robert Eden, the brother-in-law of the last Lord Baltimore. Sharpe was a wise and popular man, who had a difficult position to fill during the French and Indian War, in which Fort Cumberland and other garrisons were placed in the west of the province; but in which Maryland played a dis creditable part, owing to a niggardly tary and a narrow-minded, unpatriotic legis lature.