[B]eing bound for a long Journey to a Place which I have had a long Desire to visit, and have now the Opportunity and Leave to do: It is Newfoundland I mean, which imports me more than in Curiosity only to see; for I must either go and settle it in a better Order than it is, or else give it over, and lose all the Charges I have been at hitherto for other Men to build their Fortunes upon. And I had rather be esteemed a Fool for some by the Hazard of one Month's journey, than to prove myself one certainly for six Years by past, if the Business be now lost for some want of a little Pains and Care.
English peer and politician (1580–1632)
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1580 – 15 April 1632) was an English politician and coloniser. He achieved domestic political success under King James I but lost much of his political power after his support for a failed marriage alliance between Prince Charles and the Spanish House of Habsburg royal family. He resigned all of his political offices in 1625 except for his position on the Privy Council and declared his Catholicism publicly. He was created Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage upon his resignation. Calvert took an interest in the British colonisation of the Americas, at first for commercial reasons and later to create a refuge for English Catholics. He became the proprietor of Avalon and sought a new royal charter to settle the region that would become the state of Maryland, but died five weeks before the new Charter was sealed, leaving the settlement of the Maryland colony to his son Cecil (1605–1675). His second son, Leonard Calvert (1606–1647), was the first colonial governor of the Province of Maryland. Historians have long recognised George Calvert as the founder of Maryland, in spirit if not in fact, along with the role of Leonard with his intimate relationship with his older brother back in England.
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Alternative Names:
George Calvert
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