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Copy by Willem Wirtz of portrait of
Cecil Calvert painted by Gerard Soest. Oil on canvas.
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Cecil Calvert,
the second Lord Baltimore, received the charter for the Province of
Maryland shortly after the death of his father. Cecil was only
twenty-seven in 1632 when he began the Maryland venture. Maryland was
the first successful English proprietary colony which meant that an
individual rather than a company owned the colony. The Calvert family
hoped that the colony would prove a profitable investment while allowing
Catholics to worship freely. In Maryland, Catholics and Protestants
would participate equally in government.
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