Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore (August 27, 1637 – February 21, 1715) was an English colonial administrator. He inherited the province of Maryland in 1675 upon the death of his father, Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. He had been his father's Deputy Governor since 1661 when he arrived in the colony at the age of 24. However, Charles left Maryland for England in 1684 and would never return. The events following the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 would cost Calvert his title to Maryland; in 1689 the royal charter to the colony was withdrawn, leading to direct rule by the British Crown. Calvert's political problems were largely caused by his Roman Catholic faith which was at odds with the established Church of England.
Calvert married four times, outliving three wives, and had at least two children. He died in England in 1715 at the age of 78, his family fortunes much diminished. With his death he passed his title, and his claim to Maryland, to his second son Benedict Calvert, 4th Baron Baltimore (1679–1715), his eldest son Cecil having died young. However, Benedict Calvert would outlive his father by just two months, and it would fall to Charles' grandson, Charles (1699–1751), who converted to the Anglican faith, to see the family proprietorship in the Province of Maryland restored by the king.
Charles was born in England on August 27, 1637, and witnessed the religious conflicts of the English Civil War. His father, Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605–1675), was the first Proprietor Governor of Maryland, and 9th Proprietor Governor of Newfoundland (including "Avalon", the Calvert's earliest colony). His mother was Anne Arundell, (c. 1615/16–1649), daughter of the 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour (1550–1639).
Anne and Cecil were married in 1627 or 1628, and had nine children. However, only two of Charles' siblings survived to adulthood, and Anne herself died in 1649 when the young Charles was just 12 years old.
The Calvert family were Roman Catholics and had founded Maryland as a colony where Catholics and Nonconformist Protestants as well as members of the established Church of England could live together in peace. Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605–1675), had received the proprietorship that was intended for his father, George, who died in 1632 at age 53, shortly before it was granted. Cecil established his colony in Maryland from his home in England, (but sent his younger brother Leonard (1606–1647), as first colonial governor, and as a Roman Catholic continued the legacy of his father by promoting religious tolerance in the colony. He governed Maryland for forty-two years, though he never visited his colony in person.
In 1649, the General Assembly of Maryland, the decade-old colonial legislature passed the Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the "Act Concerning Religion, a law mandating religious tolerance for trinitarian Christians". Passed on September 21, 1649 by the Assembly of the Maryland colony, it was the first law requiring religious tolerance in the British North American colonies. The Calvert family sought enactment of the law to protect Catholic and other Trinitarian Christians who did not conform to the established Church of England. Religious toleration lasted for approximately 40 years until it was revoked during the Protestant Revolution of 1689. From 1689 until 1776, Maryland was officially Anglican.
Charles Calvert sailed to Maryland in 1661 as a young man of 24, becoming the first of the Barons Baltimore to take personal charge of the colony. He was appointed deputy governor by his father and, when Cecil Calvert died in 1675, Charles inherited Maryland, becoming governor in his own right. Some time before 1666 he was married to Mary Darnall, daughter of Ralph Darnall, and the first of Calvert's four wives. The Darnall family were wealthy Maryland planters, and also Roman Catholics. Tragically, Mary did not live long; she died in childbirth sometime before 1667.
Charles was not slow to find a new bride. In 1667, he was married a second time, to Jane Lowe (1644–1693/4), the widow of Colonel Henry Sewall of St Mary's County, Maryland, daughter of Vincent Lowe and his wife Anne Cavendish. In late 1667 or early 1668, they had a son, Cecil.
Calvert's life as governor was aggravated by growing economic problems. From the 1660s onwards, the price of tobacco, the staple crop of Maryland and its chief source of export income, began a long slide, causing economic hardship especially among the poor. In 1666 neighbouring Virginia proposed a "stint" on tobacco growing, a one-year moratorium that would lower supply and so drive up prices. Calvert initially agreed to this plan but came to realize that the burden of the stint would fall chiefly upon his poorest subjects, who comprised "the generality of the province". Eventually he vetoed the bill, much to the disgust of the Virginians, though in the end Nature provided a stint of her own in the form of a hurricane which devastated the 1667 tobacco crop.
By the time Charles Calvert became governor, the population of the province had gradually become overwhelmingly Protestant due to immigration. Political power however tended to remain concentrated in the hands of the largely Roman Catholic elite. In spite of this demographic shift away from Catholicism, Calvert attempted to preserve Maryland's Catholic identity. From 1669 to 1689, of 27 men who sat on the Governor's Council, just 8 were Protestant. Most councillors were Catholics, and many were related by blood or marriage to the Calverts, enjoying political patronage and often lucrative offices such as commands in the militia or sinecures in the Land Office.
Much conflict between Calvert and his subjects turned on the question of how far English law should be applied in Maryland, and to what degree the proprietary government might exercise its own prerogative outside of the law. Delegates to the assembly wished to establish the "full force and power" of the law but Calvert, ever protective of his prerogative, insisted that only he and his councillors might decide where and when English law should apply. Such uncertainty could and did permit the charge of arbitrary government.
Calvert acted in various ways to restrain the influence of the Protestant majority. In 1670 he restricted suffrage to men who owned 50 acres (200,000 m2) or more, or held property worth more than 40 pounds. He also restricted election to Maryland's House of Delegates to those who owned at least 1,000 acres (4 km2) of land. In 1676 he directed the voters to return half as many delegates to the assembly, two instead of four. Measures like these might make the assembly easier to manage, but they tended to strain relations between Calvert and his subjects.
One of Calvert's earliest decisions, regarding the legal position of Africans imported into Maryland, would have long-term and baleful consequences. Although the first Africans had been brought to Maryland in 1642, when 13 slaves arrived at St. Mary's City, the first colonial settlement in the region, their legal status was initially unclear and colonial courts tended to rule that a slave who accepted Christian baptism should be freed. In order to protect the rights of their owners, laws began to be passed to clarify the legal position. In 1663 the Assembly ruled that slaves would be enslaved for life, and that the children of slaves should also be enslaved for life, thus perpetuating the institution of slavery for the next 200 years, until its abolition during the American Civil War. However, the impact of such laws would not be felt for some time, as large scale importation of Africans to Maryland would not begin until the 1690s.
In 1675, the elder (second) Lord Baltimore (Cecilius, who planted the colony of Maryland) died, and Charles Calvert, now 38 years old, returned to London in order to be elevated to his barony. His political enemies now took the opportunity of his absence to launch a scathing attack on the proprietarial government, publishing a pamphlet in 1676, titled "A Complaint from Heaven with a Hue and Crye...out of Maryland and Virginia", listing numerous grievances, and in particular complaining of the lack of an established church. Neither was the Church of England happy. An Anglican priest, Rev. John Yeo, wrote scathingly to the Archbishop of Canterbury, complaining that Maryland was "in a deplorable condition" and had become "a sodom of uncleanliness and a pesthouse of iniquity". This was taken sufficiently seriously in London that the Privy Council directed Calvert to respond to the complaints made against him.