Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/16

6 South Carolina, and the issue of arms was only averted by the retreat of the Federal government, by concession and by compromise.

The king of England at the beginning of the seventeenth century claimed the proprietorship of the North American continent, which claim was disputed by the Spaniard in the South and the French in the North. New England was hemmed and bounded by New Spain, New France, and the ambition and the courage and enterprise of England were roused to the conquest of the new world. The spirit that had shattered the Grand Armada and won for commerce the freedom of the seas, was directed to new countries and new States to be founded in North America, where the institutions, the habits, the sentiment and the society of their ancestors were to be transplanted, cultivated and developed, as they had been a thousand years before from the forests of Germany to the shores of Britain. The leading nobility and gentry, sailors, soldiers, and merchants of England were aroused to this great enterprise. They formed the Virginia company and received a grant from the king of that part of North America unoccupied by French or Spaniards. The enterprise of settlement, transportation and support of colonies proved too much for the company, and its grant was taken away with its charter, and the crown resumed its rights. Then grants were made to individual proprietors. Noblemen and gentlemen about the court secured these great favors, which they hoped would be the foundation of fortune to their posterity, just as the grants of the Norman conqueror had founded great houses and families which had controlled England for six centuries. Among them was Sir George Calvert, a Yorkshire knight of moderate fortune, but of an old family, whose ancestors had filled important offices in the Low Countries under the kings of Spain, and high positions at the court of France. He, in association with Sir Francis Arundel of Wardvin (whose daughter, Lady Anne Arundel, his son Cœcilius married,