Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/71

48 Governor Calvert when he was an exile in Virginia had been promised that they should be paid in full "out of the stock and personal property of his Lordship's plantation." Governor Calvert was dead, the pay was not forthcoming and the only course left to the soldiers seemed to be insurrection. Governor Green could think of nothing to appease the half-starved indignant troops, so he went to Margaret Brent for aid. As soon as Mistress Margaret heard of the trouble, she recalled the instructions which Leonard Calvert had given her to "pay all," so without hesitation she sold the cattle belonging to Lord Baltimore and paid off all the hungry soldiers. News traveled slowly in those early Colonial days and it was some time before Lord Baltimore heard of all that Margaret Brent was claiming and doing as his own attorney and executrix of his brother. And not really knowing Mistress Margaret he was inclined to look upon her as a person who had been "meddling" in his affairs and he wrote "tartly" and with "bitter invectives" concerning her to the general assembly. But the general assembly understood Margaret Brent better than Lord Baltimore did and they sent a spirited reply to him in gallant praise of Margaret Brent and her wise conduct. So we find the Maryland Assembly which could not give Mistress Margaret the right to vote defending her even against the Lord of their own colony and declaring her "the ablest man among them."

To the end of her days Margaret Brent continued to lead a life of ability and energetic action. There are occasional glimpses of her latter history as she flashes across the records of the Maryland colony—always a clear-cut, fearless, vigorous personality. At one time she appears before the assembly claiming that the tenements belonging to Lord Calvert's manor should be under her guard and management. Again she comes pleading her cause against one Thomas Gerard for five thousand pounds of tobacco. At another time she figures as an