Rob of the Bowl: A Legend of St. Inigoe's. Vol. 1 (of 2) Read online

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  ROB OF THE BOWL:

  A LEGEND OF ST. INIGOE'S.

  BY THE AUTHOR OF "SWALLOW BARN," "HORSE-SHOE ROBINSON," &c.

  _Daniel._ Quot homines tot sententiae.

  _Martin._ And what is that?

  _Daniel._ 'Tis Greek, and argues difference of opinion.

  _John Woodvil._

  IN TWO VOLUMES.

  VOL. I.

  PHILADELPHIA:LEA & BLANCHARD.SUCCESSORS TO CAREY & CO.1838.

  Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1838, byLEA & BLANCHARD,In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States,in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

  I. ASHMEAD AND CO., PRINTERS.

  PREFACE.

  The tale related in the following pages refers to a period in thehistory of Maryland, which has heretofore been involved in greatobscurity,--many of the most important records connected with it havingbeen lost to public inspection in forgotten repositories, where theyhave crumbled away under the touch of time. To the persevering researchof the accomplished Librarian of the State--a gentleman whosedauntless, antiquarian zeal and liberal scholarship are only surpassedby the enlightened judgment with which he discharges the functions ofhis office--we are indebted for the rescue of the remnant of thesememorials of by-gone days, from the oblivion to which the carelessnessof former generations had consigned them. Many were irrecoverable; andit was the fate of the gentleman referred to, to see them fall intodust at the moment that the long estranged light first glanced uponthem.

  To some of those which have been saved from this wreck, the author isindebted for no small portion of the materials of his story. In hisendeavour to illustrate these passages in the annals of the state, itis proper for him to say that he has aimed to perform his task withhistorical fidelity. If he has set in harsher lights than may be deemedcharitable some of the actors in these scenes, or portrayed inlineaments of disparagement or extenuation, beyond their deserts, thepartisans on either side in that war of intolerance which disfiguredthe epoch of this tale, it was apart from his purpose. As a native ofthe state he feels a prompt sensibility to the fame of her Catholicfounders, and, though differing from them in his faith, cherishes theremembrance of their noble endeavours to establish religious freedom,with the affection due to what he believes the most wisely planned andhonestly executed scheme of society which at that era, at least, was tobe found in the annals of mankind. In the temper inspired by thissentiment, these volumes have been given to the public, and are nowrespectfully inscribed to THE STATE OF MARYLAND, by one who takes thedeepest interest in whatever concerns her present happiness or ancientrenown.

  THE AUTHOR.

  BALTIMORE, Dec. 1, 1838.

  ROB OF THE BOWL.

  A LEGEND OF ST. INIGOES.

  CHAPTER I.

  No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But choked with sedges, works its weedy way; Along thy glades a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, And the long grass o'ertops the mould'ring wall.

  THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

  It is now more than one hundred and forty-four years since the ancientcapital of Maryland was shorn of its honours, by the removal of thepublic offices, and, along with them, the public functionaries, toAnnapolis. The date of this removal, I think, is recorded as of theyear of grace sixteen hundred and ninety-four. The port of St. Mary's,up to that epoch, from the first settlement of the province,comprehending rather more than three score years, had been the seat ofthe Lord Proprietary's government. This little city had grown up inhard-favoured times, which had their due effect in leaving upon it thevisible tokens of a stunted vegetation: it waxed gnarled and crooked,as it perked itself upward through the thorny troubles of itsexistence, and might be likened to the black jack, which yet retains afoothold in this region,--a scrubby, tough and hardy mignon of theforest, whose elder day of crabbed luxuriance affords a sour commentupon the nurture of its youth.

  Geographers are aware that the city of St. Mary's stood on the leftbank of the river which now bears the same name (though of old it wascalled St. George's,) and which flows into the Potomac at the southernextremity of the state of Maryland, on the western side of theChesapeake Bay, at a short distance westward from Point Lookout: butthe very spot where the old city stood is known only to a few,--for thetraces of the early residence of the Proprietary government have nearlyfaded away from the knowledge of this generation. An astute antiquarianeye, however, may define the site of the town by the few scatteredbricks which the ploughshare has mingled with the ordinary tillage ofthe fields. It may be determined, still more visibly, by the moulderingand shapeless ruin of the ancient State House, whose venerableremains,--I relate it with a blush--have been pillaged, to furnishbuilding materials for an unsightly church, which now obtrusivelypresents its mottled, mortar-stained and shabby front to the view ofthe visiter, immediately beside the wreck of this early monument of thefounders of Maryland. Over these ruins a storm-shaken and magnificentmulberry, aboriginal, and cotemporary with the settlement of theprovince, yet rears its shattered and topless trunk, and daily distilsupon the sacred relics at its foot, the dews of heaven,--an august andbrave old mourner to the departed companions of its prime. There is yetanother memorial in the family tomb of the Proprietary, whoselong-respected and holy repose, beneath the scant shade of themulberry, has, within twenty years past, been desecrated by a worsethan Vandal outrage, and whose lineaments may now with difficulty befollowed amidst the rubbish produced by this violation.

  These faded memorials tell their story like honest chroniclers. And abrave story it is of hardy adventure, and manly love of freedom! Thescattered bricks, all moulded in the mother-land, remind us of thelaunching of the bark, the struggle with the unfamiliar wave, the arrayof the wonder-stricken savage, and the rude fellowship of the firstmeeting. They recall the hearths whose early fires gleamed upon thevisage of the bold cavalier, while the deep, unconquerable faith ofreligion, and the impassioned instincts of the Anglo-Saxon devotion toliberty, were breathed by household groups, in customary householdterms. They speak of sudden alarms, and quick arming for battle;--ofstout resolve, and still stouter achievement. They tell of the victorywon, and quiet gradually confirmed,--and of the increasing rapture as,day by day, the settler's hopes were converted into realities, when hesaw the wilderness put forth the blossoms of security and comfort.

  The river penetrates from the Potomac some twelve miles inland, whereit terminates in little forked bays which wash the base of the woodyhills. St. George's Island stretches half across its mouth, forming ascreen by which the course of the Potomac is partly concealed fromview. From this island, looking northward, up St. Mary's river, the eyerests upon a glittering sheet of water about a league in breadth,bounded on either shore by low meadow-grounds and cultivated fieldsgirt with borders of forest; whilst in the distance, some two leaguesupward, interlocking promontories, with highlands in their rear, andcedar-crowned cliffs and abrupt acclivities which shut in the channel,give to the river the features of a lake. St. Inigoe's creek, flowinginto the river upon the right hand, along the base of these cliffs,forms by its southern shore a flat, narrow and grass-clad point, uponwhich the ancient Jesuit House of the patron saint whose namedistinguishes the cre
ek, throws up, in sharp relief, its chateau-likeprofile, together with its windmill, its old trees, barns andcottages,--the whole suggesting a resemblance to a strip of pasteboardscenery on a prolonged and slender base line of green.

  When the voyager from the island has trimmed his sail and reached thepromontories which formed his first perspective, the river, now reducedto a gun-shot in width, again opens to his view a succession of littlebays, intercepted by more frequent headlands and branching off intosinuous creeks that lose themselves in the hills. Here and there,amongst these creeks, a slender beach of white sand separates from itsparent flood a pool, which reposes like a mirror in the deep forest;and all around, high hills sweep down upon these placid lakes, anddisclose half-embowered cottages, whose hoary roofs and antique formsturn the musings of the spectator to the palmy days of the LordProprietary.

  A more enchanting landscape than St. Mary's river,--a lovelierassemblage of grassy bank and hoary grove, upland slope, cliff, cot andstrand, of tangled brake and narrow bay, broad, seaward road-stead andair-suspended cape, may not be found beneath the yearly travel of thesun!

  The ancient city was situated nearly two miles beyond the confluence ofSt. Inigoe's creek, upon a spacious level plain which maintained anelevation of some fifty feet above the river. The low-browed,double-roofed and cumbrous habitations of the towns-people werescattered at random over this plain, forming snug and pleasant groupsfor a painter's eye, and deriving an air of competence and comfort fromthe gardens and bowers in which they were sheltered. The State Housestood at the upper extremity of the town, upon a cedar-clad headlandwhich, by an abrupt descent, terminated in a long, flat, sandy point,that reached almost half across the river. In regard to this building,tradition--which I find to be somewhat inclined to brag of itsglory--affirms it to have been constructed in the shape of a cross,looking towards the river, with walls thick enough to resist cannon,and perilous steep roofs, from the top of the chief of which shot up aspire, whereon was impaled a dolphin with a crooked, bifurcated tail. Awooden quay and warehouse on the point showed this to be the seat oftrade, and a crescent-shaped bay or indentation between this and asimilar headland at the lower extremity of the town, constituted theanchorage or harbour for the scant shipping of the port.

  The State House looked rearward over the town common,--a large space ofopen ground, at the farther end of which, upon the border of a marshyinlet, covered with bulrushes and cat-tails, stood a squat, sturdy andtight little gaol, supported,--to use the military phrase,--on oneflank by a pillory and stocks, and on the other by an implement ofgovernment which has gone out of fashion in our day, but which foundfavour with our ancestors as an approved antidote to the prevalentdistemper of an unnecessary or too clamorous loquacity in theirdames--a ducking stool, that hung suspended over a pool of sufficientdepth for the most obstinate case that might occur.

  Without wearying my reader with too much description, I shall contentmyself with referring to but two or three additional particulars asnecessary to my future purpose: a Catholic chapel devoted to St.Ignatius, the patron of the province, in humble and unostentatiousguise, occupied, with its appurtenances, a few acres in the centre ofthe plain, a short distance from that confine of the city which laynearest to St. Inigoe's; and in the opposite quarter, not far from theState House, a building of much more pretension, though by no means soneat, had been erected for the service of the Church of England, whichwas then fast growing into the ascendant. On one of the streets leadingto the beach was the market house, surrounded by its ordinaries andale-houses: and lastly, in the year 1681, to which this descriptionrefers, a little hostelry of famous report, known by the sign of "TheCrow and Archer," and kept by Master Garret Weasel, stood on thewater's edge, at the foot of the bank below the State House, on a pieceof level ground looking out upon the harbour, where the traveller maystill find a luxuriant wilderness of pear trees, the scions of anotable ancestor which, tradition says, the aforesaid Garret plantedwith his own hand.

  The country around St. Mary's bore, at the period I have designated,the same broad traces of settlement and cultivation which belong to itat the present day. For many miles the scene was one of varied fieldand forest, studded over with dwellings and farm yards. The settlementshad extended across the neck of land to the Chesapeake, and along bothshores of St. Mary's river to the Potomac. This open country wasdiversified by woodland, and enlivened every where by the expanse ofnavigable water which reflected sun and sky, grove and field and lowlycottage in a thousand beautiful lights. Indeed, all the maritime borderof the province, comprehending Calvert, St. Mary's and Charles, as wellas the counties on the opposite shore of the Chesapeake, might be said,at this date, to be in a condition of secure and prosperous habitation.The great ocean forest had receded some hundred miles westward from St.Mary's. The region of country comprising the present county of AnneArundel, as well as Cecil and the Isle of Kent, was a frontier alreadysettled with numerous tenants of the Lord Proprietary. All westwardfrom this was the birthright of the stern Sasquesahannoch, the fierceShenandoah, and their kindred men of the woods.

  They are gone! Like shadows have these men of might sunk on the earth.They, their game, their wigwams, their monuments, their primevalforests,--yea, even their graves, have flitted away in this spectralflight. Saxon and Norman, bluff Briton and heavy Suabian inherit theland. And in its turn, well-a-day! our pragmatical little city hathdeparted. Not all its infant glory, nor its manhood's bustle, itswalls, gardens and bowers,--its warm housekeeping, its gossipingburghers, its politics and its factions,--not even its prolific damesand gamesome urchins could keep it in the upper air until this our day.Alas, for the vaulting pride of the village, the vain glory of thecity, and the metropolitan boast! St. Mary's hath sunk to the level ofTyre and Sidon, Balbec and Palmyra! She hath become trackless,tokenless.

  I have wandered over the blank field where she sank down to rest. Itwas a book whose characters I could scarce decipher. I asked for relicsof the departed. The winter evening tale told by father to son, and thewritten legend, more durable than monument of marble, have survived toanswer my question, when brick and tile, hearth and tomb have allvanished from the quest of the traveller.

  What I have gathered from these researches will occupy my readerthrough the following pages.