but strolled to the tavern,—­I suppose to that kept by Mr. Cordea, who, in addition to his calling of keeper of the ordinary, was the most approved shoemaker of the city,—­and here regaled himself with a potation of strong waters.  It is likely that he then repaired to Mr. Blakiston’s, the King’s Collector,—­a bitter and relentless enemy of the Lord Proprietary,—­and there may have met Kenelm Chiseldine, John Coode, Colonel Jowles, and others noted for their hatred of the Calvert family, and in such company as this indulged himself in deriding Lord Baltimore and his government, During his stay in the port, his men came on shore, and, imitating their captain’s unamiable temper, roamed in squads about the town and its neighborhood, conducting themselves in a noisy, hectoring manner towards the inhabitants, disturbing the repose of the quiet burghers, and shocking their ears with ribald abuse of the authorities.  These roystering sailors—­I mention it as a point of historical interest—­had even the audacity to break into Alderman Garret Van Swearingen’s garden, and to pluck up and carry away his cabbages and other vegetables, and—­according to the testimony of Mr. Cordea, whose indignation was the more intense from his veneration for the Alderman, and from the fact that he made his Worship’s shoes—­they would have killed one of his Worship’s sheep, if his (Cordea’s) man had not prevented them; and after this, as if on purpose more keenly to lacerate his feelings, they brought these cabbages to Cordea’s house, and there boiled them before his eyes,—­he being sick and not able to drive them away.

After a few days spent in this manner, the swaggering captain—­whose name, it was soon bruited about, was Thomas Allen, of his Majesty’s Navy—­went on board of his ketch,—­or brig, as we should call it,—­the Quaker, weighed anchor, and set sail towards the Potomac, and thence stood down the Bay upon the coast of Virginia.  Every now and then, after his departure, there came reports to the Council of insults offered by Captain Allen to the skippers of sundry Bay craft and other peaceful traders on the Chesapeake; these insults consisting generally in wantonly compelling them to heave to and submit to his search, in vexatiously detaining them, overhauling their papers, and offending them with coarse vituperation of themselves, as well as of the Lord Proprietary and his Council.

About a month later the Quaker was observed to enter the Patuxent River, and cast anchor just inside of the entrance, near the Calvert County shore, and opposite Christopher Rousby’s house at Drum Point.  This was—­says my chronicle—­on Thursday, the 30th of October, in this year 1684.  As yet Captain Allen had not condescended to make any report of his arrival in the Province to any officer of the Proprietary.