April 15, 1632, George Calvert died, and the charter was made out in the name of his eldest son, Cecilius, and was signed by the king, June 20, 1632.  Cecilius Calvert, named after Sir Robert Cecil, was born in 1605, and in 1621 entered Trinity College, Oxford University.  He married Anne Arundel, daughter of Lord Thomas Arundel, of Wardour.  As Cecilius, unlike his father, never held public positions in England, his character is best revealed by his conduct of his province in America, which shows him to have been a man of consummate prudence and tact.

Baltimore’s grant called forth a strong remonstrance from members of the Virginia Company and all the leading planters in Virginia, including Claiborne.  The matter was referred by the king to the Commissioners for Foreign Plantations, who heard the complaint, and July 3, 1633, decided to “leave Lord Baltimore to his patent” and “the other partie to the course of the law."[8] This certainly meant a decision against the wholesale claim of Virginia to the ancient limits, and was deemed by Lord Baltimore as authorizing him to go on with his settlement; and his patent authorized a form of government entirely different from anything yet tried in America.

The English colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts were founded by joint-stock companies really or ostensibly for profit.  After the suppression of the London Company in 1624, the powers of government in Virginia devolved upon the king, and the government was called a crown government.  Had Charles been a Spanish or French king he would have appointed an absolute governor who would have tyrannized over the people.  But Charles, as an English king, admitted the colonists into a share of the government by permitting them to elect one of the branches of the law-making body.  This concession effectually secured the liberties of the people, for the House of Burgesses, possessing the sole right to originate laws, became in a short time the most influential factor of the government.

Baltimore’s government for Maryland, on the other hand, was to be a palatinate similar to the bishopric of Durham, in England, which took its origin when border warfare with Scotland prevailed, and the king found it necessary to invest the bishop, as ruler of the county, with exceptionally high powers for the protection of the kingdom.  Durham was the solitary surviving instance in England of the county palatinate, so called because the rulers had in their counties jura regalia as fully as the king had in his palace.  In Durham the bishop had the sole power of pardoning offences, appointing judges and other officers, coining money, and granting titles of honor and creating courts.  In the other counties of England all writs ran in the king’s name, but in Durham they ran in the bishop’s.  The county had no representation in the House of Commons, and were it not that the bishop was a member of the House of Lords, an officer of the church, paid taxes into the national treasury, and had to submit to appeals to the court of exchequer in London, in cases to which he was a party, he was, to all intents and purposes, a king, and his county an independent nation.