Tea at Trianon: Captain Claiborne and the Calvert Brothers

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, June 12, 2025

Captain Claiborne and the Calvert Brothers

From Talbot250:

One can only imagine the horror Captain Claiborne experienced when he was informed that Kent Island was smack in the middle of the new county palatine of Mary’s Land, and that his domain now belonged to the Calverts.
To Claiborne’s dismay, Kent Island was now claimed as part of Maryland. He refused to accept the authority of the Catholic-led colony, sparking a conflict that would last for decades. Claiborne saw the Calverts as aristocrats who hadn’t earned their claim through labor, and their Catholic faith only deepened the divide.
Tensions came to a head in 1635, when Maryland colonial authorities seized one of Claiborne’s ships and arrested his agent for illegal trading. A naval skirmish followed on April 23, 1635. Later described as a naval battle, it ended in a victory for the Maryland colonists.
In 1638, Leonard Calvert seized and burned Claiborne’s outpost on Kent Island, asserting control over the territory.
The struggle didn’t end there. During England’s Civil Wars in the 1640s, Claiborne and other Puritans briefly regained power in Maryland. In 1644, Claiborne led an attack that burned St. Mary’s City. But Leonard Calvert returned and reestablished authority before his death in 1647. (Read more.)