The Beginner's American History. D. H. Montgomery

BALTIMORE

       Table of Contents

      (1580-1632).

      76. Lord Baltimore's settlement in Newfoundland; how Catholics were then treated in England.—While Captain Myles Standish was helping build up Plymouth, Lord Baltimore, an English nobleman, was trying to make a settlement on the cold, foggy island of Newfoundland.

      Lord Baltimore had been brought up a Protestant, but had become a Catholic. At that time, Catholics were treated very cruelly in England. They were ordered by law to attend the Church of England. They did not like that church any better than the Pilgrims did; but if they failed to attend it, they had to take their choice between paying a large sum of money or going to prison.

      Lord Baltimore hoped to make a home for himself and for other English Catholics in the wilderness of Newfoundland, where there would be no one to trouble them. But the unfortunate settlers were fairly frozen out. They had winter a good share of the year, and fog all of it. They could raise nothing, because, as one man said, the soil was either rock or swamp: the rock was as hard as iron; the swamp was so deep that you could not touch bottom with a ten-foot pole.