Discouraged by its cold and sometimes inhospitable climate and the sufferings of the settlers, he looked for a more suitable spot further south and sought a new royal charter to settle the region, which would become the state of Maryland.

[1] Calvert's father, Leonard of Yorkshire, was a country gentleman who had achieved some prominence as a tenant of Lord Wharton,[2] and was wealthy enough to marry a "gentlewoman" of a noble line, Alicia or Alice Crossland (sometimes spelt "Crosland").

In 1569, Sir Thomas Gargrave had described Richmond as a territory where all gentlemen were "evil in religion", by which he meant predominately Roman Catholic;[2] it appears Leonard Calvert was no exception.

From the year of George's birth onward, his father, Leonard Calvert, was subjected to repeated harassment by the Yorkshire authorities, who in 1580 extracted a promise of conformity from him, compelling his attendance at the Church of England services.

The senior Calvert had to give a "bond of conformity"; he was banned from employing any Catholic servants and forced to purchase an English Bible, which was to "lie open in his house for everyone to read".

[14] Calvert had a total of twelve children: Cecil, who succeeded his father as the 2nd Baron Baltimore, Leonard, Anne, Dorothy, Elizabeth, Grace, who married Sir Robert Talbot, 2nd Baronet of Carton, County Kildare, Francis, George, Helen, Henry, John (died young), and Philip.

[7] King James rewarded Robert Cecil, whom he made a Privy Councillor and secretary of state, with the granting of the title of Earl of Salisbury in 1605 and Lord High Treasurer in 1608, making him the most powerful man at the royal court.

[20] In 1609, James appointed him a "clerk of the Signet office", a post which required the preparation of documents for the royal signature and brought Calvert into close contact with the king.

Elector Frederick's decision in 1619 to accept the throne of Bohemia triggered a war with the powerful neighbouring Habsburg dynasty of Austria to the southwest in Vienna, which James attempted to end through a proposed alliance with the Kingdom of Spain.

The king's favourite, Sir Robert Carr, first Earl of Somerset (1587–1645), Viscount Rochester, assumed the duties of secretary of state and recruited Calvert to assist with foreign policy, in particular the Latin and Spanish correspondence.

[29] In 1616 James endowed Calvert with the manor of Danby Wiske in Yorkshire, which brought him into contact with Sir Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford (1593–1641), who became his closest friend and political ally.

[33] In Parliament, a political crisis developed over the king's policy of seeking a Spanish wife for Charles, Prince of Wales, as part of a proposed alliance with the Habsburgs.

[35] As a result of his pro-Spanish stance and defence of relaxations in the penal laws against Catholics, Calvert became estranged from many in the Commons, who were suspicious of his close familiarity with the Spanish ambassador's court.

[36] Calvert also faced difficulties in his private life: his wife's death on 8 August 1622 left him the single father of ten children, the oldest of whom, Cecil, was sixteen years old.

[37] King James rewarded Calvert in 1623 for his loyalty by granting him a 2,300-acre (930-hectare) estate in County Longford, in the Irish province of Leinster, where his seat was known as the "Manor of Baltimore".

Calvert was increasingly isolated from court circles as the Prince of Wales, (heir to the throne) and George Villiers wrested control of policy from the ageing James.

[40] As the chief parliamentary spokesman for an abandoned policy, Calvert no longer served a useful purpose to the English Royal Court, and by February 1624 his duties had been restricted to placating the Spanish ambassador.

At the time, Simon Stock, a Discalced Carmelite priest reported to the Congregation Propaganda Fide[48] in Rome on 15 November that he had converted two Privy Councillors to Catholicism, one of whom historians are certain was Calvert.

[49] Calvert, who had probably met Stock at the Spanish embassy in London, later worked with the priest on a plan for a Catholic mission in his new first Newfoundland Colony (off modern Canada).

[53] Though nothing came of Baltimore's recall, he renewed his rights over the silk-import duties, which had lapsed with the death of James I,[54] and secured Charles' blessing for his venture in the "New Found Land".

[64] The settlement appeared to be progressing so well that in January 1623, Calvert obtained a concession from King James for the whole of Newfoundland, though the grant was soon reduced to cover only the southeastern Avalon peninsula, owing to competing claims from other English colonists.

[75] He had taken both Protestant and Catholic settlers with him, as well as two secular priests, Thomas Longville and Anthony Pole (also known as Smith), the latter remaining behind in the colony when Baltimore departed for England.

[78] He and his family moved into the house at Ferryland built by Wynne, a sizeable structure for the time, by colonial standards, and the only one in the settlement large enough to accommodate religious services for the community.

He was dismayed to find that the war with France had spread to Newfoundland, and that he had to spend most of his time fighting off French attacks on English fishing fleets with his own ships the Dove and the Ark.

[88] He wrote to his friends Francis Cottington and Thomas Wentworth enlisting their support for this new proposal, admitting the impression his abandonment of Avalon might make in England: "I shall rayse a great deal of talke and discourse and be censured by most men of giddiness and levity [sic]".

[89] The king, perhaps guided by Baltimore's friends at court, replied expressing concern for Baltimore's health and gently advising him to forget colonial schemes and return to England, where he would be treated with every respect: "Men of your condition and breeding are fitter for other imployments than the framing of new plantations, which commonly have rugged & laborious beginnings, and require much greater meanes, in managing them, than usually the power of one private subject can reach unto".

The Virginians, led by William Claiborne, who sailed to England to make the case, campaigned aggressively against the separate colonising of the Chesapeake, claiming they possessed the rights to that area.

He wrote to Wentworth: "Blessed be God for it who hath preserved me now from shipwreck, hunger, scurvy and pestilence..."[97] His health declining, Baltimore's persistence over the charter finally paid off in 1632.

[104] Avalon, which remained a prime spot for the salting and export of fish, was expropriated by Sir David Kirke, with a new royal charter which Cecil Calvert vigorously challenged, and it was finally absorbed into Newfoundland in 1754.

[105] Although Baltimore's failed Avalon venture marked the end of an early era of attempts at proprietary colonisation, it laid the foundation upon which permanent settlements developed in that region of Newfoundland.