Colonial Thriller

Featured

Jul 25

“THE BEST KIND OF FICTION IS ONE THAT’S ALMOST NOT...”

Queen of England, Henrietta-Maria [Anthony van Dyke]

A quarter into the 17th century, a Catholic, French-born, new Queen of England was stirring up trouble at her London court. She and her frenemy, Lucy Carlisle, shared a penchant for wielding power and stealing the hearts of men. But what perhaps even her closest friends didn’t know was that the Queen’s godfather had in store a role for her to play that would forever change the face of the global Catholic Church.

Maffeo Barberini, the Queen’s godfather, who would become Pope Urban VIII and create a firm of Vatican agents called the Propaganda Fide. c. 1598 painting of Maffeo Barberini at age 30 by Caravaggio.

With his goddaughter’s help, the Pope’s agents converted many Anglican nobles at the English court to Catholicism — not the least of which was Sir George Calvert. The 1st Baron of Baltimore was granted, by the king, the permission to create the first colony in America for Catholics.

**Can you search this almost 400 year-old map of Maryland to find present day Washington, D.C.?** [Jerome Hawley and John Lewger]. Nova Terrae-Mariae tabula, 1635. Huntingfield Collection, Maryland State Archives. MSA SC 1399-1-526.

But the young and savvy Queen was also the daughter of Catherine de Medici and she sensed the Pope was keeping a secret.
Through her own web of women, she discovered a valuable treasure
he was intent to destroy.

**The Ark carried the Catholics to their new colony, but it was separated in a storm from it’s pinnace, The Dove.** On the Queen’s mission the smaller vessel made its escape to secretly retrieve the treasure and save it from the clutches of the Vatican bringing it safely to the new world. [‘The Ark & the Dove off the Scillies with Lord Baltimore aboard’ by M Dawson.]

But the treasure was not so safe. William Claiborne (a Virginian and Anglican) clashes in battle with Leonard Calvert (a Marylander and Catholic) in the Battle of Pocomoke Sound in colonial Maryland, 1630s, the first naval conflict on Chesapeake Bay. Hand-colored woodcut of a 19th-century illustration.

The treasure was carried to Maryland but it needed protectors. A society was formed through ancestral lineages from the passengers of The Ark and Dove, its descendants perhaps knowing their real mission was to protect the treasure at all costs from falling back into the hands of the Vatican and being destroyed.