In a recent column, you wrote about how an area of East London came to be called Maryland. What about the state of Maryland? What can you tell us about that name?
Maryland
Perspective | Meet Queen Mary, the Mary whom Maryland is named after
That’s what Sir George Calvert — a.k.a., Lord Baltimore — originally wanted to call the great swath of land he was granted by England’s King Charles I in 1632. Crescentia means “land of growth or increase.” It’s a Chamber of Commerce sort of name.
Of course, when it comes to naming property that has been gifted to you by a monarch, it’s probably a good idea to suck up to that monarch. And that’s what Calvert did with his Mid-Atlantic colony. It’s unclear whether Calvert came up with the idea to name the land after Charles’s wife, Henrietta Maria, or if the king himself did. Some sources say the paperwork had been left blank and Charles inked “Terra Mariae” — the Land of Mary — in the space. Or it may have been a savvy move by Lord Baltimore.
Some early settlers may have seen divine providence in the name. Most of the colonists who arrived in Maryland in 1634 aboard the Ark and the Dove were Catholic.
“This was going to be a refuge for Catholics from England, a place where you were free to practice your religion without being harassed by the government,” said Francis O’Neill, senior reference librarian at the Maryland Center for History and Culture in Baltimore.
To these settlers, the Mary in Maryland suggested the Virgin Mary. After all, if it was named after Henrietta Maria, why wasn’t it called Henriettaland?
Well, said Leanda de Lisle, author of the 2022 biography “Henrietta Maria: Conspirator, Warrior, Phoenix Queen,” the English weren’t sure what to call Henrietta Maria after she married Charles in 1625. For a while, she was called Queen Henry. Charles decreed she be called Queen Mary.
Henrietta Maria was born in the Louvre Palace in 1609. Her name honors her two parents: King Henry IV of France and his wife, the Italian Marie de’ Medici.
Henrietta Maria was a Catholic. Charles was a Protestant. But royal marriages back then weren’t about shared interests. They were about politics. And there was at least one thing the two families could agree on: Neither side liked the Spanish Habsburgs.
Disputes over religion had roiled Britain since Henry VIII had toppled the Catholic church and put himself atop the Church of England. The French hoped Henrietta Maria could ease things for English Catholics.
“You have to remember that in the France [Henrietta Maria] came from, Protestants were allowed to practice their religion, whereas in England, Catholics were viciously persecuted,” de Lisle said. “She saw no reason Catholics in England couldn’t be given the same rights as Protestants in France.”
That was not to be. Detractors derided Henrietta Maria as “the Popish brat of France.” Enemies accused her of leading Charles astray, conveniently forgetting that Charles was quite capable of leading himself astray, alienating Parliament with a series of expensive wars.
The animosity toward Henrietta Maria took a familiar form, with critics tarring her as both cold and calculating and promiscuous and flighty. They criticized her looks and her behavior.
“Her history has been largely written by her enemies or the heirs of her enemies,” de Lisle said. In fact, she said, Henrietta Maria “was highly intelligent. She had a great sense of humor. She knew about art. She was very much the daughter of Marie de’ Medici, who was a great patron of the arts.”
Henrietta Maria introduced unique amusements to court life, including elaborate productions involving music, dance and poetry known as masques. In a rather different guise, she went to Holland to procure weapons for Charles’s forces.
The Royalists lost the English Civil War and in 1649 Charles lost his head. Henrietta Maria lived in poverty in France, returning to England after the Restoration in 1660, when her son Charles II became king. In 1665, with London beset by plague, she went back to France. She died there in 1669, a death possibly hastened by opium she was given to ease her pain.
Said de Lisle: “She’s been much maligned for a host of reasons, but she was an extraordinary woman, one of the more remarkable queen consorts in British history.”
The next time you think of Maryland, think of Henrietta Maria.