brothers thus turned to the youngest brother, whose business acumen left him well-equipped to lead a proprietary colony.21
They all recognized that the Agreement of 1732 was an important step toward solvency. Land grants and the collection of quitrents in the contested region had virtually stopped in both colonies because new settlers refused to pay for land with uncertain titles. The slowing of revenues left the Penns in a precarious financial position, but they expected the new agreement would change that. The proprietors realized that the recent expansion of the colonial government—its legal institutions, markets, and order—had made these lands all the more valuable. Richard Penn, for instance, speculated that the quitrents on new grants could be higher than ever before because the “lands … are more valuable now, then they were before any form of government was settled, any plantation made, or any markets found.”22
As Charles Calvert, the Fifth Lord Baltimore, crossed the Atlantic, he harbored similar dreams. While Baltimore was only two years older than Thomas, he had had a far different upbringing, and he had developed a different character. Baltimore grew up the privileged oldest son of a wealthy baron. His father died when he was sixteen, leaving him a fortune, including the rights to Maryland. By 1732, Baltimore had controlled his colony for more than half of his life. As he matured, he became enmeshed in imperial politics by holding various court appointments and several ministerial posts. His personality mixed with his background left him far more brash, assertive, and abrasive. He was prepared, like his grandfather before him, to confront the Penn family if necessary.23
Baltimore and the Penns did have one thing in common. The patriarchs of both families secured their charters in spite of their contentious religious beliefs. By the early eighteenth century, their heirs abandoned the faiths of their fathers and joined the Church of England, a move meant to ingratiate them with the Crown. Baltimore’s father renounced his Catholic faith and joined the Anglican confession in 1713. The conversion allowed him to regain control over Maryland’s government, something the family had lost with the ascension of William and Mary. The Penns, meanwhile, knew that Quakerism created political problems at a time when they could ill afford such hassle, and so they distanced themselves from the meetings. Thomas would make the split complete with his marriage in an Anglican Church in 1751. Unlike Baltimore’s move to conformity, Penn’s conversion only distanced him from the Quaker governing elite in Pennsylvania, even as it drew him closer to imperial circles. It also allowed him to embrace the military means necessary to defend his colony from a rival.
After arriving in their respective colonies in the fall, the proprietors and their commissioners met to implement the agreement on October 6, 1732, in Newtown, Delaware. The conference began with a bang—Thomas Penn spent over £100 treating the Marylanders to drinking and displays of gunfire—but ended with a thud. For almost a year, commissioners met sporadically to discuss the articles but were never able to agree on the proper boundaries. The diplomatic charade went on until November 1733, when the warring commissions finally agreed to disagree and wrote an official report about their failure. Indeed, once Baltimore saw the land in person, he was sure that the map used in 1732 was not only inaccurate but somehow the work of the Penns to defraud him. Incensed, Baltimore left for England in May 1733, effectively declaring the agreement dead. At the time, James Logan, who had once wondered how two colonies could go to war with one another, concluded “tis now all over … the dye is cast and nothing but war remains.”24
“He Would Defend Him from the Proprietor of Pensilvania”
By the time Baltimore left, he and his agents had designed a new strategy for Maryland to win the disputed land. First, Samuel Ogle had to establish Maryland’s firm control over the land west of the Susquehanna by convincing settlers to become loyal tenants of Baltimore. Second, Ogle had to establish Maryland’s legal jurisdiction through the appointment of justices of the peace and other offices. Samuel Blunston described these tactics as an effort “to alienate the minds of the inhabitants of this province and draw them from obedience to their party.” In England, meanwhile, Baltimore prepared to press his case in court using the loyalty of the settlers, the establishment of legal offices, and the taxes paid to him as evidence supporting the validity of his claim. In short, Baltimore hoped that a functioning legal jurisdiction would equal political possession.25
Ogle knew that the implementation of such a plan would require muscle, and he looked to Thomas Cresap to supply it. When Baltimore made Cresap a justice of the peace sometime in 1732, he expected that Cresap’s ardor would serve his purposes well. The terms of Cresap’s commission reinforced the often personal relationship between proprietors and their tenants. Proprietors felt duty-bound to protect those loyal to them, and settlers would only give their fealty to a government that proved it could provide security. As one of the Marylanders stated, because Baltimore “had recd money for that land on which … Cressop lived, he would defend him from the proprietor of Pensilvania.” Cresap soon enlisted others to support him, formed militias to protect Marylanders, and empowered constables, all of which built a bulwark to fend off Pennsylvanian attacks at the same time that it established Maryland’s legal jurisdiction.26
Cresap also initiated a policy of accepting a variety of people seeking refuge, such as runaway servants from Pennsylvania and new immigrants, and he invited a number of relatives to join him. Moreover, sometime around 1732, a German community, which had settled near the Codorus Creek on the west side of the Susquehanna River before the conflict between the colonies began, decided to pay taxes to Maryland in exchange for formal recognition of their land ownership. The community was considered a large settlement for the time, with at least fifty heads of household. Their allegiance to Baltimore was crucial because he could use their fidelity as evidence that those who already lived in the region recognized his claims as legitimate.27
With Baltimore in England and Cresap operating with a commission on the western side of the Susquehanna opposite Lancaster County, Thomas Penn began to orchestrate Pennsylvania’s counterstrategy through Samuel Blunston. Penn once again aimed his institutional powers at Cresap, the representative of Maryland’s claim to absolute legal authority over the area. By the winter of 1733, Thomas Penn approved an arrest warrant for Cresap, and rumors that were probably true circulated that there was a £50 reward for his capture. Around that time, Andrew Hamilton, the Penns’ main legal adviser, met with Blunston and gave him specific orders for arresting Cresap. Although no record exists of his instructions, correspondence between Penn and Blunston suggests that Hamilton advised the latter to arrest Cresap at any point when he was not at his house. This was likely done for technical reasons. Cresap possessed a grant for his home, which meant Pennsylvania would violate Maryland’s sovereignty by raiding it. The area outside of Cresap’s home, however, was, in Pennsylvania’s view, under its jurisdiction.28
During the winter of 1734, Blunston plotted with his aides to snatch Cresap. As a pacifist Quaker, Blunston delegated the violence to the Scots-Irish settlers from Donegal and the Scots-Irish sheriff of Lancaster County, a pattern that would come to define this war and the ones that would follow. The situation escalated on January 29, when Lancaster County sheriff Robert Buchanan received intelligence that Cresap planned to leave his yard to help his workmen cut logs for a new home and a ferry. It was the exact legal opening they had sought. Buchanan rounded up a crew and headed across the river. Cresap, having received advance word of the Pennsylvanians’ plan, stayed back and sent his wife to the field to watch for the impending attack. The Pennsylvanians, meanwhile, seized eight of Cresap’s men for various complaints, carted them off to Blunston’s house (which served as Lancaster’s jail), and left the rest. Cresap’s wife, meanwhile, escaped and raced back to their home to warn Thomas of the assault.29
Some of the disappointed Pennsylvanians decided to head to Cresap’s home to capture their prize, contravening the instructions of Hamilton. This smaller group arrived at Cresap’s at about seven o’clock in the evening. At first, they asked for nighttime lodging, a ploy to get into the house, but Cresap refused and bolted the door. A standoff ensued with both sides shouting threats through cracks
