The Lord Baltimore | |
|---|---|
 A portrait of Lord Baltimore by Daniël Mijtens | |
| Secretary of State | |
| In office 1618–1625 | |
| Proprietor of the Avalon Colony (Newfoundland) | |
| In office 1620–1632 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1580 Kiplin, North Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 15 April 1632 (aged 52–53) Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, England |
| Spouse(s) | Anne Mynne (m. 1604) Joane |
| Children | 12, including: |
| Signature |  |
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (/ˈbɔːltɪmɔːr/; 1580 – 15 April 1632) was an English peer and politician. He achieved domestic political success as a member of parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I. He lost much of his political power after his support for a failed marriage alliance between Prince Charles and the Spanish House of Habsburg royal family. Rather than continue in politics, he resigned all of his political offices in 1625 except for his position on the Privy Council and declared his Catholicism publicly. He was created Baron Baltimore in the Peerage of Ireland upon his resignation. Baltimore Manor was located in County Longford, Ireland.
Calvert took an interest in the British colonization of the Americas, at first for commercial reasons and later to create a refuge for persecuted Irish and English Catholics. He became the proprietor of Avalon, the first sustained English settlement on the southeastern peninsula on the island of Newfoundland (off the eastern coast of modern Canada). 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. Calvert died five weeks before the new Charter was sealed, leaving the settlement of the Maryland colony to his son Cecil (1605–1675). His second son Leonard Calvert (1606–1647) was the first colonial governor of the Province of Maryland.