This lady, honored above many honorable women, whose praise, like the burden of an old ballad, runs through the records of her descendants with happy iteration, was the daughter of Captain James Neale, who, before coming to Maryland in 1666, “Had lived divers yeares in Spain and Portugall, following the trade of Merchandize, and likewise was there employed by his Majesty of Great Britain (Charles I.) and his Royal Highness the Duke of Yorke, in several emergent Affairs, as by the Commissions herewith presented may appear."

Henrietta Maria was born while her father wa in foreign service, and was named in honor of the queen of Charles I. There is a not improbable tradition that her mother had been one of the maids of honor to her Majesty, whose ill fated consort was, at the time of the birth of this child, at the mercy of his enemies.

After the regicide of Charles, seven rings were distributed among as many friends of the queen those who had been nearest and deara to her and to the king. These rings were set with a stone which presented on one side the profile of the king, and on the other a death's-head surmounting a crown and wearing a pointed and stellated diadem between the words Gloria and Vanitas, while on the inner side of the circlet was traced the legend, Gloria Angl. Emigravit, It, the 30, 1649. One of these rings was in the possession of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, a gift to him from Lady Murray Elliott. Another has come down to the Earles of Easton, in Maryland, by a succession of inheritances through the families of Lloyd and Tilghman, from Anna Neale, mother of Henrietta Maria Lloyd.

The present mistress of Wye is the grandghter of Colonel John Eager Howard of lutionary fame, and of Francis Scott Key, or of "The Star-Spangled Banner"; and er her gracious administration Wye House tains all it external stateliness and beauty, all

its social graces, and the renown of its ancient hospitality. The traditions of other such noble domains have found distinguished representatives in the Carrolls of My Lady's Manor and Doughoregan, the Calverts of Mount Airy, the Goldsboroughs of Myrtle Grove, the Tilghmans of The Hermitage, the Ridgelys of Hampton, the Hansons of Belmont, and the De Courcys of Cheston.

In Governor Lloyd's time there was a certain steward, or bailiff, at Wye, one Captain Anthony of St. Michael's, at one time master of a bay craft in the service of the governor. This man was the owner of a likely negro boy who escaped from bondage, and by his remarkable powers, acquirements, and address became known to the world as Frederick Douglass. In 1881 Mr. Douglass, being then marshal of the District of Columbia, was moved to revisit the scenes of his childhood and his thrall, and one day found himself on the porch of Wye House, where he was received by the sons of Colonel Lloyd, their father being absent, with that courtesy which is extended to every stranger who finds his way thither. When he had made known the motive of his visit, he was conducted over the estate, from spot to spot that he remembered and described with all their childish associations; here a spring, there a hedge, a lane, a field, a tree. He called them by their names, or recalled them by some simple incident, and all the glowing heart of the man seemed to go out to the place as he passed from ghost to ghost as in a dream. And then a strange thing happened; standing mute and musing for a while, he said slowly and low, as one who talks in his sleep, "Over in them woods was whar me and Mars Dan useter trap rabbits." "Mars Dan" was the governor's son. Was it the man's half-playful, half-pathetic sense of the grotesque incongruity of the situation? Or was it glamour?— all the tremendous significance of a phenomenal life compacted into the homely reflection and phrase of a barefoot "darky.”

He plucked flowers from the graves of dead Lloyds he had known, and at the table drank to the health of the master of the old house and of his children, "that they and their descendants may worthily maintain the character and the fame of their ancestors."1

On a tongue of wooded land formed by the Glebe and Goldsborough creeks in Talbot County, there is a house with a romantic story. When, in 1661, Wenlock Christison the Quaker was seized by a Puritan mob headed by the Rev. Seaborn Cotton, tried, and condemned by Governor Endicott to die, pardoned by the king, and let off with a flogging at the cart's tail on the highway, he found sanctuary in Maryland, 1 The Hon. John L. Thomas, in the "Baltimore American," June, 1881.

where Lord Baltimore granted him asylum on the tongue of land that cools itself in the pleasant waters of St. Michael's River- Miles they call it now. Here the indomitable Quaker abode and prospered, wearing his hat in the presence of governors and magistrates, and testifying for "the Truth and the Light" without fear of clubs or cart-tails. Those easy-going Eastern-shoremen actually made him a burgess, and he and his descendants long dwelt in peace in the old brick manor-house, of which a fragment still survives.

In time, by lapse of heirs, the place fell to the possession of Richard France, the famous "lottery king" of Maryland, who built the turreted "Villa" there, and adorned the grounds with fountains and winding walks, conservatories and garden gods, to the effusive wonder and admiration of the natives. But Maryland, taking up scruples, set her face against lotteries, and France for a time coquetted with Delaware, until Delaware in like manner turned prudish; and the last we hear of the "lottery king" is that he had died in a debtor's prison.

Then the garden gods fell on their faces, and thorns sprang up and choked them, and all was desolation and respectability. Again the "Villa" waited not in vain; for one day the windows were opened, exposing all the ghastly gaps in their panes, and a strange man, untidy and shock-headed, pottered about in the weedy, seedy garden, a grim and churlish recluse. But negro curiosity, once sharply piqued, is persistent and penetrating, and forthwith Ethiopia began to gossip about the strange man, how that he was a blacksmith from Connecticut, and an oracle in local political clubs, one to whom Big Six" was a spell to conjure with. And presently the disheveled interloper was joined by a bearded and venerable companion, with a head like a pear, who lurked and waited behind the close gates and the screen of shrubbery. Then a furtive yacht, at night in St. Michael's River, took the bearded mystery aboard, and was off to the bay and the sea; and the police, who went poking about the place a day or two later, looked foolish and asked one another inane conundrums about the cunning flirting of Boss Tweed.1

The gentry of colonial Maryland, under the rule of the earlier Calverts, lived on the great plantations in dwellings that were accessible by water. The bay and rivers were almost their only highways, and the obliterated little thorp of St. Mary's, founded on the site of an Indian village whereof the memory is dear to every son of the soil, was their only city. At home

My acknowledgments are due to a correspondent of the New York "Evening Post," who has written entertainingly of the “Villa" and its inmates. 2 Mr. Frank B. Mayer of Annapolis.

they sat on stools and forms, and dined without forks, cutting their meat with their rapiers. But their walls were wainscoted, and their chambers comfortably bedded. Tea and coffee they rarely tasted, and sugar was a luxury, but sack and cider and punch flowed free. Witness the facetious instructions of Governor Calvert to Colonel Price, to bring certain articles to Fort St. Inigoe's for the use of the soldiers: "And upon motion of sack, the said governor bade him bring sack, if he found any." In the early records of the province there is more sack than Falstaff's drawer ever scored. The colonial gentry dispensed ardent spirits at funerals, and clinked the sack-cup at christenings; and they affected signet-rings with their leather breeches and boot-hose. Cattle-stealing was not in fashion; only a sheriff of Kent was once charged with that offense, while a governor of Virginia was convicted; neither was there ever an execution for witchcraft in the province of Maryland.

While the colonists of New England commonly dispensed with brick and stone in the construction of their snug and friendly domiciles,those yellow colonial mansions which constitute a feature so characteristic in the Northern landscape,- the planters of Maryland and Virginia built themselves substantial structures of imported brick, and aspired to the architectural distinctions of Queen Anne and the Georges. One to the manor born,2 who has written with loving knowledge of these solid and sincere old houses, has told of the noble joinery of the roof; of the deep, capacious window-seats and hearthstones, prodigal of space; of great halls that greet you with the largest welcome; of" stairs that glide rather than climb" to the floor above, where is the dancing-hall or assembly-room; of carved chimney-pieces, paneled wainscoting, and Italian cornices; of the later piazzas and porticos that came in after the Revolution; and of the hip-roofed homes of the burghers of Annapolis, with their huddled chimney-stacks and low ceilings, their cornered fireplaces and dormer-windows, with a multitude of little panes in the broad sashes, and the shining faces of the brass knockers, so expressive of homely kindness; and without, the arbor and the dove-cote, and the prim, box-edged garden, with its walks so decorous and Dutchlike, but gorgeous with lilacs and snowballs, hollyhocks and wall-flowers.

On the broad porch of the manor-house, of an afternoon, the planter and his comely dame dozed in their rocking-chairs, and young lovers cooed in the shade of the vine, while the tall clock in the hall ticked with the conscious dignity of leisure, and the sideboard in the dining-room winked and blinked with all its cut

glass decanters. The old tide-water plantation had long been the domain of prosperity and peace: the granary, the meat-house, and the meal-cellar were full; there was a horse and gig for every guest; pipes and juleps were free; old French brandy could be had for eight shillings a gallon, and Madeira, port, and sherry for five shillings; the four-horse coach still jolted and creaked cheerily when the governor was to be met at the landing; and in the ancestral graveyard behind the house the "family" slept comfortable and quiet. When the tall clock in the hall struck the time in its gentle, slow old way, Time turned over drowsily and took another nap, as though he had been kindly patted.

Of Stephen Bordley and John, his younger brother, we are sure to hear as often as we stir the memory of some Eastern-shoreman of colonial stock, and set him to babbling gently of old times.

Stephen Bordley of Annapolis, bachelor and lawyer, was in the best sense "a citizen of credit and renown": wealthy, well educated, conspicuously influential, an ardent lover of the sturdy colony on the Chesapeake, and one whose devotion was expressed in acts more effectual than glib phrases. His patrimony was large, his tastes fastidious, his hospitalities princely. When the judges came to dine with him, they found it expressly entertaining to admire his plate, and his latest acquisitions of Holland linen, fine cambric, and wigs; and he was ever at his best in writing to his London agents for pipes of Madeira and "casks" of champagne and Burgundy. It was fitting and decorous that in due time gout should cut him short.

His younger brother, John Beale Bordley, whilom prothonotary of Baltimore County, inherited the library and the sideboard, and enlarged upon the republican ideas of Stephen. He substituted wheat for tobacco in the tillage of his broad acres, in high scorn of the Stamp Act, and set up a brewery and started a vineyard rather than buy his beer and wines on the London docks. "He ground his own flour in his own hand-mills, fired his own brick in his own kilns, made his own kersey and linseywoolsey for his servants on his own looms, from wool of his own raising; and hackled, spun, and wove his own flax. He made his own casks to hold his beer and cider, from cedar cut in his own woods, and even made his salt from Chesapeake water."1 How this self-sufficient protectionist must have growled and groaned when he found himself compelled to send his sons to Eton because a wholesome education was not to be had in the colonies. In 1766 he writes to his London correspon1 Scharf: "History of Maryland." VOL. XLIX.-32.

dent: "They have a college at Williamsburg that spoils many a man; most of their youth are turned out in a hurry, with a smattering of pretty stuff; and without a solid foundation they pertly set themselves up as the standards of wit, and what is most impudent, of superior judgment."

In 1771 he has grown vainglorious:

We expect to fall off, more and more, from best people, using our old clothes, and new of our using your [English] goods; we are already the own manufacture. They will be coarse, but if we add just resentment to necessity, may not a sheepskin make a jubilee coat?

About that time George Washington was writing to his factor in Bristol for saddles, holsters, and housing; pumps, gaiters, and ruffles, for himself, and salmon-colored tabby velvet, fine flowered lawn aprons, satin shoes, breastknots, and black masks, for his womenkind.

John Beale Bordley, on his plantation at Joppa, enlarged his estate, cultivated fox-hunting, and kept open house. When his brotherin-law, Philemon Chew, bequeathed to him the half of Wye Island, he set up his home place there, and wintered in Annapolis in the distinguished company of the Dulanys and Carrolls, the Brices and Johnsons. He was an enlightened and prosperous farmer; he had made £900 on a single shipment of wheat to Barcelona; and Miss Betsey, his sister, who was "fond of substantial attire," adhered to the modes of the time, and affected rich silks, brocades, and lace ruffles, broad Spanish hats, and shoes of celestial blue with rose-colored rosettes.

Bordley entertained in the large, bountiful style of an enlightened and independent yeoman. Visitors came, in the free Maryland way, in barges and coaches, from all parts of the colony, and made themselves at home on Wye Island from May to November. There were Pacas and Hindmans, Haywards and Chamberlains, Goldsboroughs, Lloyds, and Tilghmans, and even Brices and Ridouts from the western shore of the bay. There were continual comings and goings of bateaux and canoes with notes of compliment and invitation, and "happy thoughts" of fruits and flowers. One would have found endless hair-dressing and ruffling in chambers, and toying with sangarees and punches in the hall or on the stairs; tea on the lawn, and songs in the porch in the evening; and riding- and boating-parties, and much lunar dalliance, amorous but decorous, in lanes and gardens. Nor did the admiring company of slaves-house-servants, horse-boys, dogkeepers, and boatmen — lack their share of the general joy and junketing.

The Ringgolds of Kent, for more than two hundred years conspicuous among the county