History
The peninsula was one of the first European-inhabited areas in North America, with the first permanent settlement established at Cuper's Cove in 1610. Sir George Calvert was later given a large land holding on the peninsula. The initial colony of Ferryland grew to a population of 100 becoming the first successful permanent settlement on Newfoundland island. In 1623 Calvert was given a Royal Charter extending the Royal lands and granting them the name Province of Avalon "in imitation of Old Avalon in Somersetshire wherein Glassenbury stands, the first fruits of Christianity in Britain as the other was in that party of America." Calvert wished to make the colony a refuge for Roman Catholics facing persecution in England. In 1625 Calvert was made the first Lord Baltimore in recognition of his achievements.
The charter created the province as a palatinate in which Calvert had absolute authority.
A series of crises and calamities led Calvert to quit the colony in 1629 for "some other warmer climate of this new world", which turned out to be Maryland, though his family was to maintain agents to govern Avalon until 1637, when the entire island of Newfoundland was granted by charter to Sir David Kirke and James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton.
Calvert's son, Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, fought against the new charter and, in 1660, gained official recognition of the old Charter of Avalon but never attempted to retake the colony.
In 1696, during King William's War, the French destroyed many English villages in the Avalon Peninsula Campaign.
Read more about this topic: Avalon Peninsula
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (18421910)
“There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.”
—Leon Trotsky (18791940)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (18871971)