Note Note 14, page 242 — BOOK III. CENTRIFUGAL FORCES IN COLONY-PLANTING.

Efforts to obstruct the ships. Baltimore's opponents made great exertions to prevent the departure of the Ark and the Dove, which were to bear faithful Catholics across the flood to a new world. A story was started that these ships were carrying nuns to Spain, and another tale that found believers was that they had soldiers on board going to France to serve against the English. It was told that Calvert's men had abused the customs officers at Gravesend, and sailed without cockets in contempt of all authority, the people on board refusing the oath of allegiance. The Ark was stopped and brought back by order of the Privy Council, and the oath of allegiance was given to a hundred and twenty-eight passengers. Letters of Baltimore to Wentworth in Strafford papers, passim. But the ships came to again at the Isle of Wight, and when they got away at last there were near three hundred passengers on board, including Jesuit priests. Most of the passengers were "laboring men"; how many were Catholic and how many Protestant it is impossible now to tell. That the leaders and the gentry were, most of them, Catholics there is every reason to believe. The passengers called Protestants were rather non-Catholics, precisely the kind of emigrants that would give the Jesuits the converts of which they tell exultantly in their letters. There was no Protestant minister on board, nor was there the slightest provision for Protestant worship, present or future. Note 14.