to the said Augustine, Anna Margarita, Judith and Francina, his daughters," this being the first act of naturalization passed by any of the colonies.[8]
[Footnote 6: Journal of the Dutch Embassy to Maryland, 1659, by Augustine Herrman, in Narratives of Early Maryland, in this series, pp. 309-333.]
[Footnote 7: A copy of this map is in the British Museum. No other is known.]
[Footnote 8: Maryland Archives, II. 144.]
It was upon Bohemia Manor that the Labadists located their colony. Danckaerts and Sluyter, under the guidance of Ephraim Herrman, made their way to Delaware and Maryland. Upon meeting them the elder Herrman was at first so favorably impressed that he consented to deed to them a considerable tract, in pursuance of his ambition to colonize and develop his estates. On June 19, 1680, the Labadists, having accomplished their mission, set sail for Boston, to which fact are due such interesting recitals as that of their visit to John Eliot, the so-called apostle to the Indians, and their visit to and description of Harvard College. On the 23d day of July the Labadists set sail for Europe.
In 1683 the two Labadists returned again to Maryland, bringing with them the nucleus of a colony. In the meanwhile Augustine Herrman had repented of his bargain, and it was only by recourse to law that the Labadists compelled him to live up to its terms. The deed he executed, dated August 11, 1684, was to Peter Sluyter (alias Vorstman), Jasper Dankers (alias Schilders), of Friesland, Petrus Bayard, of New York, and John Moll and Arnold de la Grange.[9] The tract conveyed embraced four necks of land eastwardly from the first creek that empties into Bohemia River, and extended at the north or northeast to near the old St. Augustine or Manor Church. It contained 3,750 acres. Those engaging with Sluyter and Danckaerts in the transaction were all professed converts to the Labadist faith. It may be noted in passing that the Petrus Bayard named in the conveyance, and who for some time was an active member of the Labadist community, was an ancestor of the late Thomas F. Bayard, ambassador at the Court of St. James.
[Footnote 9: Baltimore County Land Records.]
When fairly settled upon Bohemia Manor, the Labadists undertook communal modes of life and industry, such as characterized them at the European centre of the church, which was Wieuwerd, in Friesland. They cultivated tobacco extensively, and engaged in the culture of corn, flax, and hemp, and in cattle-raising. Their expressed zeal for the conversion of the Indians did not take any practical form. At its most flourishing period the colony did not number as many as a hundred persons, and in the year 1698 a division of the tract occurred. Sluyter, who was the active head of the colony, reserved for himself one of the necks of land and became wealthy. He died in 1722. Some form of organization had been maintained among the Labadists even after the division of the land, but five years after the death of Sluyter the Labadists had ceased to exist as a community. The division in 1698 which marked the disintegration of the community occurred at about the same time as a similar division of the estates of the mother church at Wieuwerd. There the disintegration came about through consultative action; in Maryland, by the logic of events.
The founder of the system of religion which came to be known as Labadism, Jean de Labadie, was born in France, at Bourg near Bordeaux, on February 13, 1610. His father was a French noble and a soldier of fortune, who rose to be governor of Guienne. His parents entered him at the Jesuit College, where he completed his novitiate and took the first vows, and in 1635 he was ordained as a priest. Early manifestations of an erratic temperament, a mystical habit of mind, and physical frailty, led to his severance from the Society of Jesus. He entered upon a preaching mission, and, coming under the attention of Père Gondran, second general of the Congregation of the Oratory at Paris, he received a call to that city, and, according to his own statement, the entire body of the Sorbonne united in the call.
Labadie soon acquired a fame that went beyond the borders of France, for oratorical ability and theological precision. His former associates, the Jesuits, originated stories against his morality and sought to bring him into trouble with the authorities. The attacks to which he was subjected led him to adopt a broad though wholly fanatical scheme of reforms for the Church.[10] During the lifetime of Cardinal Richelieu, who befriended him, he was safe from attack, but upon the succession of Cardinal Mazarin the Jesuits obtained an order of the court for his arrest, the execution of which was prevented by the death of
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