The Province of Avalon was the area around the English settlement of Ferryland in what is now Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada in the 17th century, which upon the success of the colony grew to include the land held by Sir William Vaughan and all the land that lay between Ferryland and Petty Harbour.
Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (8 August 1605 – 30 November 1675) was an English politician and lawyer who was the first proprietor of Maryland. Born in Kent, England in 1605, he inherited the proprietorship of overseas colonies in Avalon (Newfoundland) along with Maryland after the 1632 death of his father, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1580–1632), for whom it had been originally intended in a vast land grant from King Charles I (1600–1649, reigned 1625–1649). Young Calvert proceeded to establish and manage the Province of Maryland as a proprietary colony for English Catholics from his English country house of Kiplin Hall in North Yorkshire.
As a Catholic, he continued his father's legacy by promoting religious tolerance in the colony. He also was involved in the establishment of the Newfoundland Colony and the Province of Avalon. Maryland quickly became a haven for English Catholics in the Americas, particularly due to rising religious persecution in England. Governing Maryland's affairs since its founding for 44 years, Calvert died in England in 1675. After his death, the Protestant Revolution along the Chesapeake Bay ("Glorious Revolution") of 1689, matched events occurring overseas across the Atlantic Ocean in Europe, overturning King James II and the Stuart royal dynasty of England and Scotland, and ended Roman Catholic control (and temporarily that of the Calvert family and the Lords Baltimore) of the Province of Maryland colony (including the other original Thirteen Colonies along the East Coast of British America), and established Protestant supremacy.
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (/ˈbɔːltɪmɔːr/; 1580 – 15 April 1632) was an English 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. His second son Leonard Calvert was the first colonial governor of the Province of Maryland.